The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 61

Sunday, September 30, 1990 THE CINCINNATI ENVU1KEK ieieviSlOITt-j Channel 19's Michael is hot with tots "W' We did pretty good. I think we even beat (ratings for) the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles once. Michael Flannery BY JOHN KIESEWETTER The Cincinnati Enquirer These are the times that comedian Michael Flannery has been dreaming about. Flannery known to thousands of Tristate children as Channel 19's "Michael" makes a big TV splash in the next two weeks. Friday, he returns to Tristate airwaves as host of Fridays Are Fun (4:30 p.m.

Friday, Channel 19). It's the first regular local children's TV program here since Channel 9 canceled The Uncle Al Show five years ago. Wednesday, he'll tape a Showtime Comedy Club special at the Sharonville Funnybone, which will be televised at a later date. And he'll appear on Showtime's Oct. 12 National Lampoon Comedy Playoffs, hosted by Leslie Nielsen, which he taped a year ago.

Flannery, named Showtime's "Funniest Man in Ohio" in 1985, is booked solid through the end of the year, including 13 Fridays for Channel 19. The station has committed to the series based on a strong audience response to four shows last May and June, and Michael's cult status members of today's Class of 2000. "Considering how nice it was duce a couple "Tom Jerry" cartoons, read viewer mail and. take a video field trip. Friday he'll' ride in a biplane; next week he'll-talk to Peter Pan cast members about their stage flights.

He plans future taped reports about horse farms, skateboard ramps and may- be even a look at how airport luggage conveyor belts operate. "I go in and out of airports a lot, and I've always wanted to know what's going on back there. I'm never sure it's going to be put on my plane," says Michael, whose night club material incorporates some of the childlike curiosity he displays on Fridays Are Fun. Flannery has spent the past sev-. en years on the road as a He's been pleased with his homerr town TV work, which was "more work and responsibility than I thought, but it was more fun Does he think about Fridays possibly becoming a daily show, or airing on Channel 19's Malrite Communications sister stations? "A lot of people have started in small TV stations and moved on to other things, but I'm not thinking about that right now," he says.

"I've been to LA and didn't like living there. I'm just taking things as they come." Cincinnati EnquKW photo Dr. Betsy Dresser works in her lab at Cincinnati's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Wildlife. Series documents zoos' struggle to save species members, the fourth-largest Fox Kids Club chapter. "Even Fox was shocked," says Patrice Mohn, Channel 19 station manager and executive producer for Michael's series.

"So much interest in only nine months obviously indicates that kids are thirsty for a TV show and Fridays Are Fun are it." The four spring shows were presented as if Michael had taken over the control room and knocked Webster reruns off the air. For fall, Michael will have mastery over Channel 19's picture with a powerful remote-control device. Each week, Michael will intro 1 "BRAVE. compelling, fun: -Richard Schickel. TIME SUPERB ENTERTAINMENT.

CLINT EASTWOOD'S MOST DARING AND SUCCESSFUL 1701 SHOWCASE ORIVK rT. MV .1 IT. Ill I.T J- i i i i i ROUTI4tl-l7SNiM TBI-COUNTV tHOPHWO CTB I 1-71 1 75 IXIT IMS TO NT. S36W IHLANMH, K1NTUCK BY PATRICIA BRENNAN The Washington Post If you could keep an endangered species from becoming extinct, should you? There are those who say to do so would be to meddle with nature. But increasingly, employees at the Cincinnati Zoo and other zoos see doing exactly that as one of their missions, as pointed out Monday on public television's The Infinite Voyage.

After all, as one scientist says, because man's encroachment has been part of the problem, man should be part of the solution. Hence the title for The Infinite Voyage season premiere, "The Keepers of Eden," to air Monday (8 p.m., Channels 48) as part of public television's fall "showcase week." The PBS program points out that no longer are zoos simply display sites for exotic animals, offering them behind bars like pictures in an exhibition. The approach has changed: If possible, animals are housed in environments as close to their native habitats as the zoo can create them. Some the San Diego Zoo is most notable encase the visitors and let the animals roam free within the zoo's perimeters. More and more, zoos also are interested in becoming protective environments for endangered species and laboratories for their perpetuation.

