Local viewers can now sample Eckert's entertaining tastes

If you toured the world sampling food and wine for a living, you probably wouldn't complain, either. But for the creator and host of public TV's "Culinary Travels With Dave Eckert," his job is especially sweet because it came just as his career of 20 years seemed to be petering out. Eckert, the onetime KMBC news anchor, is host of "Culinary Travels," now seen on more than 150 PBS affiliates and making its Kansas City debut at 3 p.m. Saturday on KCPT, Channel 19. Eckert recently moved back to the Kansas City area with his family. After five years at Channel 9, Eckert accepted an offer from Chicago's WGN-TV in 1994 to headline its new morning news program. But once he arrived there, the station known as the home of Bozo the Clown turned its morning show into Bozo for Adults. Eckert, who had not been hired to clown around, was replaced. One good thing came out of that experience: a segment he created for WGN called "What's Cookin' Chicago." With the knowledge and contacts he developed, Eckert cooked up the idea for what eventually became "Culinary Travels." Eckert says his show is different from all those other PBS food programs because it tells stories not only about the people who bring the finished meals to your table, but of the farmers, fishermen and other people who bring the food to the kitchen. "In the conversations I'd had with many chefs and winemakers, they all talked about their suppliers - where they got those great day boat scallops or foraged mushrooms or salmon or cheese," Eckert said in a telephone interview from his home in Liberty. "I realized no one was doing those stories about where the food comes from and how unique or indigenous it is to a particular culture of cuisine." Likewise, Eckert said, "We don't rate the wines or give technical information on how the vines are trellised. We just tell the story of that winery." Saturday's episode takes Eckert to the French province of Alsace, along the Rhine River. Naturally there is wine sampling, and Eckert visits a renowned restaurant in the region. Other episodes take him to exotic locales like St. Moritz, Tuscany, Santiago and Maui. Not bad for a guy whose news career included stops in Terre Haute, Little Rock and Boise. Still, "Culinary Travels" is not as glamorous as it appears on camera. Eckert runs it on a shoestring and gets by with a single corporate sponsor (Spice Islands). "I do the writing, producing, hosting, directing. I plan all the trips," Eckert said. "It's a lot of work, but I don't have to hire people." In fact, just three people are putting out "Culinary Travels": the other two are his photographer and editor, John Terendy and Danielle Montana. Even better, Eckert said, they're a couple, "so they need only one room instead of two." Eckert works "twice as hard" on this show as he ever did in commercial TV, but he said the rewards are outsized: more time with his family and creative control over what viewers see. Plus, he can live anywhere he wants to. "Even though Chicago is my hometown, we chose Kansas City," Eckert said. "This is where we wanted to be." "State of Grace," Fox Family's new series about two girls growing up in the year 1965, wraps its first season at 8 tonight. I notice that Grace's mom (Faye Grant) is no longer smoking in every scene. In fact, the long cigarette holder and cancer sticks are gone completely. They shouldn't ever have been in the picture - not on a show that's aimed at impressionable pre-teen viewers. Looks like someone at Fox Family started taking the "family" part seriously. Despite the upcoming transfer of Fox Family to Walt Disney, which will rename the channel ABC Family, "State of Grace" should return. It has been renewed for a second season. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com ON THE WEB To read more about the shows mentioned in this column, go to kansascity.com and click on FYI. @ART CAPTION:Eckert hangin' out in the vineyard @ART:Photo (color) @ART CREDIT:

19 going on 40; KCPT celebrates anniversary with new digs and new mission to promote local programming

