Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 88

bf Arizona Bails Star Page Ten Section I Tucson, Sunday, June 25, 1995 rau7 dows that face the building's atrium. Melinda doesn't operate these. She is now, truly, a company executive. Jay Zucker, a native Tucsonan, began his broadcast career at 18 as a radio ad salesman in 1975. He also owns a Telemundo TV station in Phoenix, a transmitter station on Mount Lemmon and a consulting business.

KHRR also carries news from the Noticias Telemax network in Hermosillo, Sonora, as well as "Policia en la Calle," consisting of real-life police shows, many, of which are taped in Tucson. The station soon will begin telecasting the season of the Arizona Sand Sharks indoor soccer team. KFAM features family-oriented sports, inspirational and music shows, as well as recycled network sitcoms and old movies. Both KHRR and KFAM are on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It all started in a small room at the rear of a real estate office in March 1989.

Melinda Zucker, at the manual control panel, began routing Telemundo Network signals through the medium-power Channel 14 transmitter that was then KHRR. Melinda's husband, Jay Zucker, president and general manager, was kept busy selling ads and keeping in touch with the network. Melinda was also his secretary, company bookkeeper and paymaster for the station's two employees, Jay and Melinda Zucker. In Telemundo, the Zuckers believed they were supplying the quarter of Tucson's population that is Hispanic a full slate of quality Hispanic programming produced in the United States for Latino people living here. They still believe that, and they supply an even larger population1 more programming since shifting Telemundo to the much more powerful Channel 40 in January 1993.

KHRR-TV can be received as far north as Chandler and as far south as Magdalena, Sonora, via cable boost in Nogales, Sonora. Also in January 1993, Channel 14 -now called KFAM became the Tucson dispenser of satellite programming from Family Net in Dallas. KHRR is carried on local cable systems; KFAM is not at least not yet, Zucker adds. KHRR sound is also simulcast on FM radio band 101.7, so that aficionados of Telemundo's South American novelas don't have to miss an episode while they're away from home. A novela is not like a U.S.

soap opera, Zucker points out. Novelas have beginnings and endings, more like long mini-series. They mostly originate in Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Today, the two stations employ 35 people and take up an entire lower floor of an office building at 2919 E. Broadway.

Computerized, automated recording and transmitting equipment with flickering screens and blinking lights fills an entire room behind glass display win You can find out more about Telemundo on the Internet. TCI nnviSffj nsivsjL wavaa wsvj i rjt iM C7 i f) Pj rd 1 Hollywood cowboy Gene Autry came a-ridin' into town back in the early '50s and decided that folks in these here parts deserved to have TV. So Autry bought radio station KOPO, the city's CBS affiliate, and set about to open a television station by the same call letters. It went on the air Jan. 13, 1953, on Channel 13, Tucson's first TV transmission, originating in studios nestled among motor lodges at 115 W.

Drachman St. Five years later, the call letters of both the radio and TV stations were changed to KOLD, to mesh with Autry's holdings in Phoenix, KOOL radio and TV. For more than 20 years, operators were to answer the Tucson station's phone with "Good morningafternoonevening, it's cold in Tucson." Although 13 was Tucson's CBS-TV affiliate All 4'- I. 1 1 iLin 1 from the day it went on the air, there were no transmission connections between Tucson and the network for nearly a year. Instead, kinescopes of network programming were flown to Tucson and shown to local audiences several days after the rest of the nation saw them.

KOLD was the first with a local variety show, home David Sanders, The Arizona Daily Star Bud Foster, previously with two other local stations, is now the anchorman at Channel 13 In addition to morning local news cut-ins in network programming, KOLD airs scheduled newscasts at noon weekdays with Barbara Gryalva, 5 p.m. with Bud Foster and Mindy Blake, 6 p.m. with Foster and Tina Naughton, and 10 p.m. again with Foster and Blake. On Saturdays, Jennifer Gould and Cynthia Santana deliver the news at 6 and 10 p.m., and on Sundays at 5:30 and 10 p.m.

