Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 51

Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D. Sunday, Sept. 8, 1991 Ann Landers 4 Anniversaries 2,4 Birthdays 2 School menus 4 Horoscope 3 Erma Bombeck: watch out TT7' for trendy ff teen-agers 3-LL Life New mm in me dial By JOYCE TERVEEN Argus Leader Staff elevision watchers never Terry woster heard of Bart Simpson four Teen-agers crazy about Fox show years ago. Not many knew about KTTW. what?" was the most likely response when Sioux Falls' Summer baseball memories i LA jJU yfU 1 fourth television station signed on the air in May of 1987.

In the months that followed, rumors that the station was in By JOYCE TERVEEN Argus Leader Staff Dylan and Brenda are breaking up, and Patti Ward can hardly believe it. "I just screamed when I saw that," says the 17-year-old junior at Roosevelt High School. But Dylan and Brenda aren't an trouble drifted in to station manager Chuck PoDDen. "We lis- i Luke Perry mir item in the halls of Roosevelt. They're stars in the Fox TV hit Beverly Hills 90210.

The show that started out as a whimper last fall has become a hit with teens. In its time slot, 90270 is the No. 1 series with teen-agers and kids and No. 2 with adults, 18-34, according to the A.C. Nielsen Co.

Ward is one of the faithful viewers of the high-school oriented series which follows the Walsh family. The Midwestern family with teen-age twins moved to Beverly Hills and finds their lives and values are turned up- Shannen Doherty At 5 i I a 4' jy I 1 tenedtothatfor Chuck Poppen the first year," he says. But the UHF station that started out in a two-room trailer house is now sending out a signal of confidence and a string of hit shows in Sioux Falls and surrounding communities. In addition, the company has boosted its image in the state. Aug.

31, Independent Broadcasting, Inc. added a VHF signal from Huron that beams hit shows such as Star Trek The Next Generation and The Simpsons into homes within a 60-mile radius of Huron. The addition of KTTM will double the size of the company's audience. Poppen, an investor and general manager who has been with the station since its beginning, says he never doubted that an independent station could survive in Sioux Falls. He was a semester away from graduating with an anthropology major from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks when he took a job as manager of an audio equipment store.

In 1973 he transferee! to Sioux Falls. "I thought it would be fun to own a television station," says the 38-year-old. As the cost of television equipment came down and news about the development of the Fox network started surfacing, Poppen decided the timing was right. He asked Sioux Falls businessmen Bob and Jim Elmen for financial backing. The Elmens own 89 percent of the station.

Poppen wanted an alternative to the three networks for those who did not have cable TV options "No one else was doing children's programming," says Poppen, the father of four sons ages 5 though 17. "I feel very strongly that we need to let kids be kids a little longer. The tough teen years come soon enough and we're not doing that when they come home from school and the only thing they have to watch is Oprah Winfrey or Current Affair which is mature subject matter." The station has a lock on chil-drens programming. Afternoons Monday through Friday the station runs some of the most popular cartoons including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This fall Beetle Juice and Tiny Toons are in the afternoon lineup.

Over the past years, KTTW's schedule become more attractive to adults, too. Minnesota Twins and Timberwolves games are on the schedule. Star Trek the Next Generation has been popular and soon the station will add the old Star Trek to the lineup as well. Argus Leader pholo by PAUL BUCKOWSKI commercial at the control board. KTTW director Dan Sterner cues up a program Jason Ward tapes priestey every episode.

She has a 90210 T-shirt. When one of the shows stars, Gabrielle Carteris, called KPAT to do an interview, Ward asked the questions. "The show isn't fake. It's like real things that happen," Ward says. The shows creators call the show a dramedy, a mixture of drama and comedy.

The characters drive nice cars and wear great jeans, but the humor and glamour is outweighed by the tough subjects including breast cancer, AIDS, date rape, alcohol and drug abuse and teen motherhood. KTTW, which airs the show at 8 p.m. Thursday, gets many requests for T-shirts and posters, says KTTW manager Chuck Poppen. While most networks were airing reruns, Fox got a jump on the season by running new episodes of 90210 TiZxy. Like their viewers, the teen-agers in the show were on summer vacation.