Bill Reed is showing a guest around KCPT's newly renovated 31st Street studios and offices. You'd think he was trying to sell the place. "This is so neat," says Reed, looking around his station's spacious and sunny new lobby. The president of Kansas City's public television station is eagerly pointing out one architectural detail after another and generally bragging on the $6 million makeover that has transformed this stretch of aging brick buildings into a paragon of urban redesign. "I love everything about it," Reed declares. What better way to mark the 40th anniversary of Channel 19? With four decades of solid community-service broadcasting under its belt, KCPT is embracing a future in which Reed believes local programming - including news - will become more important than ever. The new lobby, which is several times the size of the old one, features a "community room" that can be reserved by nonprofit groups. The lobby expresses what Reed believes KCPT should be doing: expanding its outreach to the community, finding new ways to serve it both on and off the air. Though it is always fund-raising season at large noncommercial television stations, the current KCPT campaign is unprecedented for the station, both in size and significance. The goal is $14.5 million, and it would pay not only for the renovation but also for an equally costly equipment upgrade to meet the government's mandate for digital television. It also would create a new $2 million fund to pay for local programming on KCPT. The fund is named for the late John Masterman, the veteran Kansas City journalist who directed public affairs programming during his 19 years at the station. Since arriving in Kansas City nine years ago, Reed has pushed for KCPT to broaden its local programming beyond public affairs. Under Masterman, Channel 19 had established a reputation for strong local coverage. At one point, his signature program, "Kansas City Illustrated," aired weekly and employed six reporters. But the show was expensive, and Reed thought there was a need for programs that were more than talking heads. He courted Kansas City Star columnist Charles Gusewelle, who's become a fixture on the station, and funded the popular, award-winning folk-art travelogue "Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations." As a PBS executive in the 1980s, Reed developed the PBS Video line, so he knew that specials like these could make money in their afterlife. Home-video sales of KCPT programs helped underwrite the cost of making them, and a cottage industry was born. As general manager of the public TV station in Redding, Calif., in the 1960s, Reed remembered the excitement of seeing the first images of "Sesame Street." But many PBS mainstays - British mysteries and dramas, nature programs, documentaries - have since been copied in profusion by cable TV. The PBS prime-time lineup now consists of warhorses that have been on the air for two or three decades. But cable can't copy local programs. The combination of PBS resources and local content would seem a natural, yet it's rarely happened. Unlike National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," which offers time for local news, no such accommodation has ever been made by PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." That may change with the arrival of a new PBS president, Pat Mitchell. Mitchell, a former top executive in Ted Turner's cable empire, has been trotting around the country to visit stations and explore collaborative projects between the stations and PBS. She will attend KCPT's 40th anniversary celebration, a Saturday concert with Jim Brickman at Starlight Theatre. "We are very supportive of the plan Pat Mitchell has laid out," Reed says. Key parts of the plan: A Friday night series called "Public Square," which will begin in January and feature segments supplied by PBS affiliates. "Public Square" will air two hours a week with a broad purview that includes the arts, politics, economics, music, history, science and popular culture. Also in January, the children's program "Zoom" will allot time to local stations each Friday. KCPT will use its segment to spotlight area kids who do volunteer work, says Cynthia Smith, Channel 19's vice president of content and community affairs. Meanwhile, KCPT will expand its lineup of public affairs programs with a single-issue news program, "East 31st Street," which will air every other month beginning Oct. 10. Former KCTV reporter Stan Carmack will reappear on local television - minus his familiar toupee - along with former CNN and Fox news reporter Joan Westcarr. The first program, with KCPT's Nick Haines as host, will compare the school districts of Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan. Once the Masterman fund is fully endowed, more new programs will follow. What excites Smith about the Masterman fund is the potential to finance "something hard-hitting" that may be stuck on the drawing board because an underwriter can't be found. And then there is "KC REACHE," probably the least-watched yet most influential show in town. "KC REACHE" is "distance learning" for adults who can't take time off to attend college. KCPT airs a video curriculum in the middle of the night five days a week; students tape them and watch them at their convenience, or take on-line courses. "KC REACHE" started in 1999 with five area colleges. Now 10 schools offer courses, including the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and more than 6,700 area adults are enrolled. Reed envisions using the new digital-TV technology for a separate channel that would air distance learning all day. Another channel could be devoted to KCPT productions like "Uniquely Kansas City" and "East 31st Street," while a third channel might show PBS programs. KCPT is not alone in broadening its horizons. Across the country, Reed says, public television stations are taking a hard look at their futures and realizing that they can't subsist on PBS and a weekly roundtable show. It's a challenge trying to fill time with local programs, but Reed thinks KCPT - and most other public stations - have no choice. "A new localism is coming to the fore in public television," Reed says, adding, "Finally." To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. KCPT AT 40 Kansas City's public TV station is celebrating its "40th anniversary" this weekend, but actually it's had those call letters only since 1972. 1961: KCSD-TV signs on as alow-power station at Channel 19. 1969: "Sesame Street" premiere. 1971: "Masterpiece Theatre"premiere. 1972: Community ServiceBroadcasting buys KCSD, changes call letters to KCPT, boosts power and begins color broadcasts. 1973: First KCPT auction. 1974: "Nova" premiere. 1980: "Mystery!" premiere. 1983: "Kansas City Illustrated," weekly newsmagazine anchored by John Masterman, premiere. 1983: "Frontline" premiere. 1988: "The American Experience" premiere. 1989: Public outcry over KCPTinterview with serial killer Robert Berdella; telecast is the highest-rated in station history. 1990: Begins broadcasting in stereo. 1997: "Antiques Roadshow"premiere. @ART CAPTION:Sesame Street; Uniquely Kansas City; Nova @ART:Photos (3, color)

