The Palm Beach Post du lieu suivant : West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 222

11 while they're writing it, they'll say: 'Hey, I've got a great For example, if MacGyver has to get over a wall with a message, and the only way he can do it is with a kite, you might see something like this. What has he got, a shirt? he takes off his shirt. He takes some twigs, he takes some resin and uses it for glue he makes a kite. He's got no ball of string to fly it, though, but he has got a sweater. He starts to unravel the sweater and by the time he gets to the end of his right arm he hopes he has enough to get over the wall.

He has now used everything around him in order to get over the wall. (The writers) sit there having the best time coming up with this stuff it's amazing!" But for the moment, not amazing enough. Ironically, Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories on NBC and CBS' Murder, She Wrote have consistently kept Mac-Gyver's audience share on Sunday nights down to somewhere in the low 20s or high teens. For his part, Richard Dean Anderson (who plays MacGyver) has taken the character to heart and even started doing scientific research of his own to make his portrayal more believable. "I've always been fascinated by physics and science and such.

I'm in awe of people who comprehend such things and can conjure up solutions. I have a certain wisdom about me, but I'm in awe of anybody who can understand enough mathematics to balance a checkbook. That's why, when the writers come up with these ideas, I research them on my own. I want to have that confidence to be able to do it matter-of-factly, becSuse the character is pretty unimpressed with his own prowess. He figures he's got the knowledge, so he might as well use it.

Not just sit around and pat himself on the back each success. It should just MacGyver: a clever hero used to battling odds guy with a normal-sized belt buckle who had bad eyes and needed glasses. "Richard was willing to show us who he was rather than play for us the character throughout. As an actor first, that was very important to me because I sincerelybe-lieve that on television, when you'e on a postage stamp-sized screen, the more humane you are the more magnetic you are. I've also found in my travels that people watch television in order to be taken care of, and if they trust the human being playing that character, they will invite him into their house.

I wanted to invite Richard Dean to meet my family when he walked in that day." Now, if ABC can just find a way to have more viewers invite him into their homes each week. be a natural extension of him." Winkler says Anderson's self-effacing manner was one of the prime reasons he was cast for the role. All the other actors who auditioned thought a hero should be played macho; Anderson gave MacGyver a different look. "All the other guys who auditioned must have been waiting in the hall for each other, because they all walked through the door in cowboy boots and the largest belt buckles you've ever seen in your life. They were all very, very cool and down home and then Richard Dean Anderson walked through the door and the first thing he did was bring out a pair of glasses to check something on the script.

He had them on the end of his nose, and there was humanity there. Rather than playing at an attitude, there was just this lovely NBC Turns Tables on Ted Turner Analysis Cox News Service MIAMI NBC has ascended to leadership among the networks beyond the area of ratings. It's purely coincidental, but like a big brother coming to the rescue NBC is doing to Ted Turner what Turner did to CBS. The peacock is making Turner's life miserable. The specter of NBC's establishing a 24-hour cable news network has put Turner into jeopardy on several fronts.

Most significantly, it's making it difficult for Turner to peddle a piece of CNN, which he needs to do to finance his billion-dollar purchase of MGMUA studios. Turner is cash poor, thanks partially to his quixotic pursuit of value of CNN as a monopoly, it has to be considerably less with competition, especially from such a formidable player. The specter of NBC's jumping into the cable news business also has inhibited Turner from charging what he wants perhaps needs for CNN. One of the sweeteners NBC is using to gain the 13.5 million subscribers it says is a prerequisite to launch is a smaller fee than Turner charges. Turner's rate card for CNN var- I-ies, but a little less than 20 cents per subscriber is close to the q.

norm. The sheet NBC has sent to cable companies starts at 12 cents, This explains why the cable indus- try has been so enthusiastic to-Torn to NBC, Page 9 7 CBS. This is the primary reason he put pieces of CNN on the block. NBC strung him along for a while, then declined to buy half of CNN because NBC insisted on full editorial control. Turner, as NBC had to suspect, wasn't willing to relinquish it.

NBC's withdrawal leaves Turner without the reported $200 million he hoped to get and with a less attractive product to market. When NBC ended negotiations with Turner, it declared its intention to proceed with previously announced plans to launch its own cable news network. Whatever the.