Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 55

Sunday, November 20, 1994 John Crudele says economy may have spelled Democrats' debacle D3 Mutual funds Calendar D2 JVJzJ JlJXjl zJtJ 3 The Dorfman 4 Effect 1 1 KiiaHm u. it cazszaa 1 fWj n. jr I i 'I Journalist has legendary -some say notorious reputation for causing stocks to jump after he talks about them for 3 minutes By Maggie Jackson Associated Press NEW YORK Dan Dorfman jabs a finger at the camera and, in a voice as rough as sandpaperuncorks a torrent of reasons why investors should avoid a medical company. By afternoon, the stock is falling. A day later, the host of The Dorfman Report on the CNBC cable network turns his daily three-minute spotlight on an aluminum company he says is bursting with promise.

By evening, its shares jump 3 percent. Dorfman, a bantam of a journalist with a legendary Ron Oliveira, known for his work as a TV anchorman, talks about his new venture at KNVA-TV, which early next year will expand programming beyond its current all-weather format. Staff photo by Ralph Barrera some might say notorious reputation for hot predictions, is moving the market again. At 63, with an all-elbows style that speaks much of a rough childhood in Brooklyn, he's no pretty TV face. By his admission, he doesn't write well and could "probably use a speech therapist." In the esoteric, MBA-populated world of the stock market, he's a self-taught high school graduate.

Yet when Dorfman anoints a company with his gravelly praise or barks out his qualms, stocks move. In the game of stock-picking, few others wield such clout. "When a guy yells 'Dorfman's everybody mans his machines," said Dan fo) 2 AP Ten years after first applying for its license, Austin's weather station, KNVA-TV (Channel 54), prepares to expand its programming When Dan Dorfman anoints a company with his gravelly praise or barks out his qualms, stocks move. By Bruce Hight American-Statesman Staff rTN on Oliveira has spent much of his 1 1 1 1 broadcast career as a news anchor, but I i these days he's floating as high as the 1 933-foot tower that broadcasts the sig-1 1 1 nal for his new Austin television tion, KNVA-TV (Channel 54). (Channel 13, Cable 13), joined the Austin television lineup in 1989, but since has been bought by KTBC.

KNVA blinked awake on Aug. 31, with programming limited to weather radar and measurements such as temperature and wind speed. On Dec. 28, Austin Cable Vision will carry KNVA on Cable 12. Oliveira said that Jan.

9 is his target to begin broadcasting programs, and on Jan. 11 the station will begin carrying the new Warner Bros, network, which initially will have programs one night a week. He won't say what the station will offer other nights. Oliveira, former news anchor for KVUE (Channel 24, Cable 3), also ran a station in Brownsville for two years. He's station manager, in charge of the day-to-day operation of KNVA.

He said he owns 8 percent of 54 Broadcasting the station's owner. Mark Goldberg, 42, the general manager who oversees the business end of the station, owns 20 percent. He said the remaining 72 percent is owned by Twenty First Century which is controlled by his mother, Rosalie Goldberg of Houston. Twenty First is also majority See Television, D4 said last week. "That time has finally come." That time was supposed to have been 1987, but there was a last-minute challenge before the FCC.

And the economic bust of the late 1980s forced the new owners to freeze their plans until this year, although they won FCC approval and completed the appeals process in 1987. Now they are ready to roll tape on a television landscape that is rapidly changing both nationally and locally. The Fox network has asserted itself as a broadcasting force challenging the three longtime national networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. Paramount and Warner Bros, movie studios are developing broadcast networks. Locally, KBVO (Channel 42, Cable 5) plans to move next spring to the CBS network, which since the early 1950s has been on KTBC (Channel 7, Cable 2), and start a local news operation.

KTBC will switch to Fox and is expected to expand its local programming, including news. A low-power independent station, KVC Hogan, a senior trader at First Albany Corp. "It's Dorfman time. You shouldn't be off the desk, you shouldn't be off having a sandwich." Despite his following, Dorfman has more than his share of critics, perhaps because of his scrappy style, perhaps due to the nature of his work. Companies accuse him of airing rumors.