While teens here went back to school this last week, the kids of Beverly Hills 90210 start school Sept. 12. Fox's fall lineup. 5F. I'm a farm boy, born and raised west of the Missouri River in the purple shadow of Medicine Butte.

My little brother, born and raised the same place, is a city kid. What makes me a farm boy and him a city kid? Try this: He played summer baseball when he was growing up. He got rides into town for practices, right in the middle of the afternoon. He didn't always get to go, but he got there often enough so I call it playing summer ball. Farm kids out in our country didn't do that.

I sure didn't. It wouldn't have occurred to me to ask my folks for the chance. There was work to be done in the country on all those long, lazy summer afternoons when city kids gathered at Gregg Field for baseball practice, Midgets and Junior-Juniors and Legion. That doesn't mean I didn't follow baseball. I did, religiously, in the tiny type of the box scores in the Mitchell Daily Republic's sports page, and on the radio.

During my earliest baseball years, there were two teams, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It seems like they played every World Series in the 1950s, and I listened as hard as anyone else. But my loyalties were divided. My dad was a diehard Brooklyn fan, and I loved my dad. My cousin, Leo, though, was a rabid Yankees rooter, and I worshipped Leo.

I didn't like to cheer for one team over the other, and in 1957, I found away out. I became a Braves fan. This was an upstart team from Milwaukee, a blue-collar bunch playing away from the media markets. They weren't the Yankees and they weren't the Dodgers. They were Hank Aaron, and Eddie Mathews, Bill Bruton and Wes Covington, Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette.

The Braves became not only my heroes, but also my playmates on muggy August nights. I could be Aaron, measuring a slow curve for my 37th home run as I stood in the yellow circle of light from the REA pole and hit a battered baseball against the garage door. I could be Covington, racing back to the fence to haul in Mantle's deep shot to left as I loped around the farm yard, heaving the baseball high into the air and snagging it with a blackened mitt. On rare occasions, I got a feeling for the real thing. Those were the nights when my dad would come out after supper, still in his work boots and khaki pants, to grab the scarred Louisville Slugger and hit pop flies to me.

I was 8 or 9 years old before I found the pancake-sized first baseman's mitt he used to use when he played ball for the Reliance town team. I remember my disbelief then. It seemed impossible that my dad, the farmer, could every have been a ball player. It didn't seem impossible those nights when he'd come out and hit flies to me. Ted Kluzewski was big in those days, a slugger for the Cincinnati Reds.

My dad had arms like big Klu's, the kind that pushed against the seams of his shirt sleeve. He hit the ball a lot like Klusewski, too. Standing near the garage, he'd knock long fly balls that I chased across the farmyard and into the thick fireweeds down by the south pasture. Sometimes the ball would sail over the fence, and I'd have to climb between the barbed wire strands to get it. "Sorry, I'll take a little off," my dad would say when I pegged the ball back in.

Then he'd rap a grounder so hot it stung my hand, but I wouldn't let, on for fear he might stop. I'd catch and chase as long as he'd hit and beg for "just two more" when he wanted to quit. Come to think of it, I guess I did play a little summer baseball, after all. Terry Woster is an Argus Leader staff writer. started out with three people in a two-room trailer house next to its 150 foot tower at 69th Street and Ki-wanis Avenue.

A year later, it moved into offices in Hawthorne Plaza at Hawthorne Avenue and 42nd Street. Last September, the station put up a 460 foot tower and increased its coverage area. The 15 employees are outgrowing their space and have taken over several more offices in the mini-mall they occupy. "This is studio Poppen says jokingly as he gestures toward a corner of one room. It's the station's only studio.

