Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 17

fr4th ED. 3rd ED. 2nd ED- -frlst ED. THE HARTFORD COURANT: Saturday, March 15, 1986 B5 February Ratings a Delight For Channel 8, Channel 20 r- 4 l-i! Gershwin Delights Pianists Team Is Featured In Television Special By STEVE METCALF Courcmt Music Critic Nearly a half-century after his death, George Gershwin is still a figure of fascination and controver- Sunday at 2 p.m., CPTV (Channel 24 in the Hartford area) will broadcast the special "Purely Gershwin," with actor William Hurt as host. The show, which was produced by Maryland Public Television and is being distributed nationally by PBS, will include performances of Gershwin works, along with recollections of the man by associates, friends and relatives.

Featured in the program will be the two-piano team of Prances Veri and Michael Jamanis, who have made a specialty of Gershwin's music. Veri and Jamanis, who are husband and wife, taught at the Hartt School of Music briefly in the mid-'60s, and periodically visit friends in the area. On one such visit recently, they talked about the TV special and its subject "Of course, everybody knows Gershwin's theater music, the great songs from his hit shows," says Jamanis. "And this show has some of that, but it also tries to portray his more serious side." Gershwin's more serious side includes, in addition to the endlessly performed "Rhapsody in Blue," such works as the Concerto in the Second Rhapsody, a set of variations on "I Got Rhythm" for piano and orchestra, the "Cuban Overture," and others. Portions of some of these works will be heard on the show.

Gershwin's fervent wish to be considered a "real" composer, rather than just another Tin Pan Alley tune-smith, is well documented. Anecdotes circulate to this day about how the fabulously successful Gershwin would importune some distinguished classical composer (Ravel or Stravinsky, in most tellings) for lessons or advice. "Gershwin's sister Frankie Frances Gershwin Godowsky told me that right before he left on his last trip to California he had said, 'Well, I've really made enough money now that I can concentrate on other things," Verilsavs. "I think it's James Endrst ON TV WFSB (Channel 3) is still the number one station in the Hartford-New Haven market, according to A.C. Nielsen February ratings, but executives at WTNH (Channel 8) in New Haven and independent WTXX (Channel 20) in Waterbury are the ones wearing ear-to-ear grins.

Channel 8, the ABC affiliate, came within a hair's breadth of tying Channel 3 in the February sweeps one of the four all-important rating periods that determine stations' advertising rates. (The others are vember, May and July.) More important, Channel 8 narrowed the ratings gap between its local evening news broadcasts and Channel 3's. WVIT (Channel 30) news remains in third place, but has made modest gains in audience. In the increasingly bitter struggle among the independents WTIC (Channel 61), WTXX WHCT (Channel 18) Channel 20 broke a virtual ratings stalemate with 61, pounding its competitors with evening movies. Newcomer Channel 18, which signed on last Sept.

30, continued its uphill battle to establish itself as a contender in the market, but again failed to register any ratings in many parts of the broadcast day and slipped in the independent prime-time hours of 6 to 8 p.m. since November. Here's how the market shaped up in the overall ratings, measured over the course of the broadcast week from 7 a.m. Sunday to 1 a.m. Saturday.

(The ratings period began Jan. 30 and ended Feb. 26. Each ratings point represents 1 percent of the market's 802,460 television households and each share represents 1 percent of the viewing audience. New York and Massachusetts stations as well as pay and other cable stations are viewed in the Hartford-New Haven area; their audiences are not accounted for here.

Figures are based on 1,081 diaries kept by viewers in the area.) WFSB 8 rating, 24 share WTNH 7 rating, 23 share WVIT 4 rating, 12 share WTXX 2 rating, 5 share WTIC 1 rating, 3 share WEDH (CPTV) 1 rating, 2 share WHCT belowj minimum audience standards Frances Veri and Michael Jamanis, who once taught at the Hartt School of Music, are featured in the TV show "Purely Gershwin." rificing its younger viewers. The result was an across-the-board loss of ratings in those hours compared with last year. In contrast, Channel 20, taking a hands-off approach to its schedule, gained 2 and 3 share points over the same period a year ago in the 5 to 8 p.m. block. In addition, Channel 20's "Big Movie" from 8 to 10 p.m.