Dare's dominance brings easy spring win

The Rock" just keeps rolling along. Thanks to the tremendous appeal of Johnny Dare, KQRC-FM (98.9) soared to its most dominating ratings performance yet, according to results from Arbitron's recently released spring ratings "book." "He is absolutely the real thing in morning radio," says Dare's boss, Bob Zuroweste, who manages the eight Entercom-owned stations, including KQRC. How real? One out of every four listeners ages 18-34 - a mind-blowing 24 "share" of the audience - was tuned to Dare and Murphy Wells. (One "share" point equals 1 percent of people listening to radio.) That's more than twice the 9.7 "share" of the No. 2 morning show among young listeners. But wait. Dare also leads in listeners ages 25-54 and ranks fifth among listeners 35-64, giving "The Rock" a broad, all-ages appeal rarely seen in radio anymore. Overall, KQRC ran away with the spring book with an all-day average of 8.7 among listeners ages 12-plus, or nearly two full share points ahead of runner-up KPRS-FM (103.3), which won the winter ratings derby. "It is a dominant, dominant station," Zuroweste says, "and this is the biggest it's ever been." "The Rock" may have to look outside Kansas City for any real rivals. According to Zuroweste, it is the second most-listened-to rock station in America, behind only KQRS-FM in the Twin Cities. Highlights and lowlights from the spring book: A year ago "Oldies 95" was a station in limbo. Entercom had agreed to sell the station to Susquehanna Radio of York, Pa., but it took months to seal the deal. Meanwhile KCMO-FM suffered; listeners drifting away. To get those listeners back, Susquehanna's market manager in Kansas City, Mike Campbell, launched a massive advertising campaign. It worked: KCMO-FM climbed from seventh place to second among listeners 25-54. Susquehanna's two other properties - talk radio KCMO-AM (710) and classic rocker KCFX-FM (101.1) - did not fare as well. KCFX dropped to 15th overall, and KCMO-AM lost 35 percent of its audience in the past year en route to a 19th-place finish in the spring book. Campbell says "The Fox" is freshening up its music list to emphasize more upbeat songs. As for KCMO-AM, Campbell says he's willing to be patient with his new personalities. Kansas City's two FM country stations improved only a little from their dismal winter ratings. That prompted a change in tune at KFKF. Program director Dale Carter tossed out most of the station's retro music and rebuilt KFKF's playlist on a mixture of new songs and hits from stars like Garth Brooks, the Dixie Chicks, George Strait and Faith Hill. Jon Zellner, who oversees KSRC-FM and KMXV-FM, says it's true that "The Rock" is Kansas City's powerhouse station. But c'mon! It's a guy station. And everybody knows guys don't make the buying decisions around the house. Women do. "Any advertiser would need 'Mix 93.3' and 'Star 102,' " Zellner says. "Between the two stations, almost 70 percent of all women in Kansas City are reached." "Mix 93.3" was No. 1 with women in all major age groups. Radio personality Tony Kornheiser threw a snit this spring after learning that WHB-AM (810) would be replacing his syndicated talk show with a local one featuring Tim Grunhard, Bill Maas and Frank Boal. The ratings bear out WHB's move. Kornheiser's show was the weak link in the station's otherwise strong all-day performance, according to sales manager Sandy Cohen. WHB's morning and afternoon drive shows are both No. 2 among young men, while the other syndicated midday show - the one with Jim Rome - is going great guns. Among public radio outlets, KCUR-FM (89.3) ranked 16th overall with a 3.3 "share," while KKFI-FM (90.1) and Lawrence's KANU-FM (91.5) ranked 24th and 25th overall. In other news Sharing credit for "The Rock's" success is the station's program director, Vince Richards. Make that soon-to-be ex-program director: Richards is expected to sign with Houston rockers KLOL-FM and KKRW-FM, according to an industry report. Next month the National Association of Broadcasters hands out the industry's highest honor, the Marconi Awards, and KPRS has been nominated in two categories: Large Market Station of the Year and Urban Station of the Year. "Hot 103 Jamz" was nominated last year for a Marconi as a "Legendary Station." WDAF is a nominee this year in that category. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. The top 10 Kansas City's top 10 (and share of listeners age 12-plus): 1) KQRC, rock, 8.7 2) KPRS, urban contemporary, 6.8 3) WDAF-AM (610), country, 6.4 4) KCMO-FM (94.9), oldies, 6.0 5) KMBZ-AM (980), news-talk, 5.9 6) KMXV-FM (93.3), contemporary hits, 5.4 7) KFKF-FM (94.1), country, 5.3 8) KCIY-FM (106.5), smooth jazz, 4.5 9) KRBZ-FM (96.5), contemporary hits, 4.4 10) (tie) KBEQ-FM (104.3), young country; KSRC-FM (102.1), adult contemporary, 4.2. @ART CAPTION:KQRC-FM morning talk show personality Johnny Dare @ART CREDIT:File photo @ART:Photo (color)

