News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 49

Dear Abby 2D Horoscopes 2D Family 4D TV Page 8D NEWS-PRESS' FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1988 ii ASK ORLI ON THE ROAD AGAIN BEST GIFT In the most ambitious project since 'Nightline' spent a celebrated week in 1985 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the ABC news show will originate live Teens have trouble just as adults do, but they might feel funny writing to Dear Abby. Their option? Orli Kohn, our teen columnist2D Instead of the usual-flowery fluff, there are gifts that some moms really need on Mother's Day. See our Tip-off on Aging3D from Israel April 25-29 with Ted Koppel anchoring from Jerusalem. Fox bleeds red ink, but outlook rosy Los Angeles Times-Washington Post I II VI -M UJ I 1:1 Mr HOLLYWOOD One year after entering the prime-time programming wars in a bold effort to establish a fourth commercial television network, Fox Broadcasting Co. is bleeding red ink but making what its commanding general considers satisfactory progress.

"It's like the Normandy invasion," says Fox Chairman Barry Diller. "We're on the beach. We are encountering all the problems that you encounter on a heavily fortified coast. But we are creeping toward the hedgerows." The analogy is apt. Fox's attempt to carve out a niche in the fiercely competitive television-programming market represents an assault not only on ABC, CBS and NBC but also on the nation's TV viewers, whose loyalties already are being divided by cable television, pay-TV andvideocassettes.

The weapons in the prime-time battle are programs. Fox's weapons of choice increasingly are programs that are distinctively but not radically different from those on the BigThree either in subject matter, style or demographic appeal. Tracey Ullman Show' is unlike anything else on television," notes Garth Ancier, Fox president of programming. "It's Garry Shandling's Show," which Fox picked up from the Showtime cable, is a comedy whose star regularly stops the story to speak directly to the audience. Yet carrying out the strategy is "very difficult," Diller observes.

Case in point: Fox's disastrous Saturday night comedy schedule, which has been attracting a mere 2 percent of the audience, is being overhauled. So out will go "Mr. President," "Women in Prison" and "The New Adventures of Beans Baxter." In will come "Family Doubledare," a prime-time version of the popular children's game show, and "Dirty Dozen," an hour-long, male-oriented adaptation of the World War II shoot-'em-up film. Fox executives are pleased with their other night of programming, Sunday. The lineup of "2 Uump Street," "Married With Children," "It's Garry Shandling's Show," "Duet," "The Tracey Ullman Show" and "Werewolf (which went on hiatus last week, replaced by "America's Most attracts about 7 percent of the audience and is growing.

AROUND CHARLOTTE BILL KILPATRICK This poetess is remarkably down to earth On Tuesday, before and during an American literature class at Florida Southern College at Port Charlotte, I got to first meet and then hear readings by poetess Hallie Cramer. Normally, I suppose one tends to approach poetesses as one would a mother superior or a maiden aunt of advanced years whose entire adult life had been spent tending to a library 's card files. I mean, poetesses are supposed to be other-worldly, right? Isn't there a temptation to think of them as women who somehow boogie to a different drummer? After all, Emily Dickinson wasn't exactly the girl next door, now, was she? It's different with poets. Most to whom I've been introduced at Greenwich Village bars or at bookish cocktail parties, usually needed a bath and stalked the martini olives as Snoopy might his supper dish. Hallie, however, fits no stereotype.

At first glance she seems small and slightly frail in appearance. Were you told she was a poetess it would be easy to imagine her cranking out syrupy verse for greetings cards the ones featuring bunny rabbits or lots of kittens. But that wouldn't be Hallie. On second look you'd take note of her neatly applied lipstick, her friendly eyes, her quick hands, a foot that twitches back and forth as she sits at a table in front of the class, her legs crossed at the ankles, reading from one of the several published collections of her poetry. The lady gives the impression of quiet competence, the impression she somehow has a handle on things.

Of Hallie, Sidney Davis, director of Florida Southern's Port Charlotte program, says, "She writes good poetry, not just rhymingjingles." And indeed she does. No writer of treacle tackles the plight of the American Indian through lines such as, "Before we came he stood in admiration and marveled at the canyon's purple deeps pitched his restless tent in forests black with destiny Or later, still on the Indian, "He descends the slope and hears behind him from the tall, sharp grass a plaintive, lonely night bird calling, calling, calling." And no mere versifier would attempt to put in poetic form a tribute to a son's World War II combat boots, or to the shabby, often repaired shoes worn to this country by a war bride from the Ukraine. Nor do mere versifiers find themselves named their state's Poet-of-the-Year, as Hallie once was in her native Ohio. The thing is, though, this plugged-in, wonderfully, joyously alive lady is 90 years old. Not only is she 90, but a year ago in May, appropriately capped and gowned for a Lakeland ceremony, she graduated from Florida Southern, thus ending a six-year quest for a college degree.

The reason it took her six years to earn the degree is that she's a snowbird. A widow, she lives most of the year with her widowed daughter (her husband and her son-in-law died in the same year) in Toledo. They come down to Port Charlotte only after Christmas, usually staying through May. "Getting here so late in the academic year meant I was always a semester behind my fellow students," Hallie said. "I had a lot of work to make up.