averaged a 4 rating and 6 share to Channel 61's "Feature Presentation" and its 2 rating and 3 share. Channel 18 made some inroads in the 8 to ll p.m.period with a mix including "Columbo," which earned a 1 rating and 2 share (up 1 share from November). Interesting footnotes in the area of independent movies are the ratings for "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Slap Shot and "Class," movies with nudity or sexual situations and strong language that ran largely unedited on Channel 20. (After a public outcry protesting the showing of such movies in the 8 to 10 p.m. time slot, Channel 20 altered its policy so such films will not be shown before 9 p.m.) Public outcry or not, "Animal House" (which started at 7:30 p.m.) pulled in a 5 rating and a 7 share, "Slap Shot" a 3 rating and 5 share and "Class" a 5 rating and 8 share all considered excellent.

On the affiliate side, lead-ins to news shows have been a problem for Channel 3, which brought back "The Jeffersons" and "Three's Company" in place of the failed "America." Though those shows are performing better than "America," they are several share points lower than their performance a year ago at 4 and 4:30 p.m. respectively. "Sale of the Cer-tury" and "People's Court," meanwhile, have strengthened Channel 8's position, bringing the station to a virtual neck-and-neck position with Channel 3 in those time slots. "Taxi" on Channel 3 is also running out of gas, off 4 shares from the same time a year ago, while "Jeopardy" on Channel 8 is winning the period and has given the station a 7-share jump on Channel 3 going into the 5:30 news. On the flip side of the news, leading into prime time, "P.M.

Magazine" on Channel 3 has held steady, but trails "Wheel of Fortune" on Channel 8. "P.M." scores an average 13 rating and 22 share to the 15 rating-26 share of "Wheel of Fortune." Channel 30 improved its position with "The New Newlywed Game" with a 6 rating and 10 share (up 5 from last year). asks, "Got a second?" (which means a half-hour) say, "No. But I do have two minutes." You can signal the end of the conversation by standing. If he doesn't get the hint, say you must make a call.

When you actually need to talk to a chronic talker, go to his desk. That way, you can leave when you're through, rather than having to try to prod him out of your territory. Many sticky situations can be avoided by playing a generally conservative social role at work, said Lauder. Try not to get too friendly too fast with people, before it's clear how they fit into the broader political and social context of the office. Generally, said Laud, it's a good practice to limit the number of drinks you have with colleagues, and to be careful about which colleagues you see on a social basis.

"Don't expect things that you say to be kept in confidence. There's no such thing," he said. If everyone else seems to be sharing sordid tales of their sorry home lives and you fear looking like a cold cuke, then share some harmless tidbits from your past. Laud relates "the story of a woman who agreed to have lunch with a colleague only to discover, to her genuine amazement, that he had a romantic interest in her. Rather than cause a scene or attempt to cut him off at the pass, she developed a plan: When he suggested dinner, she said, "Fine, how about in two when he suggested lunch the next day, she said, "Sure, but I have a date with Susan, so how about threesome?" Eventually, he got the message "The idea," said Laud, "is always to act friendly without giving positive reinforcement." Clicking With Your Colleagues India's Grande Dame A Store of Memories But the big news is in news when it comes to the affiliates.

At 5:30 p.m., Channel 3's weekday Eyewitness News averaged a 13 rating and a 30 share (up 3 shares from a year ago). The addition of Mark Davis to Channel 8's "First Edition" apparently has worked well; the show now averages a 10 rating and 22 share (up 6 shares). The best news for Channel 8 appears in the important 6 to 7 p.m. news block. Channel 3 scored an 18 rating and 32 share (down 2 shares from a year ago), reaching an average 176,000 households each broadcast, while Channel 8 averaged a 15 rating and 27 share (a jump of 6 shares) and was watched in 150,000 households.

