Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 22

C6 ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL Wednesday, October 28, 1992 inead's Now a No-No; TV Film Put N.M. in 'Overdrive' it Si' 1 I if" ing papers, Braiker said. Among them was long-time sports announcer Henry Tafoya, who is already in negotiations for a new job at all-talk station KMBA-AM (1050). A year ago, KDEF adopted fa all-sports talk format, heavy with locally-produced shows. The station was plugging into a national programming trend that had proven successful in other large urban radio markets.

What went wrong here? "When the business community won't support something, I can't create the revenue," Braiker said. The station will now rely more on less-expensive satellite-delivered sports programming, he said, He noted that in the spring Arbit-ron ratings book, KDEF had about a one-half share point, and by summer the station didn't show up in the ratings book at alL Oldies format radio stations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe have recently been taken over by new ownership. In Albuquerque, KZKL-AM (1580) and -FM (101.7) has been sold by Kool Broadcasting Partners Ltd. to Territorial Communications Inc. for a reported $600,000.

General manager Craig Parker said there will be no changes in format or personnel KBOM-FM (106.7), whose studios are in Santa Fe, was sold by KBOM Ltd. to Tesuque Radio Co. for a reported $560,000. The sale involved minority partners' buying out controlling interest from other shareholders. Lance Armer, general manager and part owner of KBOM, said he does not expect changes in format or personnel.

"Saturday Night Live" is not the only place singer Sinead O'Connor will probably never receive any more air time. Local stations KAMX-AM (1520) and-FM (107.9) have declared O'Connor persona non grata and have yanked her from the stations' playlist. The only O'Connor song currently in rotation is "Nothing Compares to You." O'Connor, recently a guest on the popular NBC comedy program, caused a flap when at the conclusion of a song she held up a photograph of the Pope, warned the audience to know the "real enemy," and tore the picture in half. Ryan Cody, KAMX music director, said the station received "a moderate number" of complaints from listeners. "They said they were offended by her actions, and quite frankly, I was offended and I know that our program director, Scott Kerr, was also offended," Cody said.

"We're not taking issue with her right to hold certain opinions, we're just saying that her manner of expressing it was in poor taste. There are other ways to express your opinions than by tearing up a picture of somebody who means a lot to Americans and to people around the world." Dianne Anderson, news co-anchor on KOAT-TV, Channel 7, and her husband, KOAT reporter Mark Mathis, are expecting their first child in early April. The couple were married Feb. 15 in Las Vegas, Nev. "We knew right away when we got married that we wanted to have kids pretty soon, because when you wait Rick Nathanson JOURNAL MEDIA WRITER to get married until you're in your 30s you don't want to put things off too much longer," she said.

Anderson is 33. Mathis is 30. "In the TV business you have to put a lot of work into the early years and focus on a career until you get really established," she said. "There's not a lot of time for social or family things. I don't think this will change the way I approach my job, though it will probably make me more in tune with educational and child-care issues.

If anything, it makes me a little bit more like the people out there I'm talking to people with families and children." Mathis said he and Anderson have chosen to not learn the sex of the baby before birth. "Dianne feels it's a boy, but I think it's a girl," he said. The NBC movie "Overdrive," shot entirely in New Mexico last summer, has been scheduled to air on KOB-TV, Channel 4, from 8 to 10 p.m. Dec. 6.

The film is based on the true story of a truck driver whose son was struck and killed by a passing semi truck while he was changing a tire on the side of a road. The story focuses on the father's search for the re Dianne Anderson Baby on the way new acquisitions, Clairmor Broadcasting, the local company that owns country music station KOLT-FM (105.9) and for the last month has managed classic country 1 station KUCU-FM (107.1) and all sports talk station KDEF-AM (1150), has carried out a "delayed consolidation move" that left "eight or nine people" out of jobs, according to general manasger Ivan Braiker. He said Clairmor will take over ownership of KUCU and KDEF pending FCC approval. Most of the layoffs at KDEF and KUCU were in sales and administration, but some on-air KDEF hosts were given their walk "Larsen was more of a fixture in the community," Gentry said. Lack of official recognition doesn't seem to diminish Archer's passion.

He can be found seven days a week where the highway meets Forest Avenue, locking eyes and smiles with people on foot and in cars. He has done it, he says, ever since the idea struck him while walking across the coast highway in 1981. Archer had owned a beauty shop, is a divorced father of six and worked for a time as a model for a clothing company, appearing in magazine advertisements wearing jeans and T-shirts. Today, he says, he sweeps the sidewalks in front of Town's View of Greeting Tradition Is Changing With Growth negade trucker and his ultimate high-speed bump-and-crunch confrontation with the killer. The film stars Stacy Reach, Lisa Banes and Sandahl Bergman.

New Mexicans filled nearly 1,000 jobs during the filming. Most were production-related positions, but they also included 31 speaking roles as well as jobs for 425 The production company left nearly $1 million in the state economy. It's not likely to cause the mass hysteria that it set off when first broadcast in 1938, but the Silver Bear Theater's re-enactment of the now-famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast is just as fascinating. Actors will recreate the studio taping of Orson Welle's original radio script about a Martian invasion of Earth. The 8 p.m.

performance at the Silver Bear Theater on Friday will be taped and aired at 6 p.m. the following night, Halloween, on KQEO-AM (920). The Silver Bear Theater is at 6921 Montgomery NE. Tickets for the live performance are $5. John Sebastian, vice president and general manager of classic rock station KLSK-FM (104.1), will be leaving Albuquerque in January to run a New Age radio station in Phoenix.