WB, Comedy Central roll strikes with 'Dead Last' and 'Bowling'

Last year the WB network gave insiders a preview of a new show, "Dead Last," a comic thriller about a rock band that had supernatural powers. It sounded like a parody of the WB schedule - "Buffy" meets "PopStars" - but you know what? The preview killed. I couldn't wait to see the finished episode. And so I waited ... and waited ... now, 15 months later, "Dead Last" makes its network debut at 8 p.m. Tuesday on the WB (Channel 62). So the band is rehearsing in this, like, dive, when suddenly this, like, freak thing happens, OK? There's this wild brooch the drummer picks up, only it's actually an amulet, OK, and it puts them through, like, this wormhole. Drummer, singer, guitar player - bang. Next thing you know, they're talking with ghosts. I know. It sounds like a really stupid TV show. But it's not. It's hilarious and genuinely suspenseful and has heart. But it seems the WB has given up on "Dead Last" by releasing the show during the dog days of summer, where it's almost certain to finish "dead last" in the Nielsen ratings. So catch it while you can. Oh, those Minnesotans sure are funny, ain't they? You betcha. As if "Fargo," Lake Wobegon and the governor weren't enough, Comedy Central has gone to the land of 10,000 leagues - bowling leagues, that is - to mine still more of the comedy gold that is becoming Minnesota's biggest export. The result is "Let's Bowl," a riotously funny "reality" program in which actual people settle their grievances over a line of tenpins. It airs for 10 weeks on Comedy Central beginning at 9:30 p.m. Sunday. A Jell-O salad of camp, competition and goofy spontaneity, "Let's Bowl" features two hosts, Wally and Chopper, who yap incessantly while contestants decide their real-life beef at a Minneapolis bowling alley. Not surprisingly, the bowling is secondary to the antics dropped in between frames. "Let's Bowl" adds a couple of rules; one involves the legal use of an airhorn. The whole thing is marinated in good-natured jokes at the state's expense (among the prizes contestants can win are a snowmobile and $500 of local meat). Through it all, the Minnesotans are remarkably good-natured. And why not? Do they make TV shows about North Dakota? CMT (Country Music Television) got a makeover this summer. Like most real-life makeovers, this one was clearly designed to make the channel look years younger. In fact, the whole country music business these days has dived headfirst into the fountain of youth. Country used to be known for its intergenerational appeal, but lately its motto seems to be "No One Who Looks Like They're Over 40 Allowed." So it's nice to see one of the greatest traditions in country music moving to CMT this week: the weekly broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, which began in 1925. "CMT's Grand Ole Opry Live" will have its debut at 7 p.m. Saturday with guests Loretta Lynn - that's more like it! - Brad Paisley, Steve Wariner and Sonya Isaacs. Also, five Opry-themed editions of "CMT Showcase" air weeknights this week at 7 p.m., including an all-star tribute on Friday to the late bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. Alison Krauss and Union Station, Nickel Creek and Ricky Skaggs will play. If your children complain about the Lawrence brothers looking funny on the TV, don't dismiss it. What happened is that the Disney Channel - where Joey, Matt and Andy Lawrence are starring in the movie "Jumping Ship" - recently moved off Time Warner Cable's premium tier. It's now at Channel 70. But something is interfering with Channel 70's signal. Engineers are looking into it and may even have the problem fixed by 6 p.m. Friday, when "Jumping Ship" will have its premiere showing. Not every home is affected by the interference, but in some areas Channel 70 has had dozens of wavy lines running across the screen. The lines have the effect of making every movie look like an old movie - even one with the ever-youthful Lawrences in it. A reader wanted to know if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would appear on the channel formerly known as Odyssey now that it has changed to Hallmark Channel. The answer is yes. Hallmark will continue to show more than its share of inspirational programming, reflecting the terms of the agreement by which Hallmark took control of Odyssey in 1998 from a consortium of 80 religious groups. Look for "Music and the Spoken Word" - direct from Salt Lake City - at 7:30 a.m. Sundays on Hallmark, followed by the three-hour "America at Worship," featuring services from various denominations. On the Web To read more about the shows mentioned in this column, go to kansascity.com and click on FYI. @ART CAPTION:"CowZilla"/Crown Center Shops atrium @ART:Photo (color) @ART CREDIT:

