Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 47

MISS MANNERS 2 COMICS TV GRID LTU THE CLARION-LEDGER I JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 1989; mm Easy listening makes return (quietly) to Jackson radio JOE ROGERS Columnist The Clarion-Ledger i WEQZ-FM answers the call of irate listeners, gains WLIN's call letters, and changes format. By Jeff Edwards Clarion-Ledger TV Editor FM was dumped by that station's new owners, ironically named WLIN on Feb. 6. The station cranks out current hits as FM The format change drew the ire of LIN fans, who complained to WOHT, wrote letters to The Clarion-LedgerJackson Daily News and responded by the thousands to WEQZ's anonymous newspaper ads. Billy Neville, the owner of WEQZ who placed the two "Do you miss WLIN?" ads in the newspaper, said nearly 5,000 local listeners responded.

"For somebody to take the time to buy a stamp and write a letter, it has to get your attention," Neville said. By conservative estimates, the response to the ads represents a potential listening audience of 50,000, he said. "That's a huge audience not being served. We're excited about the potential. We were awarded the call letters, and we're cooking.

We're ready to come on on Friday." Bill Clark, EQZLIN general manager, said, "Obviously, we believe there is a place in the market for it, which has been proven. Easy-listening music has been such a part of the community. Some folks have described it as losing a friend. Well, we're going to bring back a friend." WEQZ finished near the bottom of the list of Jackson stations in the recently released radio ratings from the BirchScarborough Research Co. From June to November 1988, 6 a.m.

to midnight Monday through Sunday, WEQZ averaged about 500 listeners during an average 15-minute period. The former WLIN finished in the middle of the 22-station pack with 2,200 listeners per quarter-hour. Clark said that with the classic-rock format, "a number of stations were doing shades of what each other was doing. We felt, in essence, that easy-listening would give us a franchise complete and total separation." Neville described the easy-rock format as "viable, but it was difficult to separate ourselves from everybody else." Jackson currently has three "adult contemporary" FM stations, two Top 40 FM stations and two FM rock stations. Neville and Clark expressed faith in the See WLIN.

3D Longtime WLIN listeners react, 3D By popular demand, WLIN and its beautiful music make an encore appearance on Jackson's radio dial. FM, currently an easy, classic-rock station, snatched up the abandoned WLIN call letters from the Federal Communications Commission, and will embrace LIN's easy-listening format. The change to "beautiful music" will occur at midnight tonight, or sometime Friday morning, on 101.7. The long-time easy-listening format of mm MJ March 12-18 is Girl Scouting Week, so celebrate and admire those trained to do so many things. 1 1 iinn.iiM.il.

i i ii. I I k' 1 I I i By Patricia McLaughlin Universal Press Syndicate Woodie's telethon seals big bucks for the disabled Here, there, and everywhere: Last weekend's telethon was another success for the Mississippi Easter Seal Society. Pat Weir, executive director, said $203,214 was raised or pledged for the society, which provides direct aid to children or adults with any type of disability. That's a couple grand higher than last year, and the second highest total ever, Weir said. "We had more phoned-in pledges this year than we ever have," she said.

"I'm still trying to sort that part out, but I think it's like 1,000 more than before." That means more folks offered their help, which is encouraging. Local co-hosts of the 18ls-hour marathon were ex-NFLer Jack Gregory and Channel 3 weatherman Woodie Assaf -r- without whom the show probably couldn't exist. But the star charmer had to be Michael Cottingham, 9-year-old Easter Seal Child for Mississippi. The kid has major league presence. The fund raising continues, too, with the Woodie Assaf Golf Tournament for Easter Seals, Friday at the Fernwood Country Club in McComb.

And if you saw Woodie's swing on the tube Sunday, you won't place any bets on him to win it. Imogene's act cleaned up You may recall Imogene, the love-starved feline who shared my home for much of January. She is doing nicely now, thank you. She is doing nicely because Friday the vet performed surgery on her, surgery designed to eliminate her obsessive lust for every tom-dick-and-harrycat in the tri-county area. It seems Imogene's owner recently caught her wearing excessive lipstick, rouge and eyeshadow and spending considerable time under streetlamps.