A Kids Club banner hangs on one wall where children's promotions are shot. A dark curtain on another wall serves as the background for a homebuyer's guide show. "Some day," he says, "maybe we'll have Studio The station's popularity has grown with the Fox network. Though Fox bombed with Joan Rivers as its first outing, the network went on to create popular programming that fills prime time on Sunday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Top shows now include Married With Children, The Simpsons, America's Most Wanted, Cops and most recently, Beverly Hills 90210.

The Arbitron survey, which measures the number of people watching a specific program, shows some of KTTW's programming is making an impact in the Sioux Falls area where its signal is strongest. In July, 77ie Simpsons, which airs at 7 p.m. Thursdays, was second only to KDLT's 77ie Cosby Show in the metro area. KSF was not included in the metro survey slot because program in July varied from week to week. It finished fourth behind KELO's Top Cops, KSFY's Father Dowling Mysteries and KDLT's The Cosby Show in the larger survey area which covers most of eastern South Dakota and adjoining counties in neighboring states.

Mike Braker, KELO-TV general manager, who put a FOX station on air in Tulsa Okla. in 1980, expects KTTW could make a bigger impact on the Arbitron surveys with more promotion. Bob Elmen, president of KTTW, says Braker is probably right. Though the station has been advertising itself, it will probably do more. The $1.3 million dollar investment in the Huron station will help.

"We will double our audience and now we can put the coals to the fire," he says. The station has not been profitable yet, Elmen says. "We expect in the next two years that it can be developed into a moneymaker." KTTW is already feeling growing pains, Poppen says. The station Teens warming up to heat-sensitive T-shirts ...1 i tk-- 5 v. with a hair dryer, others have tags instructing buyers to "breathe here" to watch the garment change colors.

The clothes can be machine-washed and dried. They are available in a variety of colors pink that turns peach, purple that turns pink and yellow that turns green. Some shirts are tye-died, others have are screen-printed. The designs on Hyper Grafix shirts change in the heat. Helen Owens the younger Helen's mother was intrigued by the clothing last spring.

"I saw them advertised and thought it looked like fun." But the novelty wore off, she says. Owens probably won't buy more heat-sensitive clothes unless her kids suddenly decide it's the thing to wear. "They've worn well, they just haven't worn them enough," Owens says. Here is a partial list of stores in The Empire selling hypercolor clothes: Dayton's has shirts, shorts and tank tops starting at 20. Hal's Sportswear has short and long-sleeve shirts, both tie-dye and regular from $26 to $28.

Zips sells short-sleeve tops starting at $20. Younkers has girls' sweat shirts starting at $26. Also look for socks and footless tights. Boys' T-shirts are available starting at $24. J.C.

Penney Co. has socks and short-sleeve T-shirts in boys' sizes 8 to 20. By DORENE WEINSTEIN Argus Leader Staff Hypercolor shirts aren't magic, or an illusion, but they may be a gimmick. Helen Owens prefers to think of the heat-sensitive shirts as educational: When the shirt gets hot the color changes. "It's kind of like a science experiment," the 10-year-old says, "It's neat." Helen and her sister, Beth, got hypercolor shirts, last spring.

"When I wear it some people come up to me and breathe on it real hard," Helen giggles. The fabric is dyed with a heat-sensitive chemical that changes the shirt color when it gets warm. Susan Ivancie, Dayton's store manager, says the shirts are a fun trend. "It's different than most doming trends it's not the cut or style it's what the clothing does." Though the shirts, made by Ge-nerra, came to town last spring, sales continue to soar. "We can't keep them in," Ivancie says.

And they're not just for kids. "A 78-year-old woman bought one." Generra bought the rights to the dye process from its Japanese inventor. Other shirts are made using ink, but it doesn't last as long as the special dye, Ivancie says. The shirts change color all over, not just under the arm or other strategic areas. The entire article will change color if one part is heated.

T-shirts, shorts, tank tops and socks are available in hypercolors. Some of the clothes are displayed 1 it Argus Leader photo by BILL HAINES Matt Munce (left) and Dana Pliska wear Hyper Grafix designs change color as the shirt changes tempera-shirts at the Phfps Avenue Fountain. The shirts' ture. 1 111 IJnJ.