Channel 30's half-hour news show registered a 5 rating and 8 share (up 1 share from last February) and was viewed in 37,000 households. The 11 p.m. weekday news shows furnished more proof of Channel 8's progress. Channel 3's late news broadcast had a 12 rating and 35 share (up 1 from a year ago), Channel 8 had a 10 rating and 29 share (up 3 from a year ago) and Channel 30 scored a 3 rating and 10 share (the same as last February). Weekday prime-time (8 to 11 p.m.) numbers for the affiliates in the market are rarely a true reflection of the national standings of the networks, primarily because of viewer loyalty to Channel 3 and Channel 8 and the fact that Channel 30 cannot be received by many viewers because it is a UHF signal.

In addition, Channel 30 has competition from NBC affiliates in Springfield and New York. Nationally, CBS and NBC tied in the February sweeps with ABC a weak third. In Hartford-New Haven, CBS affiliate Channel 3 was number one in prime time with a 15 rating and 24 share (up 1 from February 1985); Channel 8 made the best of ABC's bad situation with a 14 rating and 23 share (up 3 from last year) and Channel 30 showed a dramatic gain with an 11 rating and 18 share (a 4-share jump). In independent prime time, 6 to 8 p.m., Channel 20 again was the leader with a 4 rating and 6 share (up 2 from a year ago), while Channel 61 followed with a 2 rating, 3 share (down 6 from a year ago) and Channel 18 scored a 1 rating and 1 share (down one share from November). The central reason for Channel 61's decline has been its foray into movies to compete with Channel 20 and attract an older audience.

It juggled its 5 to 8 p.m. schedule, sac taking all the control, one doing nothing or one taking credit for everything. "It's an exception when team projects work smoothly," said Goodrich's Laud. Teamwork, like life, ain't fair. The point to teamwork, say Stewart and Faux, is that you want to be cooperative while also doing your best to stand out from the crowd.

Don't be too eager to do all the work or too modest to take credit for what you do someone may pull the rug out from under you. If someone does take credit for your work, it's usually best to let it go. "You don't look great if you try to fight it," said Laud, who added, "My rule is that you only let it happen once." So how do you keep it from happening again? By making sure that when you do something great or develop a terrific idea, 'you feed it directly to your boss, whether formally say, in a memo or less so, in conversation. When rivalry is subtle, remain flexible and avoid taking it too seriously, as long as you keep an eye on your own interests. However, if the rivalry becomes overt, say Stewart and Faux, "you must show yourself to be an equally tough competitor, and you have to handle the situation tactfully." If it's necessary, they say, don't hesitate to rebuff your rival openly and hope he'll pick on somebody else, but pick your time and the issue carefully.

Don't waste anger on minor grievances. Sometimes colleagues are just a pain in the neck, like the one who doesn't know when to shut up and go away. How to deal with it? When he knocks at your door and brightly "Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in December 1938, learned that he was dead. His name had already been printed on the program, and two of his songs were played from a phonograph on stage during the concert Record company employees, u. trigned by Johnson's music, preserved the unreleased masters.

Years later, in the '60s, Columbia, which had bought Brunswick, released all 29 Johnson songs on two albums. Ultimately, whatever the appeal of his story, Johnson's music is enough. It leaps right off the turntable at you. Notes played with a slide on the acoustic guitar hang in the air, and the instrument sounds momen- Joe Tabacca Special to The Courant for a small jazz band of 14 pieces. Later it was rescued for large orchestra, and it is this version that is most often played today.

But Michael Tilson Thomas, Gunther Schul-ler and others have championed the small-band score. Similarly, many of these works exist in a two-piano version, and although Veri and Jamanis make no particular claim about the composer's intentions, they feel these versions deserve to be heard. "The 'I Got Rhythm' variations, for instance, work better than, say, the Concerto in says Jamanis. "But they are all great pieces." The TV special also includes some of the piano arrangements Gershwin made of his show tunes. "These are songs that you hear by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, or Bobby Short or whatever, and of course they do their own interpretation," says Jamanis.

"What we were trying to do is to also help be sure they are preserved in their original format." "Purely Gershwin" will be broadcast Sunday from to 4 p.m. on CPTV (Channel 24). i MADAME PANDIT they were a perfectly matched pair whatever else might have been between them." Nehru died in 1964. Pandit always referred to him affectionately as "Bhai," the Hindu word for brother. Nehru always looked upon his sister as a political confidant and colleague.

