The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 13

1 rr1 ZZ3 Networks' future worsens B2 A skater's paradise B3 Cautions on food B3 The News-Journal papers Wilmington, Del. Monday, July 11, 1988 Dover sets its own TV eewscast Station looks northward from Salisbury, for new business ELAWARE residents don't fflilpipi ir get to see themselves or their neighbors on television very often. Most of the stations they receive are beamed in from nearby states that seem to present Delaware news as a kind of afterthought. But starting tonight, folks in the Dover area can turn on their sets each weeknight to find out what happened at a local school board meeting, what their city officials say about that shopping mall proposal, what's going on at the Air Base or how Wesley College or Smyrna High School fared in football. The world beyond might as well not exist during the 7 to 7:30 time period.

The signal that will bring the Dover news can't even reach beyond a 14-mile radius of that city. "Newswatch 27" will be presented on W27AJ, a low-power station operated by WMDT-TV (47) in Salisbury, Md. It will be the only regular newscast devoted solely to a section of downstate Delaware. The other newscasts that focus on Delaware WHYY-TV (12) and WNS-TV (Heritage Cablevision 2) are in New Castle County. WBOC-TV (16) in Salisbury has a Dover" bureau and includes live reports from Kent County on its regular newscast W27AJ will simulcast all the programming that appears on Channel 47, except for "Wheel of Fortune," which airs in Salisbury while the news is on in Dover.

The station can been seen on Channel 27 on the UHF band and will be carried by Storer Cable in the Dover-Smyrna area. Commercial time on W27AJ will be sold to Dover-area advertisers for about half the cost of advertising on Channel 47 Low-power stations are more common in the West, where many viewers are out of range of regular signals. Frank Pilgrim, general manager of WMDT, said the FCC would not allow his station to establish a full-power operation in Dover because it would be too close to existing stations. But he added that such an operation probably would be a financial disaster anyway, since it would have to compete with stations from Philadelphia. "If we wanted to get to Wilmington, that would be the way to do it," said Pilgrim, who noted that it cost about $650,000 to establish the low-power operation.

"But if the full-power station in Wilmington couldn't make it (WTGI Channel 61 ran into financial trouble and has turned to international programming in an effort to reverse the trend), there's no way a Dover station could make it there." WMDT has a history of having it both ways. It is primarily an ABC affiliate but also has an arrangement with NBC. Gary Emeigh pholo "Newswatch 27" anchorman Jim Barry and camerman Mark Johnson rehearse in the White Oak Road, Dover, studios. On the tube by Gary Mullinax tornadoes struck the area recently. The Channel 27 news operation has been going through dry runs to get ready for the debut, which features an inter-, view with Dover Mayor Jack Richter.

"If almost like getting ready for a space shot," said Jim Barry, who will anchor the news and is Dover bureau chief. "To make this work, a lot of things-have to happen that are supposed to happen," added Barry, 33, a reporter at the ABC affiliate in Battle Creek, before coming to Dover. See NEWSCAST B6 (There is no full-time NBC affiliate in Salisbury; WBOC is affiliated with CBS.) The station picks what it wants from each network: "The Cosby Show" and "The Golden Girls" from NBC; David Letterman from NBC on weeknights, but ABC's "Nightline" instead of "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. The WMDT master plan is to lure Kent County viewers from Philadelphia stations. Kent County viewers watch Philadelphia stations about 50 percent of the time; they watch Salisbury stations about 28 percent of the time, with the rest of the audience going mostly to Baltimore channels.

A county is assigned to a market's "area of dominant influence" if its residents watch stations there at least half the time. If the Salisbury market gained Kent County, it would rise in the rankings of television markets from its current No. 164 (out of 220). That, says Pilgrim, "would attract more national advertising dollars." "We've got to change those viewing habits," Pilgrim said. "They've built up over all these years, so it won't be easy." Salisbury already has 54 percent of the Sussex County market, which is why Channel 47 devotes about half its regular 6 p.m.

news to Delaware. That includes reports from its Dover bureau, established last September. The bureau presented live reports from Smyrna when eir disaster ndth 3 fishermen a Trip ends with a bang The underwater status symbol By Wendy Lowe Page-up Service The dive boat Telita rocks gently at anchor on a lonely stretch of the Bismarck Sea off Papua New Guinea. Toward sunrise, eight scuba divers slip quietly out of their cabins for a look at coral formations that grow junglelike atop an undersea wall. First to lower himself along the boat's anchor line is 42-year-old Michael N.

