The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 20

ATT UVK THE COURIER-JOURNAL LOUISVILLE, KY. TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 1990. ummmivm TIPSHEET -JL JUL 11 W)l A i KEN NEUHAUSER Tomorrow's best bet: Gadzooks! It's 'Zara Spook and Other Lures' Three women drive to New Mexico to compete in the annual Bass 'n' Gal fishing tournament. However, several distractions, such as men, rattlesnakes and beanie-shooters, cross their paths. What starts out to be a fishing competition turns out to be a match of with world championship fishing honors and two marriages at stake.

These are the comedic touches that provide the, backbone of "Zara Spook and Other Lures," the third of seven productions that comprise the 14th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. It was written by Joan Ackermann-Blount The curtain will go up on a sold-out preview -performance at 8 p.m. tomorrow in the Pamela Brown Auditorium at Actors Theatre of Louisville," 316 W. Main SL The official opening will be at p.m. Thursday.

For ticket information and reservations, call (502) 584-1205. Say it again, Sam Sam Thomas will give tomorrow's lecture in the Locust Grove Visitors' Center, 561 Lane. Thomas, author of "Views of Louisville," "Crescent Hill Revisited" and "Cave Hill Cemetery," will discuss the George Rogers Clark family. He'll also autograph copies of his books. Clark's first tombstone, which has long since been replaced, is on exhibit at Locust Grove through October.

Dessert and coffee will be served at 1 p.m. The lecture will follow at 1:15. Admission, including dessert, lecture and tour of the museum house, is $5 ($3 for Historic Homes Foundation members). Call (502) 896-2433. Singles' rendezvous If you're planning to attend Kentucky Opera's Rendezvous for Singles on Friday, be sure to get -your reservations in by Thursday.

The get-together will begin with dinner at 5:45 p.m. at the Brown Hotel, followed by a pre-opera See TIPSHEET Back page, col. 1, this section STAFF PHOTO BY LARRY SPITZER WDRB chief John Dorkin has brought a new aggressiveness to Channel 41. WDRB sharpens competitive edge with local talent By DAVID INMAN, Staff Writer HEALTH BY DIANNE APRILE 'HEN WDRB-41 first went on the air in 1971, it relegated the news to a minute or so of headlines dur ing "The David Frost Show." The station afternoon schedule Having a local kids' show isn't exactly a new idea. In Louisville, at least, it goes back to the 1950s when Ed Kallay was the host of "Funny Flickers" at WAVE-3 and Randy Atcher and "Cactus" Tom Brooks did "T-Bar-V" at WHAS-11.

For years, Presto the Magic Clown had his own after-school show on WDRB. "This business is really funny; nothing's new," Dorkin said with a smile. "Things worked 30 years ago, and you stop doing them be "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," at 7 a.m., got a larger share of the audience than "Good Morning America" on WLKY. And in the afternoons, "Duck-Tales" at 4 p.m. beat reruns of "Growing Pains" on WHAS.

In November it drew a sizable 21 percent of the audience watching TV at the time. In fact, in the nation's top 50 markets, Dorkin said, WDRB ranks third in attracting children 2 to 11 as viewers. Part of that, he said, is because the station "The days off just programming a station with reruns while some of them do well isn't going to get you very far." consisted mainly of reruns "The Munsters," "The Patty Duke Show" and little-known syndicated shows like "Ultra Man" and "Rocket Robin Hood." How times change. Almost 20 years later, the independent station's schedule boasts first-run programming from the Fox Broadcasting Co. Its afternoon and early-morning schedule is crammed with first-run syndicated shows that give the competition a run for the money.

Its evening schedule includes the popular talk show, "The Arsenio Hall Show," and top-notch theatrical films such as "Amadeus" that bypassed the big TV networks. Next week, the station that once boasted, "Where independence is FUN!" becomes more of a serious competitor with a half-hour nightly newscast featuring some of the best-known faces in Louisville. All in all, it represents a new aggressiveness on the part of WDRB one spurred on by president and general manager John Dorkin and backed up with resources from the station's owner, The Toledo Blade Co. "It's a change in philosophy brought on by the amount of competition the station faces today," Dorkin said. "The three network affiliates in town are our competition, and then there's cable, home video and all the other options people have today.

The days of just programming a station with reruns while some of them do well isn't going to get you very far." Instead, Dorkin believes, a station should turn to something more special: Local talent Dorkin who worked at cause they get old, and then somebody does them later and everybody thinks it's a great idea. But there's no viewer loyalty to a 'Cheers' rerun people don't care if they watch it on WGN or WDRB. Just because you're licensed to Louisville doesn't make you a local station." Another rather large local entity joins WDRB in September: University of Louisville. Sports. The two-year contract, won in a bidding war with WHAS and WAVE, Dorkin said, included televising on a live or delayed basis all of football and basketball games not connected with regional or national telecasts.

As part of the deal, the station agreed to televise six other varsity sports, carry the coaches' TV shows and cover pep rallies, pre-season luncheons and post-season awards banquets. "WDRB is more established than it was three years ago," of athletics director Bill Olsen said when the contract was awarded last month. WDRB carried of games from 1985-87, and Dorkin said it was worth getting the package again. "If you were a programmer and had a chance to get a sure-fire show, you'd have to be interested," Dorkin said. "In Louisville, of sports espe-HMHaB daily basketball is about as sure a thing as you can get I'd Conquering incontinence Maybe you find yourself unable to relax while lunching with friends because you're too busy checking out the location of the restrooms.