Sebastian is generally credited in the national radio industry with being the creative force behind New Age radio programming. KLSK was originally a New Age station, until it switched to classic rock in January 1991. Sebastian is a co-owner of Progressive Broadcast- has only risen since then. That bumper-to-bumper, horn-honking, no-place-to-park reality has caused some Laguna residents to question the wisdom of the city's traditional open-arms stance. Environmentalist groups, such as the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, have opposed county efforts to widen Laguna Canyon Road, the only other highway leading to Laguna Beaph.

They also have lobbied against construction of the San Joaquin Hills tollway, which would increase access to the city. Local polls show that three-fourths of the city's residents also oppose the tollway. Anti-development efforts have been supported by the City Council as well. "We are not at all an exclusionary community, but we Sinead O'Connor Persona non grata ing, which owns KLSK, and he will remain as a consultant to the station. Mark Sternhagen, KLSK station manager, will become general manager of the station and of the other New Mexico broadcast properties operated or owned by Progressive Broadcasting.

Progressive Broadcasting recently purchased heavy metal station KZRQ-FM (105.1) and nostalgiabig band station KTVA-AM (1310) from Star Management of New Mexico. The combined audience makes Progressive Broadcasting the third-largest radio broadcaster in the state. Sebastian said no personnel or format changes were planned for the have a very strong sense of preservation," said Laguna Beach -Mayor Robert F. Gentry. In some ways that attitude has affected perceptions of the city's current greeter.

While Larsen, the former and best-known greeter, was eventually bestowed that title by official act of the city, Mayor Gentry said there are no plans to make No. 1 Archer official. Gentry hails Archer as "someone who provides lots of local color, (someone who) is part of the fabric of what Laguna is all about," but also believes that the greeter's ministrations often go unnoticed or misunderstood these days. TT! The I I 'v i i I Hi 1 i 1 1 1 I 1 I I I- Hurry In Now! 1 several local shops whose owners pay him enough to rent the storage garage that serves as his home base. "It's my calling," said Archer, who arrives at his favorite intersection by bus each morning at 6:04 and leaves 14 hours later at 8:15 p.m.

"It's a way of being that you're not hired to do; you do it out of love." And love, for the most part," is what he gets in return. "It's a friendly face," said Debbie Laydon, 33, a visitor from North Carolina, on a recent summer morning after encountering Archer on the sidewalk. "Just the gesture of saying hello makes you feel good." On The By David Haldane LOS ANGELES TIMES LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. He stands each day at his corner on Pacific Coast Highway, shouting greetings to passersby. The elderly looking man with a white beard, weather-beaten face, straw hat and gnarled wooden cane smiles at the cars whizzing past, waving daintily to the drivers like some flower child's version of God.

"You're perfect," shouts the man, whose Texas birth certificate identifies him officially as "No. 1 Unnamed Archer." The name was bestowed 61 years ago by his parents, taken by surprise at the birth of twins. "You're perfect too, Number One," a passing motorist yells to the man standing at the curb. Meet Laguna Beach's self-proclaimed "greeter," who for more than a decade has spent 14 hours a day, seven days a week, standing or sitting at the well-traveled corner waving to pedestrians and motorists. He is the latest in a centurylong line of greeters who have welcomed travelers in Laguna.

But as the area's growth and the passage of time bring new throngs of people and cars to this seaside resort, some residents have become less enamored of the open-arms tradition that the greeters embody. "It's a different time and a different city," said Karen Ziegler, a longtime resident who, while not opposed to tourism, is concerned about the potential loss of Laguna's small-town atmosphere. Back when the city's first greeter was meeting stagecoaches along the dusty road into town, such fears must have been inconceivable. His name was Old Joe-Lucas, a Portuguese fisherman who had survived a shipwreck. From the 1880s until his death in 1908, Lucas who always carried a trident and was said to resemble the Roman god Neptune greeted stagecoaches as they passed through town en route to Santa Ana or El Toro.

Next came Eiler Larsen, a Danish immigrant who arrived in Laguna about 1940. A hulk of a man with an enormous gray beard and wild penetrating eyes, he spent the next 31 years shouting his booming "hellos" to motorists along the coastal highway. The City Council proclaimed Larsen the official greeter of Laguna Beach in 1963. Today, his memory is honored by at least two statues in town and a restaurant bearing his name. His footprints are embedded for posterity in the sidewalk at his favorite spot.

"He was part of the spirit of Laguna," Ziegler said. That welcoming spirit had a lot to do with the completion of this segment of Pacific Coast Highway. As a concept, the highway began in 1919 when Laguna Beach started promoting itself as a mecca for Save An Additional The self-proclaimed greeter of visitors to Laguna Beach, known as "No. 1 Unnamed Archer," waves to passersby. Behind him is a statue of Eiler Larsen, one of the town's former greeters.

For more than a decade he has spent 14 hours a day, seven days a week, at the well-traveled corner, waving to pedestrians and motorists. Lowest Ticketed Price TT liOTKE JIIWEMTO Ex "automobilists." One enterprising real estate company, according to early newspaper reports, even offered a road map, predicting that "Laguna is destined to become the greatest automobilist resort" Only one problem: Would-be motorists had no way of getting there. N.E. West, a local landowner, stepped in with a campaign to extend the highway from Newport Beach south to Laguna Beach, which at that time could only be reached by a narrow dirt road through the canyon from Santa Ana. When the coast highway opened in 1926, most of the communities along the way chose beauty queens for the inaugural parade, and movie star Mary Pickford was enlisted to cut the ribbon.

Automobiles followed en masse, and the traffic flow You'll Save 60-80 Off Suggested Retail Prices Throughout The Entire Store. Ami ffmri milium The Outlet That's Always In. MONTGOMERY PLAZA 881-8363.