At one point he considered naming her his vice president. Madame Pandit's feelings about Nehru's daughter Indira were another matter. Although Madame Pandit says she virtually raised Indira as her own after Indira's mother died, the two as adults became personal rivals and then political opponents. Indira Gandhi first became prime minister in January 1966; she was assassinated by two Sikh security guards in October 1984. Indians sometimes interpret her break with her aunt as a rivalry between two strong women at odds over whether the daughter or the sister should inherit the Nehru legacy.

But Pandit, not surprisingly, puts the blame solely on Gandhi. "The one thing she could not tolerate on any level was disagreement," she says. "And yet we both belonged to a family in which we were taught to disagree. So many of the books now describe a woman I didn't know." Only after Indira Gandhi's death did Pandit become reacquainted with her son Rajiv. "For 20 years, I didn't see anything of him because of the strained relationship between me and my niece," she says.

"But he is a very loving person, and he stretched out his hand to me right away. I feel very happy." After lunch and some more talk, Pandit is ready for a rest This has been enough nostalgia for the day. Every day she becomes more aware that she is one of the last of her generation left. When in her lifetime will she ever get a chance to know another "Bhai," meet another Mountbatten, go through another freedom struggle? "I think it's high time," she says, smiling, "for me to go to a better world." si clear that if he had lived, those other things would have included symphonies and string quartets and pieces in this vein." (Gershwin died in 1937 at the age of 39.) Veri says that Gershwin had not only contemplated a second opera (his first, of course, having been "Porgy and but had already composed some music for it. She recalls that one evening recently she and Jamanis were having dinner at the home of Kay Swift, Gershwin's close friend and a sometime composer in her own right.

"The subject of the second opera came up and Kay went over to the piano and played some of the tunes she remembered that he had already written for the show," Veri says. "The opera was to have had a Jewish theme, but it didn't have a title as I recall." Many of Gershwin's larger works exist in more than one version, and there is some disagreement in musical circles over which represent the composer's true intentions. "Rhapsody in Blue," for instance, was originally orchestrated (by Ferde Grof e) Pandit is to take a trip back four decades and see Mountbatten as a member of one royal family as viewed by another. The Nehrus are the first political dynasty of modern India, raised by British nannies and schooled in England, so the Nehru and Mountbatten families seemed destined to become friends. Pandit, who is still referred to as "Madame" from her days at the United Nations, says she will never know the exact nature of the unusual friendship that developed between Mountbatten's dazzling and difficult wife, Edwina, and Nehru, a romantic and impassioned man who was widowed at the time.

Last year the especially juicy parts of "Mountbatten," a well received official biography by Philip Ziegler, were serialized in Indian newspapers, creating a brief flurry of fresh gossip about the threesome. But Ziegler in the end described the relationship between Edwina and Nehru as "intensely loving, romantic, trusting, generous, idealistic, even spiritual." Pandit, too, can only speculate. "Edwina was a great friend of my brother's," she says. "A man and a woman can be great friends. I've had many good men friends, but I haven't been to bed with them.

If the relationship did become intimate, she adds, "I'm glad. What can I say? I've seen many of the letters, and I've found they are some of the best literature I've read. But that's my brother. They're so beautiful, I think they should be published." Before Mountbatten's death in 1979 by a bomb planted on a fishing boat by the Irish Republican Army, he showed Pandit a few of Nehru's letters to his wife. Edwina had died in 1960, yet Pandit says be told her he had never read any of them.

The Ziegler biography suggests that he was afraid of what be might find. Pandit sees it instead as a matter of privacy. "You don't read your wife's letters," she says sternly. Pandit lives with her daughter, the novelist Nayantara Sahgal, and son-in-law in a simple, gray, stucco house just outside Dehra Dun, a resort town 125 miles north of New Delhi. She remembers that when the Mountbattens had just arrived in India, there was a reception in progress at the Nehru home.