Or perhaps you're afraid to sneeze or cough in -public. Maybe you've dropped your aerobics class for fear of embarrassing yourself there. Stress incontinence the sudden leakage of urine when lifting or sneezing or coughing is a fairly common problem for women. It occurs less often in men usually after certain operations. At greatest risk for stress incontinence are women 50 or older, particularly those who have had more than one child.

But studies suggest women are hesitant to mention the problem even to a doctor. The condition typically occurs when there's a weakening of the bladder sphincter muscles. There are several "conservative measures" that can be taken, short of surgery, to correct the prob-. lem, according to Dr. Morris Jackson, a Louisville urologist Jackson will be talking about stress incontinence at a brunch next Tuesday at Hess's at Oxmoor Cen- ter.

It's sponsored by Baptist Hospital East as part of it's women's health series. Medications, primarily a type of cold medicine called pseudoephedrine, can help increase the tone of the bladder muscles, Jackson said. Kegel's exercises, which also tone those muscles, are also helpful. A pessary, a device placed in the vagina to add support to internal structures, is another possibility. In addition, there are many types of operations for this problem, all of which attempt to "re-sus- pend" the relaxed muscles at the neck of the blad- -der to a more normal position, Jackson said.

The surgery has a 95 percent cure rate, though the prob-, lem can recur. Incontinence can also be a sign of other physical -problems, Jackson stresses. That's why it's important to see a doctor. Baptist's brunch series runs Monday through Friday next week from 10 to 10:45 a.m. in Hess's Patio Restaurant.

It costs $2.50 per brunch. Other lectures will address heart disease in women, the good and bad effects of anxiety and how the eye changes as we age. For a reservation, call (502) 897-8131. has the money to go after first-run animated programming, while the competition isn't aiming at children. And the Fox programming, aimed at slightly older viewers, is showing an increase in viewers especially "The Simpsons," "America's Most Wanted," "Cops" and "Married With Children." "With the Fox stuff, we've certainly gotten numbers we've never had before," Dorkin said.

In ratings taken in April 1989, for example, WDRB was the only local station to show a gain in its prime-time audience. With WDRB looking more and more like a network affiliate, it was only natural that news would be the next step. So Dorkin went to the station owners and got some money. How much, he won't say. "It wasn't really a hard sell because they want to make their stations better," Dorkin said.

"I felt like a 10 o'clock news would work in the long run, at least. I thought it would take us some time to get credibility, to get where we want to be. But we're really lucky to get the people we've gotten. I think we can start off that way." The people include former WHAS anchor Jim Mitchell, who helped that station stay No. 1 through most of the 1980s; former WAVE reporter and anchor Lauretta Harris; and well-known local reporters such as Susan Sweeney and Mike Edger-ly, formerly of WHAS Radio.

Ken Rowland, formerly of WHAS and WLKY, will do business reports. The news directors of shows that will compete with WDRB's "The News at 10" say they welcome the competition and don't see their audiences slipping away. "The winners in this are the public we're trying to serve," said WAVE news director Ed Godfrey. "We're just going to continue to do the best show we can do," added WLKY news director Steve Sa-bato. "Jim Mitchell's departure didn't cause us to lose any viewers," said WHAS-TV news director Larry Smith.

"I'm not sure people turn to the news to see any one individual it's because of a station's coverage. The wonderful thing about viewers here See WDRB PAGE 6, col. 1, this section "This business is really funny; nothing's new. Things worked 30 years ago, and you stop doing them because they get old, and then somebody does them later and everybody thinks it's a great idea." WLKY-32 in the 1970s came to WDRB a year and a half ago. One of his first moves was to hire Ange Humphrey as the host of the station's "Prime Time Movie." "I just wanted to have a local personality associated with the program," Dorkin said.

Then, last summer, the station picked five local youngsters two hosts and three alternates to appear in "Kids' Club" vignettes the station runs in the morning and afternoon. "We've gotten over 12,000 members, and we're growing fast," Dorkin said. "On Valentine's Day we asked the kids to send us valentines, and we were flooded with them." rather have it working for me than against me." Olsen cited the station's commitment to a newscast and the implementation of a new, more powerful transmitter as reasons why of made the switch from WHAS. The $2.5 million transmitter, which went on line last month, expands WDRB's coverage area by more than 4,000 square miles and brings the station to 230,000 more viewers in the Louisville area and Southern Indiana. The increase in coverage can only help the station, which is already making its presence felt in the local ratings.

In November, for instance, two children's shows showed some strength. Grapes get a low score Chilean grapes, the subject of a cyanide scare last year, are back on the grocery shelves. They're safe to eat again, but how nutritious are they? As fruits go, not very, according to a nutrition score card by the Cen- ter for Science in the INSIDE Public Interest You'd be better off eating a banana, an orange or a wedge of watermel-' on. Grapes came in almost at the bot- -torn of the score Family finds good Samaritan See "Speaking of People," Page 6 Donita Bridgeman left, and her friend Kim Hedden. Ann Landers Body Shop Comics mm-1 212 See HEALTH" PAGE 4, col.

this section Family Doctor Show Clock Tom Dorsey- iBl! ii i iii Mill.