South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 47

Sun-Sentinel, Tuesday, April 11, 1989 Section ar TOM JICHA Television Writer EarlTupper took a rock-, hard plastic waste product and created an American kitchen institution. Tupperware. Home Parties photos Cheatwood makes best of bad situation THEMAN AND HIS WOMEN he darkest moment of Joel II 1 -n li 1 1 not long after dawn on a Monday morning last summer. It was a lit- -XX. tie past 8 a.m.

when the WSVN- By LIZ DOUP Staff Writer uurrrrp Oh, excuse us, please. We don't mean to be rude, but we really couldn't help it. And to be perfectly honest, Ch. 7 news director answered the phone and heard both WSVN owner Ed Ansin and general manager Bob Leider on the other end. His bosses were calling to confirm the rumor that had been swirling through the market.

CBS had bought WCIX-Ch. 6. This meant WSVN, which was losing its NBC affiliation because NBC had purchased WTVJ-Ch. 4, would become an independent station. This was like a football coach being told in 4 to it seemed like the right thing to do.

We're here in Kissimmee at Tupperware World Headquarters home of the plastic bowls you once had to "burp" and where "seal" is a sacred word. It is our pleasure to be outside the building perusing the soaring rainbow constructed of 64,000 Tupperware seals, and to be strolling the gardens with its "Opportuni-trees." that the pro team he had been hired to lead was dropping out of the NFL to play Arena Football. It also was the situation that Ansin had given Cheatwood "a blood oath" would never happen when WSVN lured him south from Cleveland. With his world seem- incrlv rrnmhlinff arnnnri A third generation of users is whispering the seals on America's most famous containers. We are here in order to tell you the Tupperware tale the story of the man who created it, the woman who loved it, the parties that sold it and the museum that shows it off.

Now pardon us, please, if we rush right to the point. It's been a long haul just to get here and we're more than ready for our Tupperware party. We are three women, each from a different decade yet sharing a bond that is stronger than steel or any space-age metal. It is plastic that unites us. We sit in the lobby of the World Headquarters, a building that looks more like a museum than a sanctuary for the Pick-a-Deli pickle holder.

It is, in fact, a spectacular building, designed by an architect of note, sitting on 1,500 acres once a cow pasture that includes manicured gardens, lovingly planted and carefully tended, all for the glory and honor of the people who push this prized plastic. Inside this modern-day Xanadu are Lawrie Piatt and Shirley Stuller, part of the Tupperware Team, saturated with Tupperware spirit and filling us with Tupperware facts. Stuff like: The Tupperware Bell Tumbler is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Elizabeth Taylor once gave a Tupperware party aboard her yacht. Actress Meredith Baxter Bir-ney did time as a Tupperware dealer.

Tupperware is sold in 42 countries. Then gradually yet naturally we start to digress. Someone tells a story about the couple who fought over Tupperware custody in their divorce. Then another tells of the woman who picks every home she buys based on the SEE TUPPERWARE 4E '4 Cheatwood him, Cheatwood reacted like a champion: "I'm going to Disney World," he declared. This wasn't so much gallantry as common sense.

Cheatwood and his wife had arrived at the Magic Kingdom the night before, for the start of his vacation. "There was no sense coming back home," he recalled. "That wasn't going to change anything." Good intentions, bad advice In the ensuing days, he had no shortage of advice or options. "All my friends were calling and every one of them said the same thing. 'Get out of there on the next "Even Leider told me he would understand if I left," Cheatwood said.

At the same time, the general manager sweetened the pot for his news director to stay. "He said we were going to do something no other independent had ever done make news our calling card." Finally, he put his trust in his closest friend. "My wife, who's the brains in our family, said, 'What happens if you go? You might wind up working in a larger market or at a bigger station, but you'll probably have a lot of executives looking over your shoulder, meddling in everything you She reminded me that WSVN had given me incredible freedom and had kept every promise but the one about being a network affiliate." Cheatwood realized he couldn't hold the latter against the station because he knew Ansin had been sincere. Almost no one in the industry thought CBS would lock itself into a station with WCIX's signal problems. Worst case wasn't bad Besides, Leider also had promised Cheatwood the opportunity to develop the idea that has become Inside Story.