Showtime loads up on quirks for trip to 'California'

You live in a small town. You're young, but you feel strangely set in your ways: You've got your girl, your job, your watering hole. Life has become a John Cougar Mellencamp song: "Jack and Diane" five years later. You feel vaguely like a loser. What do you do? Get out of town, of course. That's the premise of "Going to California," a promising new buddy series that will have its premiere at 9 p.m. Thursday on Showtime. Space (Sam Trammell) and Hank (Brad Henke) are the buddies. Their car is a 1966 Buick. Their excuse is that another buddy suddenly left town after his girl dumped him. Something about Memphis. So they point their car toward Tennessee. They have a strict rule against hitchhikers. But what fun would that be? Thus in no time they are hooking up with larger than life characters such as Bob (John Asher) - a guy who really, really likes eggs - and a tranvestite who looks an awful lot like NFL great Lawrence Taylor. In next week's episode, Hank meets the girl of his dreams on the streets of Memphis, while Space is haunted by Elvis impersonators. At times, "Going to California" acts like it's going to be profound or something. But it's a sweet enough show; I don't mind going along for the ride. (Warning: Adult language.) Fans of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" already know that the shining star of that improv-comedy show isn't host Drew Carey or commercial pitchmen Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie. It's Wayne Brady, the incredibly versatile singer/comic with a million-dollar smile. Brady's talent reminds you of those all-purpose entertainers who used to headline in Vegas and have their own summer variety shows on TV. Fittingly, then, ABC has endowed Brady with his own summer series, and judging from the electrifying 12-minute preview I saw last month, "The Wayne Brady Show" will take us right back to those thrilling days of yesteryear. This half-hour tour de force debuts with a one-hour show at 7 p.m. Wednesday on ABC (Channel 9). I watched Brady take a hokey sketch premise - James Brown saves a heart-attack victim - and single-handedly rescue it with a dead-on impersonation of the Godfather of Soul. I also saw heartfelt tributes to Sammy Davis Jr. and Brady's own grandmother (it involves drag). Variety shows are always a mixed bag; that's why they rarely appear on TV anymore. But if anyone can deliver more than a highlight reel's worth of entertainment, it's this guy. Read more on Brady on Showtime, Page D-4. It's ba-a-a-ack: "Shark Week," a cable-TV event that will surface for its 14th summer on Discovery. The weeklong event (every night at 8 p.m. beginning Sunday) features three new hours of programming along with some encores. Shark maven Nigel Marven is your host. On Sunday, meet a group of remarkable South African sharks that think they're dolphins. They elevate 15 feet out of the water in the quest for food. A Discovery press release describes one scene as "the most spectacular feeding frenzy ever seen, when over 27 great white sharks lined up next to each other to gorge on a 35-foot Bryde's whale carcass." You might want to wait an hour after eating before you watch that. ON THE WEB To read more about the shows mentioned in this column, go to kansascity.com and click on FYI. @ART CAPTION:Be sure to catch the footage of great whites going on a whale feeding frenzy, part of the "Shark Week" action on Discovery. @ART:Photo (colo)

