The Daily Times from Salisbury, Maryland • 39

Tf i I J) SECTION ENTERTAINMENT Salisbury, Md Dec, 23, 1979 pat maiiuiuni in i.iiiiiimiii .11 h. Nobody's Watching Shore Will Soon Have 2 Television Stations Classy TV Cop Show Ratings Victim v. -t 2-w if -j. 1 would like to see better local 'programs, such as a sports talk show. Balas also commented that he thinks this area could use a children's program.

"Kid-sworld," which is shown Saturday mornings, is an example. Many of the technical jobs on this show are often handled by children. The new station should help the local job market. A variety of positions, including technical, managerial, and clerical, will have to be filled. Hoehn said they will also be hiring part-time employees in the areas of news and production.

Balas also commented that the new station could serve as a possible training facility for college students. And the establishment of the new station could also serve as a possible source of employment for college graduates in the area. It may be interesting to note that a third station may be coming to the Delmarva area in the near, future. Although nothing definite can be disclosed as of yet, the city of Seaford, could be the location of this station. By KENT MESSICK Times Correspondent Early next year the Eastern Shore of Maryland will have two television stations.

A new station, WMDT Channel 47, is planning its first live news broadcast for February. WMDT, which will be the ABC affiliate for this area, will locate offices and studios on the Downtown Plaza in Salisbury, in a building that was formerly the Rite-Aid Drug Store. According to the director of broadcast operations, W. Michael Hoehn, the station will be financed by a $3.5 million budget for installation and production costs. This budget will include the operation of three mini-cameras.

The transmitter for WMDT, in Sharptown, will produce 3.7 megawatts. The height of the tower, 1,017 feet, will make it virtually the tallest structure on Delmarva. The tower will have the potential to transmit a signal to Dover on the north and to Virginia on the south. Hoehn said that the plaza building will be permanent until it becomes necessary to move. Such a necessity could arise if the building is needed for retail use.

Hoehn stressed that WMDT will not impede the redevelopment of the downtown area or the growth of the city. ALTHOUGH THE organization of personnel is still continuing. Hoehn said that Donald Feldman, of North Platte, has been hired as the station's news director. Aside from the usual news, weather and sports, Hoehn said that WMDT is planning novations for the future, but he did not wish to comment on them at this time. John Balas, who teaches television production at SSC, cited several suggestions for future shows.

begin with, I would like to see an excellent news broadcast." Balas mentioned that he would like to see better coverage of statewide news. "I would also like to see con-sumer reports, and more criticism of the arts." Balas went on to say that he away from the action. No high -speed car chases. No punches thrown. Instead there's a lot of talk.

The chief's realy good at dropping in on suspended officers at home and talking about the good old days for 10 or 12 minutes of airtime. It's slow. The big problem with "Eischied" is the stories, and It's a hard one to solve. Because, the lead in an administrator, he doesn't have natural access to traditional cop or detective cases. He's only going to get involved at the top level.

He has an office full of detectives but they wait for thim to pull the strings. If "Eischied" is re-tooled, instead of cancelled, his legmen must be beefed up. They are the only people in contact with the outside world. They could bring cases in, rather than react to what their boss reacts to. But then you'd be cutting down the on-camera time of your star, which can be dangerous.

So this is a tough one of repair: Generally the networks prefer to bring in a new model. What better way to mount a non-violent cop show than to cast big Joe Don Baker In the title role. Baker, who can turn the flood rage on and off like a faucet, scored big as Buford Pusser in "Walking Tall," a supberb low-budget vigilante film of a few years ago. He might be an administrator these days but he still brings with him the constant threat of violence. "Eischied" looked like a show that would go places.

It has: to the bottom of the ratings. It is precisely what NBC should be doing to get back on top putting name talent in a classy hour venture. But nobody is watching. The network is yanking it coincident with the November sweeps. It may or may not return.

Once again here is a show with potential that is a victim of the world according to Nielsen. It hasn't found itself yet. It needs time. Time is money. From week to week you're not quite sure which show you're going to see.

The only thing you can be sure of is that it will stay By DAVID HANDLER Earl Eischied looks like a retired white hope who can now eat as many pancakes as he wants. His face is battle -scarred and a bit puffy. The three piece suits he wears look roomy enough to sleep six. For spice rie smokes foot long cigars, has a fondness for cats and makes his living by being New York City's chief of detectives. He's not very good at playing the game.