Irate investors stop him on the street to berate him for their losses. Critics also say he's used by profiteers, especially "short sellers" banking on a stock's decline. "If you do a negative story, you're the tool of the shorts. If you do a positive story, you're a tool of the bulls. You can't win," said Dorfman during a recent interview sandwiched between a broadcast and a business dinner.

He said, for the fourth time in an hour's talk, "I'm just a reporter." Dorfman maintains that, contrary to what many think, he's not a stock picker, but simply reports what "bright minds" tell him. "They could be right, they could be wrong," said See Dorfman, D3 "It's just a wonderful time," Oliveira said. "We're not just quietly walking in. We're coming in with a roar. We plan to be a contender in the market, a big player in town." Bold talk for a man who as of last week could count two executives, including himself, and two secretaries on his entire employee roster.

He's begun hiring about 22 more employees, primarily for sales and production jobs. But his exuberance is understandable. He and his partners applied for the Federal Communications Commission construction permit in 1984, and "there's 10 years of bundled energy that I've been waiting to release," Oliveira Scorning vital corporate link Internet 'home page' File Edit Options Naulgete Annotate mm- XWMMMMMmMMm The Reference Press, Inc. Catalog ThRfrnctPrM. Welcome to The Reference Press Bookstore Ths Reference Press Is the teedin provider of high-quality, reesormbly priced company information to the msss market.

From Time Warner to Starbucks to Yamaha, The Reference Press provides accessible, livery, and imsresttng-to-read profiles on businesses that affect our daily lives. Austin companies discovering hot real estate in cyberspace From staff and wire reports The hottest new location for Austin businesses isn't a plush downtown office or a site along the rolling hills of Loop, 360. It's in cyberspace. Austin-based Whole Foods Market last week joined dozens of other Austin companies who offer an on-line service on the Internet's World Wide Web. The grocer's customers can access the company's financial reports, recipes and nutrition-labeling information.

"It's a logical, timely extension of our commitment to innovation," said Richard Cundiff, vice president of Whole Foods Market Southwest division. Austin's Go Media, which coordinated the on-line project for Whole Foods, likes the Web because it offers graphics, video and sound clip opportunities, said Julie Gomoll, president. Other uses of the Internet do not have those capabilities. "The advantages of using electronic material are that we can up- See Companies, D7 this grand marketing experiment, companies are flocking to the Web in anticipation of the millions of customers they expect to find there. Some companies build and maintain their own home pages, while others spend thousands of dollars a month to have Internet experts such as Compuserve or O'Reily Associates create the virtual equivalents of fancy front doors and reception areas.

A goal is to make it on someone's "hot list" of interesting new Web sites, and, of course, to stay there as the Internet brings millions of potential customers into the electronic realm. The World Wide Web is seen by some technologists as the key to widespread commercial and civic uses of the Internet, because the Web adds bouys, channel markers and sea lanes to an otherwise fathomless ocean of information. The main trouble with the Internet has been that almost everything tends to be hidden behind a uniform display of raw computer text. By contrast, the World Wide Web, a subset of computers on the Internet, enables users to leap from one computer data base to another at the click of a mouse, following ideas, color photographs, See World Wide Web, D7 Locations on the World Wide Web tapping Internet's first 'killer application' By Peter H. Lewis New York Times News Service For thousands of businesses these days, the home page is where the heart is.

Each day, scores of new businesses, ranging from garage-based startups to multinational giants, are setting up shop on the global Internet computer network by creating a "home page" in the vast, interconnected electronic publishing medium known as the World Wide Web. Mountain Travel-Sobek of El Cerrito, has a home page that includes "hot travel news" and advertises camel trips to the pyramids. General Electric is dispensing information via the Web on its entire line of plastics. Earlier this month, Fox became the first television network to open a Web site, offering computerized video clips and sound bites, program schedules and biographies of Homer Simpson and other Fox television stars. Although there is scant evidence that anyone is getting rich from mm PRODUCTS COMING will portunity to attract potential customers in what it thinks be the marketplace of the future.

Tom Linehan of The Reference Press, based in Austin, said the company's presence on the Web has given it an op-.