The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 35

Sunday, August 25, 1996 Page 3D Station The remote control has changed much more than channels 1 A I eft vk: ft V(S jA Star die photo Muni Butler pauses on the set of "By The Way" in this file shot taken in the early 1970s. Area flavor found in such locally-produced shows may diminish when the station moves to Birmingham. Slush drinks celebrating birthdays Fort Worth Slo-Tfyam It was such a simple story, the kind that those of us in the media love to jump on. The Slurpee, that frozen, fizzy, tooth-numbingly-sweet beverage indigenous to 7-Elevens, was celebrating its 30th birthday. Accordingly, Southland 7-EIeven's parent company in Dallas, recently sent out a passel of press releases recounting the Slurpee's birth and growth, and giving the impression that the whole frozen carbonated beverage business had its start in 1966.

The only problem with that is it's not exactly true. Slurpee may well be the most famous fizzy frozen drink around, but it wasn't the first. Strictly speaking, it's only 29, too. The Slurpee was officially christened such in early 1967. Thanks to a massive advertising push that included a short-lived Slurpee magazine and a Slurp dance step and record, it soon became part of the pop-culture landscape, just at "brainfreeze" would later become part of the vernacular.

More than 125 million Slurpees, in flavors such as Coca-Cola, wild cherry and pina colada, are told annually in the United States alone; total sales will reach 3 billion this year. But as anyone who grew up near a 7-Eleven in the 1960t knowt, before there was the Slurpee, there was the Icee. A similar product developed by a Dairy Queen owner in the late 1950s in Coffey ville, the Icee, recognized by its blue-and-red striped cup and its polar bear mascot, continues to rival the Slurpee in popularity. It sells 150 million cups annually. "We were definitely first," says Susan Swisher, marketing director for Icee USA, which provides Icees to most of the United States, in such locations as movie theaters, convenience stores, theme parks and discount stores, such as Kmart.

"The actual anniversary of Icee, I don't know if it can be pinpointed. But the product itself was established as early as the mid-'60s. Absolutely." In early 1967, 7-EIeven's advertising agency officially changed the name of the company's frozen drink to Slurpee. Icee Slurpee 1966 1967 whatever. When all is said and done, we're just thankful we're not going to 7-Eleven to get a cherry Kneblik.

Studio Of DAHCEARJS (A CHRIST CENTERED BUSINESS) FALL PANCB REGISTRATION Barry Mundy, Director Ballet Pointe Jazz Liturgical Dance Lab Adult Ballet Call Now 235-2290 1123 Noble Street, Anniston AmiAinowcnoHS: The Nutcracker ft nous Lecture Demonatmtone Spring Dane Concert Irrurgica! Dance Opportunism FREE KIDS TICKETS While supplies last at participating imsmrnn From Page 1D Confusion may be the only appropriate response at this point in the shift to the larger market After all, even Phil Cox. the station manager for WJSU's new incarnation Alabama's ABC says he is unaware of any precedents for the new television hybrid he is helping to create. Last January, Allbritton Communications of Washington, D.C., leased TV 40 from its owner, Osbom Communications Corp. of Conn. The previous November, Allbritton had also acquired Tuscaloosa's WCFT-TV 33.

In February of this year, Allbritton announced plans to combine the two stations into Alabama's ABC, a switch form the CBS affiliation, and to move the majority of the staff and operations to Birmingham. The new station debuts one wee! from today and will serve the entire central Alabama area, from Tuscaloosa to Anniston and beyond. What makes the new arrangement truly unusual and perhaps trend-setting it Allbritton't promise to continue to provide focused local coverage in both Anniston and Tuscaloosa through a combination of special newt inserts and community programming. The newt inserts would work on the tame principle as when a local television network pre-empts one i ports game for another match with more regional appeal. Newt broadcasts will be anchored out of Birmingham, but during three-to-five minute segments devoted to local newt coverage Birmingham viewers will tee Birmingham newt events, Tuscaloosa viewers will tee Tuscaloosa coverage and northeast Alabamians will see northeast Alabama news.

