St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 59

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1993 siLOUGPOSnmrrjH 7G BABY BLUES By Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott CATHY By Cathy Guisewite WE SliO WE Hun off in the distance, a candy fis I stoat on my tiptots and cant roof looked all 'around, Cji ouncn oj cneap ays naa oeen tUmtim in me I KNOU), BUT I JUST HAD TO 6ET you A LITTLE WE PROmiSE.0 WE W0UL0N 5 ANOTHER BUSINESSPERSON, OUERWHELfllED BW THE TH0U6HTFULNES5 Of OTHERS, FINALLY BREAKS INTO THE FEST1UE HOLIAV IF ANV0NE ELSE IS WEREN'T EX DO 6lfT5, IMARIA WE A PRESENT, SPEAK SlfTS NOW BEFORE I flMKE ffW Andstyrofoam reindeer with foam the sight then Btfort me was a to quiet the kids as they posed with this hacki iMth fatherly instinct, at once I was wary THIS WEAR, CHARIENE. A Ulil lW MIWW rubber hooves! major letdown. Jfe was dressed in faks fur and his Of SOU TO WE HAD A PACT. tii icicurff forehead was wet, find his clothes were aS soggy with tjd drool and sweat DO HI 1 lift Of being in line until Cote tmul itv vii 'February, WE'RE SUCH FRIENDS. COULDN'T HELP IW5ELF -uWote FUNKY WINKERBEAN By Tom Batiuk SYLVIA-By Nicole Hollander THE LAST MOVEMENT WHICH HE LIFTED MOTH FOR MOTE FROM A POPULAR TUNE OF THE DAA.

HE WAS LATER SUED AMD HAD TO DPTHE rWALTlES WHICH HE HAD SWALLOWED IN A UAlM ATTEMPT 10 HIDETHEV1 BARLOW 5 CHRI5T7VIA5 OmC, 'OH HECTIC NlGHf16 EMTUD 'W 5WT FROM THE rvl il torn-- wy 1 vr I Ml OC IU mil 1 UJCVF ACT Oift SJ eMe, VlfAM'lN Vl'f-AMiN ism rrr sz-ct is And SeLeNiiANp-fteN a wacU Op Art' Own ay CURTIS By Ray Billingsley ANDY CAPP-By Reg Smythe T-l CURTIS, I CAH'T LEeP! Nl MOU A U11MD0U) A WIT EXCEPT MT 4 11 JfOTGOLVf, CONSCIENCE II NOTHING GONNA 1 III PREVENT ME I CHILL OUT, BARRt I PUT THE BALL BACK AND MOM AMD PAD DIPN'T CATCH ME, SO CHURCH UMPOW-UITVI 1 ZZ A FOOTBALL THAT MOM 7 FLO. BOW, WAVE -r- I SOT SOME A NEWS FOR YOU-1 HID AS A CHRISTMAS NO BOM KNOWS lull nuui kviiiiii unww mm fir. rivui' ubi I nn ra. mm .1 I A r-flAf hli.iiT preseht: NOTHIN'! NUIHIN Ik -X 1 UVJ" mom 7 iri ri NOT TODAY usuWloo-JE ST, TTKLifc TO Be GOOD yT X)fOY (bEPRESSEDO 1 IJrTY 7 enough -AS-jeJi P4 ALREADY 3 I TIGER By Bud Blake B.C. By Johnny Hart i gerrep.

WASH MY 33 PESAK. FPUSTRATt? U5g THEM TO WEAP OP HIS IPTTHISY'AE. ties orr WW-r-ALL SI 1M CMATOM ITMOCAra. DONALD DUCK By Walt Disney Productions THE DUPLEX By Glenn McCoy I oar I DlPMY know Pi SLI I TOUCXJKALOTUKe YOU SCULPTZD, IT WHEN YOU'RE FlIsllSMEP? I rr THE WIZARD OF ID By Brant Parker and Johnny Hart Baker CMATOftt ITNOtCATI. MC 7- -n a (i 0 ilii lllllllllr ,1 1 PPIUIC IN TWO BRENDA STARR By Ramona Fradon and Mary Schmich Jy rr wa.

make unh i 3 i wojlpnt go -vovtstt) A ANEXCaXENT jfcj WITH THAT "pTCH JA 1 MU5T rev? you TO THE QBVOUmQ WITH GASOLINE ALLEY By Jim Scancarell Whatever I get for Phyllis Last year I gave she exchanges! 7 her a gift certificate she exchanged it for a bigger size From page one taught one o. Barry Bakelman grew up in the Bronx in a transitional neighborhood. "The building across from where we lived went from a synagogue to a church to a methadone clinic while I was growing up." He has a notion of himself as an adroit outsider, an honorable conniver who could have been lifted from Russian-Jewish lore about the wily peddler up against the boyars. With a little retailoring, this Eastern-Jewish version of the successful guy makes a serviceable philosophical frame for Baker with his huge entrepreneurial ambitions: ail-American boy from the Bronx takes on the Lucky Sperm Club. All Baker's stories about himself the stories he accords importance to depict him as an outsider whose perfect fit is not to fit, whose savvy comes from not belonging.

Baker: "I skipped third and eighth grade, and then I went to high school for aeronautical engineering in Brooklyn. I went to school with smart black kids and smart Jewish kids and smart Japanese kids. I commuted each way one hour on the subway. I always say that's where I got my best education, riding that subway. "When I came to St.