"The phone rang and it was them they wanted to come over," Madame Pandit recalls. "This was unheard of, the viceroy wanting to mix with the Indians. But they were people who had come here to make friends. In that way, By JUDY LINSCOTT New York Daily News Just when you thought the work Silace was safe for working, you get umped not by your boss, not by a subordinate, but by a colleague. Would that we could all get along famously, and that personality conflicts would never rear their ugly heads.

Well, dream on. It doesn't happen that way. And it's important to be able to deal with all kinds of people. "Your colleagues can make or break you," said Robert Laud, executive vice president of the human resources management consulting firm Goodrich Sherwood Co. "It's extremely important to get along well with them." Supervisors give high credibility to peers' opinions, said Laud.

Additionally, "If they think your work is excellent but you're difficult to work with, it's not likely that you'll advance very quickly." In the old days, when the work force was fairly homogeneous, things were easier, writes Marja-belle Young Stewart and Marian Faux in "Executive Etiquette" (St. Martin's Press, "Relating to one's colleagues today is far more complex and fraught with opportuni-. ties for error." Why? Competition is hotter, rewards are greater and the work force is broader. The key, say Stewart and Faux, is to be a gracious team player, to handle your rivals with tact and to show good manners. But just like life in the schoolyard, -it sounds easier than it is.

Team projects are a place where trouble can start. It's crucial to define everyone's role at the outset and to make sure the boss agrees. Otherwise, you may find one person By ELISABETH BUMILLER Washington Post DEHRA DUN, India There aren't many people still alive in this country who remember Lord Louis Mountbatten as "Dickie," a contemporary and a friend. But Madame Pandit, the 85-year-old sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, can tell grand tales of the last British viceroy, who in changing the life of her country inevitably changed her own. "He did a lot of harm to India because of the policies he had to carry out so swiftly," she says, referring to the hasty decision to divide the empire into India and Pakistan, leading to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Moslems.

"But personally, he was a charming man. I was in love with him from the moment I saw him until the day he died. As were most people." Pandit is relaxing under a sun umbrella in her garden, which looks out toward the tree-covered hills that announce the beginning of the Himalayas. Like Mountbatten, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit is one of the great figures of modern Indian history. She was her brother's ambassador to Moscow, London and Washington, the first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, a leading freedom fighter who was jailed three times during the Indian independence movement and a bitter and outspoken critic of the politics of her niece, Indira Gandhi.

Now she is a big fan of the grand-nephew who she says has finally welcomed her back into the family, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. As with most Indians, she had been unaware of the PBS Masterpiece Theatre series "Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy" on public TV recently in the United States. But spending a few hours with Waterbury Plans Party After Clancy Concert The Waterbury Convention and Visitors Commission is sponsoring an "afterglow party" to follow Sunday's 2 p.m. concert with the Clancy Brothers and the Morgans at the Waterbury Palace Theater. Party-goers will be able to meet informally with the two music groups from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

at the Holiday Inn, 82 South Elm St, Waterbury. Admission is $17.50 and includes a buffet dinner. Call the hotel at 575-1 500 for information on tickets. Legendary Bluesman Is Perfect Myth Continued from Page Bl made, he said, and there's little chance the record will turn up. Marvin Montgomery of Dallas, who recorded with the Light Crust Doughboys on June 20, 1937, has vivid memories of those days.

He remembers times when it was so hot in the rooms that musicians took off their shirts. But Montgomery doesn't remember that particular day, and he doesn't remember Robert Johnson. "I didn't know I was seeing history, or I'd have paid more attention," he said. Johnson was attracting attention in other quarters, however. Record producer John Hammond, looking for Johnson to appear in the tartly amplified.

His voice can leap to a falsetto, drop to a growl, mellow into a seductive croon: "You better come on in my kitchen, 'cause it's bound to be rainin' outdoors." You can hear modern blues and rock 'n' roll being born. Johnson sounds so vivid, so alive, it's hard to believe he's gone at all much less -dead almost 50 years. He sang: "You can bury my body down by the highway side, "So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride." Who knows? Maybe he's passing through town right now. 1.