Two veteran reporters from WJSU's news team, John Magnum and Paulette Miller, will cover our region. Cox said Alabama's ABC will retain WJSU's public service role with "This Week in Northeast Alabama," a half-hour community show scheduled to appear throughout the entire coverage area every Sunday at 8:30 a.m. So how does all this change the big picture of the small screen? The preliminary reviews are mixed. Susan Robertson, a spokeswoman for the Anniston Museum of Natural History, said the Museum had a wonderful relationship with WJSU that she is confident will continue under Alabama's ABC. "From the conversations I've had, it is going to be business as usual," said Ms.

Robertson about Alabama's ABC. "We are going to continue to call them and they are going to continue to come out." 1 Next door at the Berman Museum, K. Dozier, the museum's curator of education, said she was basically more curious than concerned about the structure of the new station. Both Kathy Foster, the special events coordinator of the Main Street program, and Jim Nims, the president of Calhoun County United Way, echoed Ms. Roberston's and Ms.

Dozier's confidence in the ability of a reformatted station to provide adequate community affairs coverage. However, Bonnie Seymour, director of the Anniston Public Library, was not so sure about the transition. Ms. Seymour has regularly reviewed books on "By the Way." "I just know we won't be doing (book) reviews anymore," Ms. Seymour said simply.

She said she had heard the news through word of mouth rather than any official contact with the new management "Aren't we all kind of in the dark about what's going to happen?" Ms. Seymour asked. In fact several former WJSU employees expressed concern about the effect that moving the base of operations to Birmingham will have on the of local community coverage. Angie Casey left her job as an anchorwoman at WJSU to work at a local, news bureau planned for WNAL in Gadsden that has since been put on indefinite hold. "With the change you have to be realistic the local hews is going to be limited," said Ms.

Casey. "You may get the top story of the day, it's true, but what happens to the story about somebody doing a great community service or the Kiwanis Pancake Day? A lot of TV-40 news was not big news, but that was part of the lure, the charm of it." According to Robyn Eoff, an associate professor of communications at Jacksonville State University, Ms. Casey may be right on target. "Local good news you probably won't hear about" said Ms. Eoff.

"Bad things that happen in Anniston will still be on (air), because that is major television news." kU 'The Shopping Channel, the Weather Channel, they are things you can hook into as you are flipping around. They are islands in the Rick Dillman, professor Western Maryland College know what's what Jim Lange from "The Dating Game' talking about Frasier and Roz, someone from "3rd Rock From the Sun lip-synching to a Tom Jones song. We'll do whatever we think will keep people from reaching for the remote." Of course, as you and I and Manze know, people reach for their remotes all the time. That reality has spurred more than shorter theme tongs and "promo-tainment." It has driven the development of a new kind of network the special-purpose channel. From CNN Headline News to the Weather Channel, television is brimming with channels that are oases of con stancy, channels where you always know what's on.

"Many see the growth of these special-purpose channels as a response to channel-surfing," says Rick Dillman, an associate professor of communications at Western Maryland College. "The Shopping Channel, the Weather Channel, they are things you can hook into as you are flipping around. They are islands in the flow." These island-channels center their programming on the presumption that viewers are flipping in and out all the time. A network such as Nick at Nite, with a lineup of vintage reruns, or Classic Sports Network and its schedule of bygone sporting events, provides a steady, familiar ground for viewers to step over to as they please. "That's the beauty of the remote," says Brian Bedol, CSN's president.