She had become a furry tart and she liked her work. Spaying was the obvious solution. Imogene looked fine when last I saw her, except for a shaved spot on her side where the cutting took place. And a look on her face that suggested life would never be quite the same again. Kitty, Things are not going so well, unfortunately, for another animal reported on of late.

Lulu, the missing toucan, is still at large. In case you missed it, Lulu escaped from her cage Valentine's Day when her owner, Willis Usry, went in with some food and wind blew the door back open. Usry has been roaming the Castlewoods vicinity since then, trying to track Lulu down. "The last time I heard was a week ago Sunday," he said. "She was on the seventh green at the golf course.

By the time they called me and I got there she was gone." All in all Lulu has been seen four times in Castlewoods, Usry said, but no one has been able to rein her in. "She knocked on a guy's front window one morning," he said. "She probably would have come in the house, but a redbird was chasing her and she left." Some people have told Usry they have been putting out food for Lulu, who might not be able to find much of her diet in the wild. "I continue every afternoon looking that country over," he said. "I've just about given up.

It looks like I'm going to have to go to Florida and get me another female." I'm sure Lulu's mate Bama would appreciate that. Mark Twain, again at last Hinds County Community College will be putting on its seventh annual Mississippi and the Arts Week starting March 20. Events include a blues concert with James "Son" Thomas, a reading by author Will D. Campbell, a talk by Channel 3 anchor Maggie Wade, and sundry other attractions. Among those sundry others will be a performance workshop with Jack Stevens on Recreating Mark Twain.

I saw Jack do his Twain some 16 years ago in college, and have been waiting for a return engagement ever since. The only catch is it starts at 10 a.m., which makes it a tad difficult for working stiffs to take it in. But if you can, it should be worth it. And Jack's a lot older now, so he shouldn't require so much makeup. Shouldn't life have merit badges, like Girl Scouts? Sure, you have your minks and Rolexes and Testarossas that testify to wealth, and I your Oscars and Grammies and Pultizers that recognize certain nar- row competences.

But why aren't there adult status symbols that tes- tify to character, virtue and general usefulness? Juliette Low met Sir Robert Baden-Powell at a dinner party in 1911, shortly after he'd founded the Boy Scouts, and so the story goes fell in love with him. She also borrowed his idea of scouting and reinterpreted it for American girls, starting the first Girl Scout troop in America on March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Ga. Low kept the ideals of handiness and cheerfulness, and she kept the merit badges, but she broadened the kinds of competence they recognized. Boy Scouts learned to survive in the wilderness Girl Scouts would learn to manage at home as well. Boy Scouts learned to tie knots and start fires by rubbing sticks together; Girl Scouts would also learn to test babies' bath water, make buttonholes, clean and dress fowl and nurse invalids.

The experience of achieving mastery would persuade them that they could do anything they set their minds to. The first handbook of the Girl Scouts of America, published in 1913, was a self-help book of amazing scope. It told girls how to stop a runaway horse, splint a broken leg, prevent frostbite, recognize poi- -sonous snakes, start a fire, tie knots, send a message in Morse code or by semaphore, tie up a burglar with eight inches of cord, tell time by the stars, discourage mice, prevent consumption, rescue a person who has fallen through the ice, exercise to develop strength, scrub and polish floors, read a map, patch a hole in a dress, cure a ham, take a pulse, test milk for butterfat content, clean wire window screens, play various games, be observant, sew on buttons properly, poach eggs, use sour milk to bleach linen, make a "really good rice pudding," bathe a baby, put a child's stockings on, stop a nosebleed, remove a cinder from an eye, put out a fire, rescue a person drowning, and give artificial respiration. It also offered plenty of advice: choose a career, learn a trade, be punctual, don't read rubbish, have a place for everything and everything in its place, don't waste, breathe through your nose, never draw attention to yourself unnecessarily by behaving noisily and talking or laughing loudly in public, don't let any man make love to you unless he wants to marry you and you are willing to do so, don't read in bed, See GIRL SCOUTS, 7D J. Kyle KeenerThe Philadelphia Inquirer and the variety of achievement.

For nearly 80 years, girls have scouted out the possibilities The weather's sunny for ex-JSU star Vivian Brown I JEFF 1 EDWARDS TV Editor fs.y The Clarion-Ledger colors. Public TV gets real public in a couple of special events this month. Today, schoolchildren across the country will join in what the Public Broadcasting Service calls 1989 World's Largest Concert. More than 7 million children simultaneously will sing along with the 30-minute program of patriotic, folk and tradtional songs, which airs at noon on the Mississippi ETV network. The national telecast features the McDonald's Ail-American High School Band and singers from all 50 states.

