The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 21

fb jjpfclalielpfim Inquirer daily magazine People Home Movies The Arts TV Style section 4 Tuesday, February 17, 1987 This pageant's winner will compete for the title of U.S. Man of the Year a male version of Miss America. Ch. 29 news' celebrates a successful Special 10 The inquirw iMfcHtbA McOinrAN Contestants line up for the swimsuit competition. Because organizers want to avoid the male-stripper image, no bikini-style swimsuits are allowed.

first year By Lee Winfrey Inquirer TV Cnttc One year old today, WTAF's The Ten O'clock News has doubled the size of its original audience and reached a break-even point financially. Now, all that worries the city's newest news crew is what Channel 29's new owners will do when they take over the station later this year. "Everybody is to some extent apprehensive about new management," news director Roger LaMay said in an interview last week. "We've been assured they appreciate the value of The Ten O'clock News to this station and the prospect of making money in the future." Taft Broadcasting owner of WTAF and four other television stations, announced on Nov. 17 an agreement to sell them for $240 million to TVX Broadcast Group Inc.

"Best guess is April in terms of when they'll have control," LaMay said. TVX will inherit a newscast whose average monthly Nielsen rating rose from 2.1 in its first month to 4.3 last month. "You're breaking even at 4, at least, and probably making some money," said LaMay. "We will at least break even this year, which is a year ahead of schedule." Although the bottom line is always the most important one in the TV business, LaMay and his anchor man, Lee McCarthy, get the most satisfaction from an even simpler fact: sheer survival for one year. "What I'm proudest of generally is, we did it," McCarthy said.

Similarly, LaMay said, "What we accomplished most is, it's generally accepted now that there are four newscasts in town." When The Ten O'Clock News premiered a year ago with McCarthy saying, "Good evening, everyone," it broke a 16-year monopoly of local TV news by WPVT (Channel 6), WCAU (Channel 10) and KYW (Channel 3), all stations either owned by or affiliated with one of the major networks. Ten News was the first newscast offered by an independent station here since 1970, when the now-defunct WKBS (Channel 48) closed down its news show after a two-year Ten News has carved its niche by avoiding head-to-head competition with the established local newscasts airing at 11 p.m. Broadcasting an hour earlier, Ten News worries more about competition from L.A. Law and Falcon Crest than it does from Action News or Eyewitness News. Ten o'clock newscasts on independent stations are considered such specialized products that LaMay, 33, was brought here precisely because he had worked previously with 10 p.m.

news shows' on independent stations in Los Angeles and New York. "Taft came to me for that specific reason; 'Like to have you come in and buy the thumbtacks and rugs and hire the LaMay said. "One of the prime differences is what you're up against," he said. "At 10, you're going to be up against prime-time network entertainment. Very much part of the premise is that if someone wants to be greatly entertained at 10 o'clock at night, they're going to catch L.A.

Law." Something like that even happens in LaMay's own home, where his family watches the Ten News live, but tapes LA Law, which airs at 10 p.m. Thursdays on Channel 3, for later viewing. "If they're watching us, they're (See "NEWS" on 8-C) Mr ROLE MODEL gamp-- hit- wVi 1 FcV1 iff. II tlJI I 1 Thomas McDonnell dress as Jean-Claude Tabb (right) helps Doug Johnson watches. Aft entered as a challenge, or in hopes of breaking into modeling.

Jerome Mitchell, 29, of Reading, a marketing representative and one of several contestants who has done some modeling, said, "Traditional things are changing now men are doing things women traditionally did, and this fits in with that attitude." Brancato, who said the local contests were locally but who has hopes of finding major sponsorship for the national competition, said she has worked hard to keep the pageant "legitimate." For example, on Sunday, she wouldn't allow the men to wear tight jogging outfits in the show's first number. Contestants cannot wear bikini swimsuits; only boxer-shorts-style suits are allowed, and contestant interviews count for SO percent of the scoring. "We do not take male strippers, that's not the image I'm looking for," she said in an interview before the contest. "I'm looking for a wholesome, ail-American man who is pursuing a career. It's not just another body contest.

These men are competing to be a role model." Whatever the goal, the men were taking it seriously. The stage at the Brandywine Club disco, was decorated as for a Fourth of July political rally. Red, white and blue helium-filled balloons formed an arch across the platform and a border (See PAGEANT on 5-C) By Tanya Barnentos Inquirer Stall Writer Two hours before show time, the contestants started to primp. They pulled out hair spray, they put gloss on their lips, and some even ducked into a side room to have makeup put on their faces. After all, it was better to be safe than sorry especially when the judges would be subtracting points for any flaw.

Whoever said vanity's name is woman wasn't in Chadds Ford on Sunday when 17 Pennsylvania men strutted on stage in swim-suits and tuxedos in the state's new, male version of the Miss America pageant. The U.S. Man of the Year contest had everything you'd want in a beauly pageant, including contestants who bristled at the mention of the words beauty pageant. "It's not a beauty pageant, it's a style pageant," protested Paul Narducci, 41, a kindergarten teacher from Bethlehem. "Kven in Miss America they aren't looking for beauty, it's the ones that are talented and articulate who win." Veronica Brancato, the former beauty queen who started the U.S.