Emmerman, a money manager for Neu-berger Berman, a New York investment-management company. At 10 feet he lets go of the rope so his wife Sylvie can catch up. He focuses automatically on small details: his position, the elapsed time, the way the current flows gently around fan-shaped wedges of soft coral as thin and delicate as handmade Belgian lace. The reef community is just waking up. A stingray in a patch of sand peers out with beady eyes in search of breakfast.

A hundred tiny, gleaming orange and purple Anthias fish zoom past like a precision bomber unit and vanish over the edge of the wall. Moments later Emmerman sees the sharks. Three silvertips, a potentially aggressive breed, float almost motionlessly along the wall about 35 feet below him. They should have been spooked at the sight of a human. "What are they waiting for?" he wonders.

"For me?" But he paddles slowly down the wall in pursuit, leaving Sylvie and the others to follow his trail of air bubbles. The silvertips go deeper; they seem almost, to be leading him. At 70 feet three other sharks dart out of the shadows, then two more. By the time all eight divers have reached 100 feet, eight silvertips are circling in front of them, faster and faster, like kids in a bumper-car race. "There's no wasted effort," Emmerman recalls.

"They can come directly at you and veer off at the last split second, almost as if they were dancing." A close encounter with a shark ballet may not be every diver's idea of a great morning. In fact, it's a rare event at the See SCUBA B4 News JournalHoward Johnson Postscript by Roland Wright By fishermen's usual standards, the trip had been a big success, and now the three friends were on their way home from Canada, headed southward in the early morning on a desolate stretch of Interstate 81 in northern New York state. That's when the engine died, and their truck limped to a stop beside the dark highway. And that's how a 40-inch pike, caught in a chilly Ontario lake, came to cost $90 an inch. The story is told by my friend CHUck, a public relations executive, who arrived at that figure by dividing 40 inches into the total cost including a rebuilt truck engine (price: at least $2,100) of his week in the wilds.

Two weeks have passed, and Chuck can chuckle now at his tale of woe. After all, everyone got home safely, even the ailing pickup (aboard a flatbed tow truck) and the 40-inch fish (which survived the adventure, came home packed in ice and presumably has been eaten by the neighbor who had requested it). For Chuck and his two teacher friends, all around age 50, the trip was their second annual (and maybe last) excursion to Lake Wenebegon in northern Ontario. Don't confuse its name with Wobegon, the fictional lake made famous by author-broadcaster land on the wind-tossed waters. But by 3 p.m.

the next day, they were back in their enclosed pickup truck -on the drought-dusty roads of Ontario, headed home. "The truck was running like clockwork then," Chuck recalls. "Nothing ever goes wrong in the daylight hours." But suddenly at 2 the next morning, the radiator began to boil and the truck lost power. The three fishermen were 50 miles north of Syracuse at the time, and presumably far from the nearest village, riding on a four-lane interstate shared by few other motorists and none who cared to stop. But Chuck was ready for such a crisis: He had a CB radio that See POSTSCRIPT B6 75 walleye and an uncounted number of northern pike, including one they preserved for mounting.

Oh, there were a few anxious moments. At the outset, they feared their plane would never lift off the lake, so heavy was its load. "Would you please lean father forward?" the pilot wisely asked the heaviest passenger. The mosquitoes were formidable (Chuck calls them "the national bird of and there were reports of forest fires nearby. When the day came to leave, the three men couldn't because the plane picking them up could not Garrison Keillor; they have nothing in common except water.

The lakeside campsite is 45 minutes by float plane beyond the northern end of a dirt road. To get there, the three companions first drove for 19 hours from Chester County, in the '79 GMC pickup. To make sure nothing could go wrong on the trip, Chuck had invested $1,000 in repairs and new parts. The week at the lake was a camper's delight. The three men had brought along a gourmet's selection of fine foods, which stayed fresh in a propane-fueled refrigerator.

They caught at least JlJ4 a jrt -M.