A little more about on-air personalities: BYRON L. "BUD" FOSTER, 44, was born in Lafayette, Ind. He became a published newspaper writer at the age of 10 and later served as editor of his high school newspaper. He attended Purdue and Ball State universities, taking a bachelor's degree in business administration from the latter, but returned to news when he enrolled at Arizona State University for graduate work in radio and TV. Subsequently he delivered the news for KAET-TV in Tempe, and KTAR and KOOL television in Phoenix before moving to Tucson, where he has done graduate work in political science at the University of Arizona, studied Spanish at Pima Community College and served as an adjunct instructor in media arts at UA from 1984-86.

Foster joined KOLD's news staff in April 1994 after stints at two other local network-affiliated stations. MINDY BLAKE came to Tucson and KOLD in 1988 from four years as weekend anchor in Colorado Springs, Colo. Born in Cleveland, she earned a bachelor's degree in English from Western State College of Colorado in Gunnison. Her broadcast career started in 1983, when she began reviewing the weather for viewers in Grand Junction, Colo. Blake, 34, enjoys reporting on children and family issues and is involved in "Peacebuilders," a school program that teaches children how to get along and respect others.

Blake and her husband, Jeff Canterbury, have two children of their own, Sean, 4, and Megan, 22 months. FRANK J. LESINSKI, sports director and weekday sports anchor, came to Channel 13 in 1993 from Fort Collins, Colo. Lesinski, born and raised in Minneapolis, attended college at Mankato State University and the University of Minnesota before venturing to Colorado, where he began a career in radio sports broadcasting in 1982 at Burlington, Longmont and Fort Collins. He also has done free-lance play-by-play and sideline analysis.

Lesinski's wife, Stephanie is a producer for KOLD. tf Barbara Grijalva But don't expect him to stay long. His dream is to be chief meteorologist for a major San Fran; Cisco TV outlet. BARBARA GRIJALVA is a Tucson native and graduate of the UA. She began her broadcast career in 1975 at KIKX radio as news anchor and director.

Next she produced a talk show at KNST radio. She joined KOLD in 1983 as morning news anchor. CHRISTINE ANN "TINA" NAUGHTON also was born in Tucson and graduated from the UA in radio and television with a minor in speech and drama. During her college years she worked at KCUB radio. Naughton, 31, went to work for KOLD in 1986 as an associate producer, then assignments editor, now reporter-anchor.

DAVE HARMON: Born in Santa Ana, and raised in Los Angeles, Harmon has degrees in psychology from UCLA (1982) and meteorology from San Jose State University (1985). He came to KOLD last year as chief meteorologist. "I'm single," he says "I'm young enough to have fun and old enough to stay out of trouble doing it." He has been a traveler, beginning his broadcast career on campus stations at UCLA and San Jose State. His first TV meteorologist job was in Chico, Calif. Two years later, he took 4'2 years of time out to traverse North America and Europe.

Then came TV weather jobs in Grand Junction, Montrose, Durango and Glenwood Springs, Amarillo, Texas; and Spokane and Yakima, before saying "yes" to Tucson. Harmon says he loves to fly, run, play chess, ski (snow and water), hike, speak French, play pool, listen to contemporary jazz, make friends, hypnotize himself, read, surf the Internet, work and enjoy "life in general." and news shows, the first to broadcast in color and the first to do live bits from remote locations. Autry owned the station until 1969, when it was sold to the Evening News Association. In 1986, the Gannett Corp. owned it briefly before selling it to Knight-Ridder Broadcasting Inc.

In 1989, it became a property of the St. Joseph (Mo.) News Press Gazette, and four years later of New Vision Television. Ellis Communications, the current owner, bought KOLD in March. In 1994, the station installed two state-of-the-art computer systems and established a Mexico bureau. Last December, studios and offices were moved from their original location to a newly renovated, building near Interstate 10 and Cortaro Road in Marana.

iriNet CBS maintains a home page with daily updates on its most popular shows and its fall schedule. -I I i IIIL-fM, ZZLZ2 1. tZ i 1 nasi more on days when National Hockey League and National Football League games are fed to Tucson. In addition, Fox children's programming appears on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings, a total of 16'2 hours a week. Fox shows are riding high in Tucson, especially "Melrose Place," Files" and "The Simpsons." In fact, in February, KMSB ranked 20th among the network's 154 affiliates in numbers of regular male viewers between the ages of 18 and 34 during the prime 15 hours each week.