He has no tolerance for red tape or doubletalk, and can't be bothered by the press. He especially hates politicians. When he has to talk to the commissioner on. the telephone be looks like he's about to tear the thing out of the wall and eat it. But he sticks his neck out.

He is tough, fair and he cares. Like Quincv, another NBC leading man, he is a white collar vigilante who brings about justice by breaking the system's rules. Take Quincy out of the morgue, take Eischied out of his plush office, and you're back in the jungle with Tony Baretta. DETECTIVE. Joe Don Baker, right, plays a New York City chief of detectives in NBC's "Eischeid," a white-collar cop show that has fared poorly in the ratings.

Trend In Movies Is Bigger' Will The 'Small Picture9 Fade? 1 To this viewer, some of the more enjoyable movies of the past year were those that moved us in a quiet way rather than those that dazzle the senses. I'll take the humanistic appeal of "small pictures" like "Breaking Away" and "Norma Rae" over the flashing lights and pseudo-profundity of "Star Trek" any day. THAT, of course, is a matter of taste, but one hopes there will be room for both types of movies to thrive. Unfortunately, some in the industry predict this will not be the case. Producer Roger Gorman, once king of the "small picture," said his company has been forced to move into multi-million The Reel World By Dick Fleming How appropriate that "Star Trek The Motion Picture" will be one of the last major movies to appear on the Shore before the end of the 1970s, a decade that has been marked in the industry by a growing trend toward big budget "event" films and the corresponding decline of the "small picture." Produced at a cost of $42 million, "Star Trek" ranks among the most expensive movies ever filmed, and, if early box office reports are an accurate indication, should also be one of the most successful of the decade in terms of profit.

The fact that the movie has been almost universally panned by critics has not deterred the legions of "Trekkies," who provided a built-in audience for the film from the television days of the U.S.S. Enterprise and crew. The other science-fiction extravaganza released for the Christmas holidays, arriving to town this weekend, is Walt Disney Productions' "The Black Hole." Produced at about half the cost of "Star Trek," "Black Hole" also promises to be heavy on special effects, many of them created through the use of new, computerized techniques. If the Disney team proves as innovative in its use of computerized effects as in its early development of the use of that film should succeed on its own technical merits. IT remains to be seen, however, whether the Disney film will suffer the same shortcomings that have drawn criticism of both "Star Trek" and Francis Ford Coppolla's Vietnam War epic, "Apocalypse Now," which has yet to be shown locally.

Those movies have been largely praised for their technical achievements, but criticized for weaknesses in plot and or character development, once staples of the Hollywood entertainment factory. Elaborate productions and special effects can, of course, be quite entertaining. The question, is, for how long, and at what expense? Will movie-goers continue to be entertained by movies that invest-more time and money into technology and pay less attention to the human element? productions to keep pace, and he sees the trend growing in the '80s. "One of the major developments of the '70s" Gorman was quoted as saying, "was the coming of what I call the 'event' picture the giant film like 'Star Wars' or 'Apocalypse Now' which takes a dominant form in the industry and squeezes out the little picture." On a sobering note, Gorman added, "I think that sometime in the next few years one of these giant films will fail with disastrous effect. I foresee a film costing $20, $30 or $40 million winding up an almost complete failure.

And that will shake the industry." The age of the "big picture" is upon us, and the trend will no doubt continue until movie-goers decide to send a message to film-makers, loud and clear, that bigger is not necessarily better. BELUSHI ON THE WARPATH. John Belushi is shown in a scene film also stars Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty and Robert Stack, from "1941," a comedy set in Los Angeles in the panic-stricken among others. It is showing at the Mall Cinema in Salisbury and days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Steven Spielberg the Sun and Surf Cinema in Ocean City.

(AP Laserphoto) Tom T. Hall Has Goal Street Encounter Sparked Hit Song writing, "The Storytellers' Nashville," published Nov. 2. "My wife wanted me to write it," he says. "I'd studied writing at Roanoke College in Virginia.

I thought that one of us fellows in the boots with the guitar on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, running up and down the streets of Nashville struggling to make He says, "I've written some brand new country songs. They're kind of basic, real country songs. That doesn't sound very creative, does it? I'm outof crossing over and into staying alive." Hall got his nickname, "the storyteller," on a much earlier trip to Australia. "I was on a 30- 4 if "To become a celebrity with no visible justification -not being able to do anything but just to be somebody -1 think, would be the most frightening experience in the world." KM1 Mi 1 It .4 By MARY CAMPBELL AP Newsfeatures Writer Tom T. Hall has a goal: "To keep on writing and performing until I literally become He says, "To become a celebrity with no visible justification not being able to do anything but iust to be sombody I think would be the most frightening experience in the world.