Among those profiled by the PBS series is Dr. Betsy Dresser, Cincinnati Zoo physiologist. She directs the Cincinnati project that HIN MAT. 78 MOM- AT. UNTIL ePM BUM.

HOLS. MMT HOW AT TABBtO( FC ATUMS ONLY TtMfS MOWN AM FOB) TOOA ONLY LATf SHOWS FBI. AT. 1 outside, we did pretty good. I think we even beat (ratings for) the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles once," says Flannery, a College Hill native and Roger Bacon High School graduate.

Michael, as the station prefers that he's called, has been an instant hit with kids since he first appeared on Channel 19 the day after Christmas. On that day he announced Club Nineteen, WXIX-TV's local chapter of Fox Broadcasting's Kids Club. Fox had estimated that Cincinnati would sign up 50,000 children in the first year. After nine months, Channel 19 boasts 80,000 IAITQATI MALL 4701 MITOTI LVO IKIT S3-S BOMt-7 i.i. i.i.ii.ni i.in J.

.1111 ll.llll You have to see It twice" "One of the year's best. Incredibly powerful." MID MlttNINI. AMIRMA AM TV "Dazzling, devastat ting. unforgettable." Stunning, explosive, funny" DE NIRO JOEPESCI i a kb iomm wa.fwmm Kiu i nun anna noil thmii ma 7 IIMt 1 "DOB (BSD flfflBflflWB IMGL "Stunning, brilliant, frequently hilarious." PERFORMANCE AS AN ACTOR." Jack Garner. Gannett Newt Service 10 -Garv rranklin.

ABC TV "TWO THUMBS UP." SISKEL ll EBERT "A FASCINATING, DARING, BEAUTIFULLY FILMED EXPLORATION OF OBSESSION." Jay Scott. TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL has transplanted embryos of threatened species into surrogate mothers who then give birth and nurture the babies, saving that species temporarily, at least from extinction. Dresser first transplanted a bongo antelope embryo into a common eland in 1983. Seven years later she and her team at Cincinnati's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Wild life had repeated the experiment six times with five different species, using both cryogenically frozen and fresh embryos, in vitro fertilization and surgical and non surgical transfer. Among their successes: A Hoi stein cow gave birth to an endan gered guar calf, and a domestic cat became the host-mother of an en dangered species of desert cat.

The Bronx Zoo in New York is the only breeding colony for the proboscis monkey in the United States. Washington's National Zoo breeds golden hon tamarins. A zoo along England's Jersey coastline tries to maintain unusual species that other zoos seem to have es chewed. Even the best efforts of humans may not be able to save the cheetah, a species so inbred that a computer display of the chromosomes of several cheetahs shows them all to be almost identical. They are all prey to the same diseases and may either be sterile or reproduce poorly.

The message: Go to a zoo and see them while you can. You may have to tell your grandchildren about them. i inn, i i rfll i la i I 1 la i hf a i 11 fl I iv if in. I II an 3't I I I'l' '14 I'll 1 1 a i a a itit I a Li mk: "Funny. Sharp.

Fast. "Breathless and brilliant. Riotous and beautifully cast "Big, rich, powerful and explosive. Great entertainment. "Bristles with passion.

wit and style. An American classic, MMIIVt.Mlftil Awesome." -Mr bra MHM ROBERT RAY UOTTA 1 IKMMIUkm WARNFR BHUS PHFSF NTS A ALPASO RASTAR PRODUCTION CLINT WHITE MUNTRR BLACK HI ART JUTFAHI C.t IVl'NIVA ALUN ARMSTRONG MARISA Bl Rl NS( IN CO PBODUCf STANLI RI'BIN SCREENPLAY BY PETER VIERTEL JAMES RRIIH1ES AND Bl'RT KENNEDY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DAVID VALDES PRODUCED AND DIRFCTED BY CLINT EASTWIKD WARMR BAi IPCI iim mo Mima mr5ttTOol GoodlFcllas TImm Decade at Life in die Mafia. 1KUI SOUS KM hi. Sanaa, cowmk ran iMwu i iM-ctnoiAS Kin CINCINNATI SPfHNQDALt ERLANGER CASTQATC Ml4rttJI 'I ll 4. im 4 7:15: 11:11 1 II 4 i tiki a iy al a it a.

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