This despite the fact that the Tucson market is 81st in size among the affiliates. Middleton came to KMSB in July I 1993 from an NBC affiliate station in: Charlotte, N.C., that is also owned by c- 'i ine rroviaence journal, trior to K.V1SB, Middleton spent 22 years in broadcast If ever there was an example of persistence paying off, it's KMSB, Channel 11. Since it became Tucson's Fox Television affiliate, this doggedly independent but ratings cellar-dweller has sprouted popular roses, like "Melrose Place" and "The Simpsons." KMSB shares offices and studios with KTTU, Channel 18, at 1855 N. Sixth and its transmitter is on Mount Hopkins in the Santa Rita range south of the city. The station wenton the air as KZAZ on Feb.

1, 1967. Licensed in Nogales, its studios were located in a former supermarket on North Tucson Boulevard. The independent station featured movies and syndicated comedy and drama reruns. It had an active news department with live telecasts anchored by Gene Adelstein, George Borazon and later by John C. Scott.

KZAZ quit the news business in 1980. The station was sold by Roadrunner Television in 1985 to The Providence (R.I.) Journal which formed the Mountain States Broadcasting subsidiary to run it. A few months later, the call letters were changed to KMSB, and in 1987 the station's license was moved to Tucson. "We've maintained a strong public service commitment to the community of Nogales," said Harry West, program director for both KMSB and KTTU. The station's weekly public affairs broadcast, "Southern Arizona Forum" with Sherry Stepleton, often features Santa Cruz County issues.

Ken Middleton is president of Mountain States, which in 1991 assumed management of KTTU, Channel 18, owned by Clear Channel Communications in San Antonio under what the Federal Communications Commission calls a Local Marketing Agreement. In 1992 the stations were the first in the nation to be transmitted simultaneously through a single, computerized, master control board. This year KTTU became Tucson's affiliate for the new United Paramount Network. Channel 18, a UHF frequency, lighted up as KDTU-TV on Jan. 1, 1985.

It was operated by the Catholic Diocese of Tucson, and its format consisted mainly of family-oriented network reruns and children's programming. The station was sold to Clear Channel in February 1989. When Clear Channel and Mountain States entered into the Local Marketing Agreement, Mountain States bought KTTU's studios and offices and consolidated both station operations there. University of Arizona sports, mostly basketball games, have been moved to 18 from 11, as well as pre-season Arizona Cardinal football games. United Paramount programming is carried for two hours on each of two nights a week currently.

A third night will be added next fall, and it will be five nights a week by 1998, along with network kids' pro-grarnming Sundays and five weekday afternoons. KTTU produces two half-hour public affairs programs a week, "FYI Tucson" at 9:30 p.m. Saturdays and "Tucson Today" at 9:30 a.m. Sundays. Both shows feature Lynn Sertich and Jim Ferguson.

Fox programming is featured on KMSB Monday through Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m., and Sunday 6 to 10 p.m.. journalism in Roanoke, Hartford, Washington, D.C.; Tampa, and Charlotte. West, an alumnus of Tucson High School and the UA, began his broadcast career in 1962 as cameraman, producer-director and eventually assistant production manager of KVOA. From 1965 to 1969, he worked at KOLD as production manager and weatherman on the 10 p.m. newscasts.

He moved to KZAZ in April 1969 and has since served as production manager, operations manager, program director and station manager. HJNet You'll find a directory of links to Far show uvb sites, including "Mar-tied With Children" and "The Simpsons" on the Internet. David Sanders, The Anzona Daily Star Harry West, left, is program direc- Ken Middleton Is president of for both KMSB and KTTU, and tain States Broadcasting. i i.