"The first time I saw A Current Affair, Cheatwood said, "I told the people here, 'We can do a better show than Suddenly, I saw the opportunity to continue as a news director and at the same time, open a lot of new doors for me. My worst-case scenario was we would fail and, under the circumstances, I didn't think that would hurt me." The president of the Nothing But Blue Skies Club couldn't have envisioned the best-case scenario. WSVN has made a fabulous success of its news-intensive format. It frequently outrates WTVJ and consistently crushes WCIX. On top of that, Inside Story has been so well-received that it is being nationally syndicated.

Those new doors already have started to open for Cheatwood. Emboldened by its beginner's luck, WSVN has established its own production company, with Cheatwood as vice president of program development. This isn't just a title. Cheatwood says two new shows are on the drawing board, and he expects to have them ready by fall. The only minor negative is that Cheatwood will be so preoccupied that he must relinquish next month the day-to-day duties of the job he loves as news director.

When the CBS-WCIX deal was announced, all the smart money predicted Cheatwood wouldn't be WSVN's news director for long. The wise guys were right, after all. La In the 1950s, the strategy of marketing Tupperware at home parties made the product all the rage. Sexism driving NOW to confront auto insurers By SHELBY GILJE The Seattle Times ex and mileage. Those are the key issues in The National Organization for Women is calling for car insurance rates based on mileage, driving record and territorial considerations, not on sex.

an ongoing debate between the National Organization for Women and the auto-insur Twiss Butler, a member of NOW's national action staff in Washington, D.C., contends there is considerable "social engineering" by insurance companies. She says the lower rates charged for young women often are "daddy pleas-ers," designed to get the father in the family to give an insurance agent more business. She also says males who are 16 to 25 often get lower rates than they should for their age group, which is considered high risk, because the insurance industry wants to establish a "good relationship" with a future businessman. Hunter, of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, said it is not sufficient to merely eliminate gender from laws governing insurance. States approving a unisex or gender-free insurance law also need to enact a provision for "good-driver protection," stating that people have the right to buy insurance.

"Women have never benefited from 'gender' protection," said Pat Thibau-deau, lobbyist for Washington Women United, an umbrella organization of individuals and groups devoted to equal rights. She believes insurance is one of the last bastions of sex discrimination. ance industry. NOW contends insurance companies overcharge most women during their driving lifetimes. On the average, NOW says, statistics show men of all ages drive twice as many miles and have twice as many accidents as women.

Patrick Butler, a researcher for NOW's national insurance project, says these statistics are not an argument for sex discrimination but rather show that accidents are directly related to mileage. NOW wants insurance rates based on documented, not estimated mileage, in addition to the individual's driving record and the "territorial rate," or where you live and drive. NOW also wants the insurance industry to cease using sex as a factor in setting rates. Those in the insurance industry say that if every consumer's odometer reading had to be documented, it would increase the costs, either for a govern- surance agents would be eliminated, cutting some costs, Hunter said. But Hunter agrees that proposal "is not politically feasible." NOW wants yet another change: A rate structure that does not use one's sex as a factor.

Some consumer advocates as well as those in the insurance industry wonder whether NOW has thought through the ramifications of unisex or sex-neutral rates. Isn't NOW shooting itself in the foot on this issue? In states where insurance companies are permitted to consider sex of the driver, young women generally pay less than men who are 16 to 25. But NOW questions whether young women really do get a break on auto-insurance prices from the time they begin driving until they reach 25. And advocates of equal rights say young men should not be discriminated against. ment agency or insurance companies, and consumers eventually would pay for this service.

Nonsense, proponents say. Motorists have to license their cars, renew tabs. Why not require an affidavit of actual mileage at that time, or have the mileage documented at an emissions-testing site? Or at safety-check stations in states using that system? Robert Hunter, president of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, agrees with NOW that a system of checking actual mileage would be more equitable than one in which mileage is estimated. But Hunter believes a gas-pump tax would be better than checking odometers. Under one proposal, consumers would pay a "mileage" tax or insurance "premium" at the pump.

That money would be remitted to the state, which in turn would pay respective insurance carriers designated by consumers. In INSIDE HEALTH FITNESS Our health may be paying the price for the benefits of the computer age. 3E ENTERTAINMENT Tomfoolery's acting doesn't do justice to the show's satirical script. 7E Advice 2E Comics 10E Television 8E Horoscope 11E.