It took me twice as long to get my degree." Once asked by a reporter why she persevered in her studies, Hallie replied, "I didn't want to spend the rest of my life playing cards. As long as you're alive, your mind continues thinking, and you might as well do something with it." That would seem to be about as good a reason as any. A Grande dame A former colleague named David Futch, whose byline once was familiar to readers of this newspaper and who now is editor of the Boca Beacon, a fortnightly tabloid-sized newspaper serving Boca Grande, scored a journalistic coup recently when he managed a lengthy exclusive interview with legendary actress (and Boca Grande snowbird) Katharine Hepburn. "The interview took about two months to set up," Futch said. "I guess she needed that long to make up her mind I was OK, that I wasn't going to embarrass her in any way.

"Of course it helped that Kathy, Mark's (his brother's) wife, did a lot of secretarial work for her, and that Mark took her up in his seaplane, took her out oystering off Cayo Costa and all. It probably would be safe to say that might have helped. "But one of the conditions she imposed on me before I could talk with her was that the interview not be published until she'd gone back North. I guess she didn't want anyone to get the idea she might be accessible for additional interviews." Bill Kilpatrick is a Charlotte Ne ws-Press columnist. Fox Broadcasting Co.

The many prime-time faces of self-proclaimed "character actress" Tracey Ullman include her real one (center). Multitalented Ullman rolling with low ratings By HOWARD ROSENBERG Los Angeles Times-Washington Post SHE blew in like a cyclone, driven by hope and hype. A noisy, electrifying, taut, frantic Cockney she was, a bundle of instincts, nerve endings, hairpin curves and surprises who was going to take American TV viewers on the thrilling ride of their lives. And? It has been a year since "The Tracey Ullman Show" began on Fox Broadcasting Co. as a Sunday night half-hour of The sound is going largely unheard.

Yes, the British dubbed Tracey Ullman "Our Trace." Yes, they went in droves to buy her pop album, "You Broke My Heart in 1 7 Places," and watched the telly in droves as she broke their funny bones in 1 7 places. In America, though, the colossus of 5 comedy has collided with the colossus of TV reality. The dismal numbers Through February, her show had averaged a tiny 3.1 rating and 5 percent share of the audience, reaching about 2.7 million TV households. Those audience totals rank her near the bottom of a Fox Sunday-night lineup that is near the bottom of the national Nielsen rankings. "Tracey is probably where most of us expected her to be in her first (full) season," says Jamie Kellner, Fox president and chief operating officer.

"We believe as strongly as ever in Tracey as a real star. We're too new to be discouraged by ratings." Kellner notes that Ullman has high appeal to the core 1 8-to-34 upscale age group that advertisers lust for. And he expects her exposure to grow in the 1 0 p.m. time slot she's occupied since March 6, concluding a 90-minute Fox comedy bloc led of by recently acquired reruns of the hilarious Showtime series, "It's Garry Shandling's Show." "It's true that it's harder to discover Tracey on Fox than on NBC," Kellnersays. But also easier for her to survive on Fox than on NBC.

Not that NBC would have been interested in a rule-bending series like Ullman's in the first place. Fox has granted See ULLMAN, page 4D innovative sketches and a little music and still, relatively few viewers have bothered to go along for the ride. A brief history: British TV comedy and recordingstar gets own show on new Fox network. Always interesting, frequently entertaining, more than occasionally brilliant. Sings nicely, plays amazing range of characters.

High acclaim, low ratings. At 28, rising star. Few movies include "Plenty." Several hit records. A scream on talk shows. Remarkable mimic.

Wife of successful British TV producer Allan McKeown, 4 1 Mother of 2-year-old Mabel. Have voices, will travel. Some predict epic future. She can be the next decade's major star, her first TV producer, Paul Jackson, says in London. She's "the sound you don't know you're missing until you've heard it," her present TV producer, James L.

Brooks, weighs in. Designers don't skirt issue of fall philosophies who were there in great numbers and wildly enthusiastic about the collection, clearly approved. Ivana and Blaine Trump and Washington television editorialist Nancy Dickerson were already wearing pants, while most others were in skirts to the top of their knees. Pat Buckley's animal-print skirt was well above her knees. Asked if she was tempted by the longer skirts, she said bluntly, "Absolutely not.

If anything, I'll shorten mine." Nancy Kissinger, who wore a skirt that grazed because she wears, she edits, she digests what is right for her and, my God, that's it. That's the way itshouldbe." And so, in this final week of the fall fashion shows that have had buyers and press tracking new styles in Milan, London, Paris and now New York, Blass presented a luxurious collection with oodles of options, long and short, easy and tight, colorful and subdued, with the option of black and white. And lots of pants, both in suits for daytime and in chiffon with sweaters for evening. His clients, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post NEW YORK "Listen, babe, the day of the fashion designer as dictator is over," said Bill Blass before his show Monday. "A woman isn't a fashion victim or survivor in our time she is a dictator.

If she's young, she likes to wear short skirts. If she's not so young, she wears her skirt somewhere around her knee. If she truly wants to, she wears pants." Added Blass, "The one who wins is the woman, LM.L See FALL, page 4D Designer Bill Blass )U9.