"You sit there with the clicker in your hand, and you can watch six things at once. We just want to be one of those six places you click on." It is easy to understand why the remote control has changed television advertising; after all, it was invented as a tool to help viewers avoid commercials. "This was a time 1956 when Zenith's founder Cmdr. Eugene F. McDonald Jr.

was still running the company, and his word was law," says Robert Adler, who invented the remote control 40 years ago last month while working in the research division of Zenith Electronics. "He thought nobody was going to be willing to sit through commercials, and he wanted to give people a way of avoiding them. And it was up to us to come up with something." In this way, commercials became the prompts for viewers to start flipping, and television's dynamic was reversed: Instead of programs delivering viewers to advertisers, viewers began surfing away. "Advertising avoidance is the primary gratification of the remote control device," says Robert Bellamy, co-author of 'Television and the Remote Control." 'Television's audience, which was once stationary, is now very mobile; the days of commercial pods bSrween shows is gone, and advertisers have had to deal with these facts. The structure and content of commercials have changed." With viewers able to scamper off at the first sign of tedium, advertisers either have to keep the viewer from flipping or stop him as he's flipping through.

And then the advertiser must get the viewer to watch the very thing he is trying to avoid. "You have to do something captivating, something so noteworthy that if people pick up the first three or four seconds, you own them for the next 27 seconds," says Stan Richards, head of the Stan Richards Group, a Dallas-based advertising agency. "The net result of the remote control is that the boring commercial is even less effective. There's really not a lot of difference between pushing buttons on a remote and sitting there dutifully and paying no attention. It's just that no one is even sitting through a boring commercial anymore.

"Our mission is to do something that still works even if someone has hit the mute button." Catching the eye. That's the trick in a world where everybody is flipping by, where it takes giant beach-party dudes romping over the Rockies or a re-animated John Wayne returning from beyond to get viewers to sit through a beer By Tom Maurstad Data Morning New Click. You use it all the time. Odds are, you have more than one, since there now are more of them than there are of us. In technicalacademic jargon, it is known as the Remote Control Device, or RCD.

To most of us, it is simply "the remote" as in, "Where's the remote?" That's the thing about it, the only time we give it any thought is when we're trying to find it Otherwise, it's just this little plastic box with buttons that we wave in the general direction of whatever it is we want to change. As we marked the 40th anniversary of its invention recently, it's clear that the remote control has changed more than just the program you're watching at any given moment. For one thing, by making it easy to change the channel you are watching, the remote control has changed the channels you are watching both the programming and the advertising. It also was the fuse on the explosion of a three-network world into a myriad-channels universe. Can you imagine cable TV without a remote? "Junior, run back over to the TV; let's see what's on channel 84.

No, the B-side, the B-side. All right, let's see what's on Television isn't the only thing that's different. Because of that little plastic box, we're different, too. The remote is one of those wheellike inventions that has transformed the world we live in and the way we live in it. To see the effects the remote control has had on television, all you have to do is hit the on button.

"Our philosophy, which we arrived at through audience research, is that given an opportunity to switch channels, viewers will," says Vince Manze, NBC's senior vice president of advertising and promotion. The remote control has transformed us into an audience of channel surfers, and the awareness of that transformation shapes much of the programming you see. Nowhere is this more obvious than on NBC, the network that has tried to brand itself "Must-See TV." Back when there was only a handful of networks and you had to cross the room to change the channel, programs were like trains pulling in and out of a station predictability was the point. One show would end with its closing credits, then a block of commercials, the next show's opening montage and theme song, then another block of commercials, and back for the beginning of this week's episode. Channel-surfing changed all that.

Over time, the old, predictable order became an invitation for viewers to start flipping around, so NBC devised strategies to keep its audience from reaching for the remote. The end of a show, for example, no longer means the end of the action. Now, when "Frasier" closes, the screen splits. While the credits roll on one side, barely legible at half-size, the show continues on the other, some closing vignette with a few more laughs designed to carry you through to the next show. "Frasier" also reflects how the remote control has changed the way shows begin: Once, shows had lengthy opening sequences in which a theme song would play while a procession of images established the show's setup and characters think "One Day at a Time," or if that's too much, think "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." But look now.

"Frasier's" opening is a quick doodle of Seattle's skyline and a snippet of jazzy melody no time for flipping around. What's more, NBC has started stringing its shows together, without a block of commercials between, in an effort to create a seamless flow with no cracks for remote controls to flip through. "It's all a definite response to channel-surfing," Manze says. "The remote control is the reason we created NBC 2000," the department that designs the network's remote-resistant strategies. "We're responding to the power people have now.