Man of the Year contest this year, insisted it was a "role model pageant." The slick program complete with glossy portrait-photos of the contestants and their vital statistics proclaimed that the con- '7'm looking for a wholesome, all-American man who is pursuing a career," says contest founder Veronica Brancato. "It's not just another body contest." IKl urn Jtl' Teacher Paul Narducci. test was "a long-awaited and overdue vehicle in which all men of America may compete for a national title. The judges will decide whom they feel would best represent the ideal American male." The New Jersey competition, held on Feb. 1, was won by Rick Urdaneta, 24, of Atlantic City; the Delaware competition will be held in late March.

All the state winners will go to the national contest, to be held in April or May in (where else?) Atlantic City. "It's a chance to make history," said Narducci, explaining why he had entered the contest, which had a $450 entry fee paid in many instances by sponsors. "We're tired of women having all the glory." Other contestants said they had 11 Business consultant Bill Brown. Drugs being tested to ease stroke effects tm i -w "st IK If i I f2 Mona Simpson's first novel is being compared favorably with work by Colette and Willa Cather. Unfazed by a debut 4 years in the making by Larry Doyle Presi International CHICAGO Recent discoveries about the basic chemistry of the brain may lead to drugs that could reduce damage caused by strokes, which affect a half-million Americans a year, a researcher reported yesterday.

A drug that may mitigate stroke damage already is being tested in humans, and far more specific and potentially effective drugs are in development, said Robert Del-orenzo, chairman of the department of neurology at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. "What's exciting about this is that stroke has been an area that's like a desert as far as treatment is con-'cerned," DeLorcnzo said. "But these drugs could have a very major effect in improving the outcome of stroke victims." -if ft IP i -4 41 r'U Strokes kill 155,000 Americans annually and cause partial paralysis or other neurological damage in many others. The most common kind of stroke is precipitated by a clot cutting off blood flow to a group of brain cells, although some strokes are the result of a burst artery. DeLorenzo, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that stroke treatment has become theoretically possible, now that scientists have gained insight into the ways that chemicals, especially calcium, shuttle in and out of brain cells.

Calcium, like sodium and potassium, is a vital element in the operation of any cell, triggering enzymes necessary for the cell's survival. Cells tightly control the amount of these elements within their walls through the use of "channels," or chemical gateways. However, DeLorenzo said, a stroke deprives bri'in cells of oxygen and impairs their ability to regulate calcium, causing large amounts of the chemical to accumulate inside the cell. "That's too much of a good thing," DeLorenzo said. Such calcium-bloated cells die within three to four minutes, resulting in the paralysis and other menial damage seen with a stroke.

A typical stroke lasts only a few minutes, but often brain cells near the affected area continue to (See STROKE on 8 C) and Anne Tyler in the process. Things in Anywhere But Here don't work out the way Adele planned, but the story that unfolds, told from the viewpoints of Adele and Ann (and, in smaller sections, Ann's aunt and grand-. mother), is a powerful one. It is a story of risk-taking, of the westward dream, and of the bond between an single-minded woman and her stubborn, smart-aleck child: They love each other. They need each other.

They can't stand each other. In her sparse, sunlit apartment way up on Manhattan's West Side, Simpson drinks coffee and fields calls on her black, boxy 1950s phone. There are interviews and book-signings to be arranged, a promotional tour on the West Coast, and even a request from some enthusiastic Floridian to appear in a parade. All of the attention, the accolades, leave the quiet Simpson unfazed. She says she's happy about the book's brisk sales, the movie deal (Anywhere But Here was optioned by Disney) and "the explosion of praise" (as it is referred to in the full-page ad Knopf recently (See SIMPSON on 8-C) By Steven Rea Inquirer Stall Writer NEW YORK Adele and Ann speed across the great Southwest in a Lincoln Continental.

The Lincoln isn't theirs. Neither is the credit card they use for gas, for their Hobo Joe's breakfasts and their nights in TraveLodges, "the kind of motels that were set a little off the highway in a field." The car and the card are Adele's second husband's, whom she and her 12-year-old daughter have deserted in a Wisconsin mill town. The pair are making for Beverly Hills, where Adele hopes to snare a wealthy guy and live happily ever after. And where she plans to land her precocious offspring on a TV sitcom, so that, in Ann's words, "I could be a child star while I was still a child." So begins i4nywhere But Here (Knopf), Mona Simpson's debut novel, a big, beautifully wrought book that has unleashed a slew of superlatives: amazing, masterful, dazzling, marvelous, brilliant, astonishing, powerful, funny, extraordinary the critics have exhausted their thesauruses, comparing Simpson to Colette, Willa Cather 1 1 rTtV 4 4t Index Art Buchwald 2-C Parrell Sittord 2-C Trie millionaire 2-C Ann Landers 2-C Society 3-C The arts 4-C Television 6-C TVradio talk 6-C Art review iari'fmr La jMl The Pruiddeipma mquuer AMT HuMUON A Navajo rug forms a background for Mona Simpson. Suit" man at National (vHery 4-C.