I want to really be somebody, so when a person says, 'I'm really glad to meet I will have some idea of why. "I know it's silly but we all dream." Hall recently went to Australia. "I saw a battery of caneras at the airport and I thought there was somebody important sn the plane. I thought maybe Kissinger was on. I was looking "or, him, and they were looking 'or me.

"I'm bigger there than I am lere. If you have a good sound, iiey put it on the radio. Country nusic at one time here was kind ethnic. Radio stations would )lay it when they thought far-ners Were getting up. After the armers went to work they'd go ack to decent music.

"I was so pleased that in Australia Tom T. Hall was an tntertainer." Right now, Hall has a single. You Show Me Your Heart (and '11 show you mine)" at No. 12 nd climbing on the Nov. 17 est-selling country chart It's rom his new RCA album, "01' Town." versity of Kentucky, starting this fall.

"Him being at Kentucky is the joy of my life," the proud father says. "Dean T. Hall, linebacker, 220 pounds, 6-feet-3." Hall was born in Olive Hill, in May 1936. He went to Nashville in 1964, 'after Army service. "I didn't go to Nashville to perform.

I turned down a lot of recording contracts, told them I wanted to write. Jerry Kennedy of Mercury said they were good songs but he couldn't get anybody torecord them. "I did an album and they pulled a single. There was a man in Louisiana who said he'd give $500 if I'd sing on one of his stage shows for 10 minutes. I drove down there and did three songs and he really did give me $500.

"I thought, writing country songs in that day and time, you'd have to write three to make that much money. There might be something to this pickin'andsingin'." Earlier this year he was elected to the Song Writers Hall of Fame in Nashville. "I was in Texas when that happened; my wife called me. I thought, how could anybody 42 years old be in a Hall of Fame? But that is quite a compliment. Boy, did I ever celebrate that night.

They say I'm the youngest living member. They throw that 'living' in there." the lady that I'm with. And my response was, 'Oh yeah! I remember now, that's how I "So that was the beginning. Then, I had to find a way to tell the story. And it wasn't working out as a song about people bumping into each other in the streets.

"So later on, I'm feeling much the same way about much the same person a little bored and I saw one of those ads in the Village Voice. You know, 'Young man wishes to form sincere relationship with a Dallas Cowboy all with wild, wild hopes. "And I saw one that looked like I had typed it myself, as my ultimate fantasy. And I thought, what would happen if I an-swered this? Probably it'll be a police decoy, the vice squad will come in. "But with me, the second I say, 'What about anything, I'm then immediately at the piano." Holmes' debut album was released in 1974.

Neither it nor three subsequent LPs made his name a household word, but there were people out there listening. One of them was Bar-bra Streisand, who has since recorded seven of Holmes' songs. And what of that dream ad in the Village Voice? "I wrote the song instead of answering the ad," he says. LOS ANGELES (AP) Pina coladas are just fine by Rupert Holmes, but they really had little to do with the song that's put him on the pop music map. "Escape" better known as "The Pina Colada is one of those tunes that come along now and then, catch the fancy of almost all who hear it, and skyrocket up the record charts faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.

But the happy little parable of romantic rediscovery via the classified ads owes less to tropical fruit drinks and newspapers than it does to an encounter with an unknown male pedestrian who gave Holmes' girlfriend the eye on a New York city street. It was a moment of recognition, one of many the songwriter has immortalized in his easy-on-the-eardrums music. But let him tell it: "One day I was walking down the street with a lady friend, and we were not getting along that day. I started looking at other people on the street, mainly of the female gender. "And I started thinking, 'This relationship is not working out.

I just can't take this. She just doesn't do it for me any more, it's not as exciting as it used to be. It's lost a lot of the magic' "And a guy's coming the other way, and I swear to you, he bumped into another guy because he's looking so hard at A day tour of UNICEF of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong. Tex Ritter introduced me on stage, 'Here is a young man who considers himself a When I came to breakfast the next morning, everybody said, 'There's the old storyteller.Mt stuck with me the whole tour. "When it came time to do the next album, we called it 'The Storyteller' and called the band the Storytellers." That was the third of 12 LPs Hall made for Mercury, before moving to RCA.