"Our goal is to retain as much of the audience as possible, and we do that by providing more content. The optimum is when that content is a part of the show "Seinfeld' has always done that, so have "Friends' and "Frasier. "But we also invented what we call They are promos, all of it deals with our programming, but they can't be hard promos. The audience will just tune out; the remote makes it so easy. "So we make them fun, silly, crazy, something so you never quite There is no personal service any- more." Not everyone is pessimistic about the future prospects for local television in northeast Alabama.

Connie Hancock, a veteran news anchorwoman at WJSU, will work for Alabama's ABC as an advertising account executive, a role she also fjjjled part-time at WJSU. Ms. Hancock said the new arrangement will only serve to enhance the station's role in the community. "What we can offer is the latest technology, better cameras, better broadcasts, and even a better signal," said Ms. Hancock.

"I think we will look much better. We will look more professional." Anniston Mayor David Dethrage said that, although he did not believe the depth of local coverage would be retained under the new format, he did hold out hope for alternatives. 'The main concern here is whether the capacity to disseminate video news will be retained," said Dethrage. "I really think we are going to see that. Some news operation will come here, we are a large enough market." Hagler, however cannot reconcile himself to the changing times.

"There is an old saying, 'You don't miss the water until the water runs dry, Hagler said. "Whether you like the station or dislike the station, it was a great service to the community. This is a great loss to the community." One community, one station Change is nothing new to northeast Alabama television. In the 25 years the station has been on the air, it has been involved in regulation and deregulation battles and changed hands four times. 1969 WHMA-TV is founded by H.

Brandt Ayers and his sister, Elise Sanguinetti, both principal owners of The Anniston Star. 1975 Federal Communications Commission divestiture order forces Ayers and Mrs. Sanguinetti to sell either The Star or WHMA-TV. A court battle is begun challenging the FCC ruling. 1983 The Supreme Court supports the FCC.

WHMA is sold to Jacksonville State University. The name of the station is changed to WJSU. 1 985 JSU finds running a television station to be an awkward match with a non-profit educational institution. For considerable profit WJSU is sold to Price Broadcasting of Salt lake City, Utah. 1987 WJSU is sold to Osborn Communications of Greenwich, Connecticut.

1996 Operation of WJSU transferred to Allbritton Communications of Washington, D.C., which signed a long-term lease-purchase agreement with Osborn Communication. September 1, 1996 WJSU becomes an ABC affiliate in joint operation with Tuscaloosa's WCFT. Both stations are operated by Allbritton. Media analyst McMasters acknowledges that big business can mean compromising community personality. "They are consolidating under a corporate ownership, which does distance the medium from the community.

It leads to a homogenous newscast, is what people say." Bill Hagler, an Anniston real estate agent, worked at WJSU for 24 years. He co-hosted "By the Way" in the early days of the station and later was news director for the station. Hagler said he has doubts about how long Alabama's ABC will emphasize day-to-day local news. "It is going to be a fleeting thing," predicted Hagler. "For a while, we will get local coverage, then they will go the same way as the Birmingham stations.

When something big happens, then we will be on the news." Mimi Butler co-hosted "By the Way" with Hagler and hosted a children's show on the weekends. She worked at WJSU for 18 years. The change for her is an indication of the national trend toward corporate takeovers. "It is heartbreaking. That was my baby," Mrs.

Butler said about WJSU. "It is just terrible how we let big business swallow up little business. Everything is a conglomerate. I miss the things Anniston used to have: The bank is so big now I don't know where the headquarters is. THE ROYAL PALACE A 11 i THUR AUG 29 OXFORD CIVIC CENTER 401 McCullars Lane Oxford 5:30 7:45 PM Beauty Pageant 8c Baby Contest H2 Ratnada Inn Sunday.

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