Greetings from the Hallmark Channel; H.G. Wells miniseries is a fine start for newly named family channel

It has had more name changes than Prince, more owners than a '78 Subaru and fewer viewers than a UPN rerun. It is the newly christened Hallmark Channel (Channel 61 on Time Warner Cable, Channel 75 on Comcast), which signs on Sunday in place of the Odyssey Network. Hallmark has completely changed the look and feel of the channel, including a new logo based on the familiar emblem of Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards. In fact, Hallmark has been running Odyssey for nearly three years; what viewers will see now is a long-overdue makeover. The channel gets off to a spectacular start with "The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells," based on short stories by the author many consider the father of modern science fiction. The three-night, six-hour, special effects-laden miniseries begins at 8 p.m. Sunday. It comes from the prolific studios of Hallmark Entertainment, which has adapted numerous classics for TV including "Gulliver's Travels" and "Animal Farm." (Hallmark Cards controls both Hallmark Entertainment and Crown Media Holdings, which owns Hallmark Channel.) In the coming months, Hallmark Channel will present a miniseries based on the stories of Hans Christian Andersen; an adaptation of "Roughing It," Mark Twain's tale of Western adventure; and "Stranded," a retelling of the "Swiss Family Robinson" classic. Hallmark Entertainment will produce those, too. The woman who runs Hallmark Channel, Margaret Loesch, says she wants programs that appeal to the whole family. In contrast to channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, which are aimed at kids, Hallmark Channel is seeking primarily grown-up viewers. "Our mantra is story telling, primarily dramatic, that's targeted to adults - but you don't have to ask your child to leave the room," Loesch says. In the H.G. Wells miniseries, H.G. Well's and his companion Jane investigate weird phenomena such as a potion that can accelerate time or a mysterious object from outer space. Each of the six hours is devoted to one short story written by Wells. The miniseries contains mild profanity and some grown-up situations surrounding the romance of H.G. and Jane, who were married in real life. Still, Hallmark's H.G. seems like a Victorian prude compared with the actual Wells, who had numerous affairs during and after his marriage to Jane, fathered children out of wedlock and carried on a torrid 26-year relationship with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. Needless to say, none of this comes up in the Hallmark version. The man credited with getting "The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells" on TV, Nick Willing, admits that the life of Wells "was indeed quite wayward," but he says the series is about Wells' short stories, not the man himself. "We used him as a character only because many of his stories were written in the first person," Willing says. "It's more about the creative process than a documentary about H.G. Wells. There have been so many of those." The road to Hallmark "H.G. Wells" is part of a $50 million effort this year to pump new life into a channel that has scarcely registered in the Nielsen ratings since it signed on in 1988 as the religious channel ACTS. A merger produced arguably the worst name in the history of cable TV - the VISN/ACTS Network - which was later changed to the Faith & Values Channel and then, in 1996, to Odyssey. In 1998 Hallmark and the Jim Henson Company bought a controlling interest in Odyssey. Episodes of Henson's classic "Muppet Show" were added, as were encore showings of Hallmark Entertainment epics and the "Hallmark Hall of Fame." As the name Hallmark Channel suggests, there won't be as much Henson in the schedule, though a new Henson series, "Telling Stories With Tomie dePaola," will air at 6:30 a.m. weekdays beginning Monday. (Loesch will only say that "the relationship with Henson is being changed.") Loesch plans to augment Hallmark Channel's heavy inventory of period pieces and reruns with new programs that tell more up-to-date stories. Hallmark Entertainment already has agreed to produce a reality series on adoption for the channel. But will families tune in? Hallmark Channel is carried in only a third of all U.S. homes with cable or satellite TV. The name change should help spur interest: A study conducted earlier this year for Hallmark Channel showed consumers giving the Hallmark brand high marks. In that same study, half of all adults questioned said they watch TV by themselves, yet most would rather be watching with others, especially their kids. Loesch thinks Hallmark Channel can make that possible. "We are doing the right thing at the right time," she says. THE HALLMARK CHANNEL SCHEDULE Mornings: "Inspirational" shows and parent-child fare ("Telling Stories With Tomie dePaola," "Donna's Day") Late mornings: Adventures in foreign TV, with family dramas "Snowy River" from Australia, "Avonlea" and "Wind at My Back" from Canada Afternoon: An early-bird's Nick at Nite, with back-to-back reruns of "My Three Sons," "Bewitched," "I Dream of Jeannie," "Happy Days" Prime time: "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" and a movie Late nights: Reality ("Rescue 911"), retro (the '80s series "Hart to Hart") and riflemen ("Young Riders," "Lonesome Dove" and the original "Rifleman") - To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com @ART CAPTION:Katy Carmichael and Tom Ward star in Hallmark's three-part miniseries, "The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells." @ART CAPTION:Children's author Tomie dePaola will have his own series, "Telling Stories With Tomie dePaola." @ART CREDIT:Hallmark Channel @ART CAPTION:"Plaza Cow" @ART CREDIT:Highwood Properties office on the Plaza @ART:Photos (3, color)