Louis to manage I'd make sales calls to white advertisers. I'd tell them, 'I can link you to the black market. What white people don't understand is that if blacks hear an invitation to a sale on a white station, they still aren't sure the invitation applies to them. But I've got the station that can send a message to black customers that you want Then I'd close the door, and I'd say, 'I can send a message without your white customers knowing you sent the And if you wonder what made my name, that did a white guy selling black radio." The outsider who is proud not to belong: "Bellerive won't take Jews. It's all Protestant." In fact, the club has several Jewish members.

"Westwood is known as the Jewish club. Bob Wolfson asked me once, 'Do you want me to suggest you for membership? Because I think the club would be I said, 'Bob, I don't want to be in a club where everyone is like me. I don't want to be in an all-Jewish club any more than I want to be the only Jew in an all-Protestant I don't think it's healthy for people to stick too close to their own kind. They end up not seeing things. I got where I am by riding the bus." The have-not who, having wrested control from the haves, is opening up avenues for other disenfranchised: When Baker was fired from KPLR, he says it was after attempts on his part first to get a partial stake in the station he'd brought to such profitability, then to buy it outright.

(Koplar did not return several calls made to confirm Baker's version of events.) "Old-line families have a very big difficulty letting go of a piece of ownership," Baker said, conjuring up the old notion of himself as the outsider, kept at employee status, denied peer status. At KDNL, he says, "everyone owns a piece." Sanford Anstey, managing director, BancBoston Capital, original equity investor in River City Broadcasting: "In three to five years, I expect to get a very big check, but before I get a nickel, the guy who runs the San Antonio station will be a very rich man. Barry saw to that, and to the degree that he took care of people, it's unusual. SCRABBLEGRAMS ANSWER Of course, he's responding to the situation that he found himself in in the past." But it is in marketing where Baker's understanding of identity, of how to shape it and use it, may serve him well now. As more viewer choices become available, the surviving stations will be the ones that can bind restive audiences through a defining mix of programming and promotion that gives them an identity.

It's that image of "the home team" or "the entertainment network" or "the kids' channel" lodged persuasively in the viewer's brain that supposedly will kick in when the viewer turns on the tube. "Viewers don't watch technology," writes Ken Au-letta. "They watch programs. They watch the channels they perceive of as supplying programming they want." Intuitively, Baker has grasped this idea of programming for identity not for art or educational value. (In fact, he purposely avoids the markedly high-quality show; its very classiness might offset the good-times image of his station in people's minds.) KDNL has three identities.

The mornings are allocated to kids' shows. Not just Saturday morning. Every morning. "We're building viewer loyalty in them at the Howdy Doody level," said Gregg Filandrinos, station general manager, without a jot of remorse. In the afternoon, KDNL offers soaps for women, un-apologetically going toe-to-toe with the network affiliates instead of counter-programming reactively.

And in the evening, the station gets network programming from "the entertainment network," Fox. Happy advertiser Bill Schicker, president, McMahon Ford: "In September we surveyed 400 of our customers to find out what drew them. We asked 200 who bought from us and 200 who didn't. Channel 30 got mentioned more times than any of the others. Oh, Barry is just way ahead of his market.

You know how it is when you meet someone who's going to the top? He's got that aura." What can trip him up? 1. Vanity. Ego-driven purchases. Switzer: "I don't think it will happen. Remember, his image of himself is as the smartest, not the biggest.

He doesn't have to own the world to think of himself as successful; he just has to beat the world." 2. Overpaying for programming. The top-dollar price that Koplar paid to renew the Cardinals baseball contract after Baker left serves as a cautionary parable. The contract price reportedly went from $4 million to $5.5 million just as advertisers withdrew from the market. Ouch! Koplar is now looking for a buyer for his station.

Baker worries about his dependence on Hollywood studios. The growing size of his television group, the additional outlets that it provides a syndicator, puts him in a better position to cut deals. And he has just hedged his bets by allying himself with four other television groups to fund a joint production company, a massive gamble by a bunch of upstart outsiders. 3. And there is the question about how durable his own compelling self-personification is.

What happens when the unbeaten duellist gets beaten (brand-new sensation), when the wily challenger from the Bronx gets tired of going up against the establishment? Already, Baker keeps track of his diversionary trips to the tennis court or the gym, as if to reassure himself he's not compulsive yet. "Cable is trying to steal my advertisers," Baker said the other day. "Another channel is introducing a show that will knock out my show at noon. It's always something. Every day I get up and I say to myself, 'Who's trying to eat my breakfast A guy popped his head into the office and waved.

His tie had shazam lightning bolts zagging across it. His smile was full of bonhomie. "That guy," Baker said after the fellow waved once more and departed, "has a new talk show. I helped him make it by buying it and giving it a good play position. If it goes big, he'll be trying to sell it to me for three times what it's going for now.

And I made the show for him! These guys have no loyalty, no loyalty." The thought made him smile. It's just starting to get fun for him, just starting to get fun right now. MARK TRAIL By Ed Dodd and Jack Elrod I GDE55 SOV'RE TELLING NAME'S MTXW WIFE ANP I ARE CWPEdA THE SURE MARTIN, ANP OH THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL KHOW WOVT rf (S My MOTHER'S I LEFT THE TRAIL -jJVHSttKf TURKEYS? SVE 1 TO GET 50ME AHHElrT PICTURES:) 1 raj CWOOR Wm WRITER ANV 411 THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN By Stan Lee IF THE MEPE IT WEANS MAJOR E. 1 63 BLUED RACK 2 11 HDDDback 3 -M r771eT1Erack 8o A. PAR SCORE 10O-110 JUOD'S TOTAL 165 SCRABBLES 8CRABBt.EanU fWtrl tfMRWlii Of MHIOn BrtdtfV Co In It ti.

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