The songs he writes usually have colorful characters, dealing with intriguing situations. The best known is "Harper Valley PTA," recorded by Jeannie C. Riley in 1968. Hall has written a second book, following one on song- it, should write a book. If one of us didn't write our story, a whole part of American culture would go by misunderstood somehow.

I was just afraid nobody would ever do it. "This book has the, language, frustrations, anxieties, pills, booze, genius, ignorance, funny stuff. I don't try to really write about me. I'm just leading the tour." Hall says, "I sat down for the past two winters and wrote it on the typewriter. I physically wrote the book; I didn't dictate it or tell it to a ghostwriter." Hall says his wife, we call her, in the old southern tradition, has the largest basset-hound kennel in the' world.

She breeds and shows them. It's her hobby." Their son is 17 and has a football scholarship to the Uni LIKES PINA COLADAS. Rupert Holmes, singer and songwriter, is enjoying the success of his better known as "The Pina Colada Song" which is skyrocketing up the record charts, (AP Laserphoto) On Legendary Working Choreographer al, which already has played in Florida and Washington, D.C., she supervises the choreography. Gemze de Lappe, a longtime aide who studied with her, actually directs the dancers. She says without self-pity she still has no feeling in her right side, and she mildly grouses that she can no longer play her piano.

She smiles gently when asked how old she is now. "That's a question." she firmly declares, "that I do not answer except in this way; I died in 1975. I'm now 4'a years old and everything is different and of a musical built around 'Green Grow the and needed a choreographer. And I was after that likea bloodhound." Although an unknown, she got the job, "but Dick Rodgers watched me like a hawk at all the auditions. It made me so nervous I could hardly speak.

The girls in the show thought he was watching them." "Lilacs," of course, became "Oklahoma!" It ran four years, has since been revived hundreds of times throughout America and has made Miss de Mille a kind of historic figure on Broadway. For this "Oklahoma!" reviv again met "failure, failure, failure. At the lowest point, I had decided to go to Macy's, get a job selling at a counter." But at this point her luck changed. She landed work staging her first full-length ballet, a Western-flavored number called "Rodeo," for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. She got $500 for five months' work.

When "Rodeo" premiered in New York, the Broadway team of Rodgers and Hammerstein was in the audience. It wasn't by accident. Although almost broke, she bought their opening-night tickets. "I'd heard they were thinking tended UCLA, getting an English degree: Later her parents were divorced, and she, her sister and their mother moved back to New York, where Miss de Mille studied, struggled and had little success for years. But she refused to give up on dance: "Once I'd set my teeth in that, it was like a bulldog.

You could remove the body from the head, but the jaw was clamped" Her studies took her to London, where she lived and gave concerts until the outbreak of war; in 1940 British authorities made her go home. At home, she NEW YORK (AP) She is of ivanced years. She suffered a jar-fatal stroke in 1975. Heron-s-blonde hair is white. But her emory stays razor-sharp, her ue eyes still twinkle, her talk lively.

And Agnes de Mille, the leg-clary choreographer, is still toiling this year on the xtadway revival of "Okla-ma!" It opened Dec. 13, a few xks and 36 years from its emiere. An instant hit, by Richard Kigers and Oscar Ham-srstein, it made her known as lady who changed the course dance in the American musical theater. Though what she did in 1943 is old hat now, she pioneered in showing how a musical's story line could be advanced with dance. Before she says, "the dancing was just decoration.

It wasn't even part of the story. What I did that was innovative was to make the ballet- so integrated into the story that you really couldn't tell the story without the ballet." Miss de Mille, who lives with her husband, concert agent Walter F. Prude, in a large, book-lined apartment in Green father, 'Come on oiit. Bill, come on Out they came in 1914. He worked in movies with his brother.

For a while, Miss de Mille harbored dreams of being an actress, but her dad said no, frequently and with much vigor. -He wanted her to be a playwright. "He wouldn't even let actors come in the house because he lespised them. The only people ne'd let in were Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford." So she studied dancing he disliked that, also and at wich Village, was born in Harlem in the early part of this century. Her father, William, was a top playwright and her sister, Margaret, an actress.

Her uncle was Cecil B. de Mille, the celebrated movie producer and director. Though famed for her Broadway work she choreographed 14 musicals, including "Briga-doon" and "Gentlemen prefer Blondes" she was raised in Hollywood in its early silent-films era. "My uncle went out there in 1913 and found the water fine," she says. "He kept tellina mv.