Locally, students from Marshall and North Jackson elementary schools will sing along from the south steps of the New Capitol. Members of the Mississippi Legislature have been invited. Cookie Monster and Grover have been invited to the Jackson Zoo, and they've graciously accepted the invitation. The former track ace passes apprenticeship and hits the air on The Weather Channel. Changing channels Vivian Brown, a former track star at Jackson State University, now competes for cable's The Weather Channel.

Brown became an on-camera meteorologist last month. She does forecasting during afternoon and early evening periods for The Weather Channel, which is based in Atlanta. Brown graduated from JSU in August 1986 with a degree in meteorology. The daughter of Mississippi Valley State University track coach William Brown and JSU professor Rejohnna Brown, she was ranked fifth in the world in the 50-meter dash in 1984. She was captain of the track team at JSU in 1985, and was named the The two Sesame Street residents will visit their friend Hooray! the zoo hippo Sunday afternoon, March 19, from 2 until 5 p.m.

Admission to the party is $2.50 for adults, $1.25 for children, and children must be accompanied by an adult. Tickets will be available at the zoo entrance. Proceeds from ticket sales will help Mississippi ETV adopt an elephant at the zoo The Cincinnati Bengals' acclaimed quarterback, Boomer Esiason, tries to score today on ABC's All My Children (noon, WAPT-Channel 16). Infamous Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) needs a famous male spokesperson for her new cosmetics company. And a date for an awards dinner.

All My Children fan Boomer is the prime candidate. Does he get the job? Does he get the date? You'll have to stay tuned. Most Valuable Player in field events for the Southwestern Athletic Conference. Brown began her work at The Weather Channel as a product specialist, responsible for preparation of on-air map products as well as some forecasting and analysis of current conditions. For the past year, she has been enrolled in the network's apprenticeship program, designed to allow qualified meteorologists to develop TV presentation skills.

Which she apparently passed with flying For sufferers of bulimia, there is hope for help tting their way -e mal studies have shown that CCK affects Tonight's TV The best: Mississippi's two representatives in the Southeastern Conference There may be new hope for the thou if Tournament are in action tonight on WDBD-Chan-nel 40. It's the battle of the basketball Bulldogs at 6:30 p.m. when Mississippi State tangles with Georgia. For too many years the automobile was regarded as the big boys' toy. But now that increasing numbers of women are entering the work force, auto designers predict that the next decade will see cars better tailored to women's requirements.

What do female drivers want? Smooth, soft lines and hospitable interiors with bright colors and fashionable fabrics. So says the March issue of Lear's magazine. Windshields will be larger; sunshades will be electronically controlled. Passenger compartments and trunks will be larger. Wheels will be placed at the far corners of the body to increase stability and ensure a softer ride.

food satiety; injections of the hormone reduce the amount of food animals eat. Antidepressants helped reduce CCK levels and reduce binging in human research patients. Doctors caution that they do not yet know if CCK abnormality is the cause or the result of bulimia. As many as 10 percent of young women in the United States and a much smaller proportion of men are victims of the hidden epidemic of bulimia. Fitness guru Jane Fonda and actress Ally Sheedy, who recently filmed the movie Heartbreak Hotel in Oxford, suffered and recovered from bulimia.

sands of Americans who suffer from bulimia nervosa, the gorging-purging syndrome, according to the March issue of Psychology Today. Researchers Thomas D. Geracioti Jr. of the National Institute of Mental Health and Rodger A. Liddle of the University of California, San Francisco, have preliminary evidence that bulimia may stem, in part, from a biological abnormality and may improve with antidepressant medication.

They believe the culprit may be chole-cystokinin (CCK), a hormone found in the intestines, blood plasma and brain. Ani The second game from Knoxville, features Ole Miss against Auburn. Here comes "March Madness." TBS bills it as "The two" best Westerns of All Time." They won't get many arguments with John Wayne in The Searchers (7:05 p.m.) and Gary Cooper in High Noon (9:35 p.m.). Ed Murphy: His Ole Miss Rebels face Auburn in the SEC's first round..