Local notes

KCTV general manager The corporate owner of CBS affiliate KCTV looked outside the Kansas City area - but within its ranks - for a general manager. The new GM, Kirk Black, has been running Meredith Corp.'s CBS station serving the Flint-Saginaw, Mich., market since 1998. He replaces John Rose, who along with nine other KCTV employees took a recent early-retirement buyout offered by Meredith. Before joining Meredith, Black was vice president and general manager of television station WIBW in Topeka. Black, 34, a native of Cleveland, graduated from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Flint-Saginaw is the country's 64th-largest television market, according to Nielsen Media Research. Kansas City is 30th. Meredith, based in Des Moines, Iowa, is a diversified media company that publishes books and magazines and owns 12 television stations. - Aaron Barnhart/The Star Birch Telecom Birch Telecom Inc. has received an additional investment of $26.3 million from current investors, including $25 million from an affiliate of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Birch's largest backer. The Kansas City-based telecommunications company announced that it had received the additional funding this week. In March, Birch officials said the company had commitments for the investment, which it says will fully finance its current business plan. On top of the money from the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts affiliate, the latest investment round has $1.3 million from other current investors. The affiliate of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a New York buyout firm, invested $110 million in Birch beginning in 1999. In March the firm invested an additional $75 million and said it would invest up to $30 million more by July. Birch officials said this week that other current investors contributed $3.7 million in April and May of this year. In the past year, the company has raised $105 million in private equity and $70 million in debt. - Suzanne King/The Star Hospital agreement St. Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System has completed a management agreement with Cushing Memorial Hospital in Leavenworth. Cushing, a 74-bed hospital with 350 employees, will pay an annual fee to St. Luke's-Shawnee Mission for consultation and management support services. "Cushing Memorial Hospital and St. Luke's-Shawnee Mission Health System have enjoyed an excellent working relationship for many years," said Don Sipes, the health system's vice president for regional services. "This management agreement brings our relationship closer. Together, we will now be able to maximize the opportunities that the partnering of a large health system and a fine community hospital offer." - Julius A. Karash/The Star @ART CAPTION:Black @ART:Photo