The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 49

Pay TV: Battle of Airwaves Looms Geo Aivjelco (Times ORANGE COUNTY PART IV WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1978 BY JOHN G.WATSON As those big signs on the RTD buses proclaim (side by side with sketches of Albert Einstein), something's moving. Einstein, of course, was talking about the cosmos, among other things. But almost as Imperceptibly, something's dawning in the broadcasting industry: the long-awaited promise of change wrought by cable, pay television and technological Innovation. In Los Angeles the most impressive indication of new times ahead is the rapid growth of On TV's subscription television operation on Channel 52 (KBSC). Its subscriber base has changed from a mere 800 on April 1, 1977, to upwards of 93,000 today, making it the largest single pay television operation in the world.

And now a second Los Angeles station, KWHY on Channel 22, is selling its primetime hours to pay TV-American Subscription Television's SelecTV. It boasts or so subscribers, but watch out. There are 4.1 million households in the Iws Angeles area; both systems have a lot of room to grow. And both systems seem inevitably headed toward a pitched battle for new subscribers. The systems have aggressive entrepreneurial owner- The growing world of pay television, one of the newest aspects of the contemporary communications explosion, is examined In a two-part series concentrating on the Los Angeles entertainment market.

Today, free-lance writer John Watson discusses the development of two over-the -air subscriber systems. Thursday, Lee Margulies looks at pay TV on the cable. ships and share a method of getting their signal into the home that only a few years ago inspired scorn: broadcasting it over the air in a scrambled form that normal TV sets cannot receive until equipped with a special decoder terminal. The only other large-scale pay-TV operation in the area is Theta Cable's Channel with approximately 50,000 subscribers, all of whom receive the signal via a cable physically wired through the home to the TV set much like telephone lines. How to account for the explosion of subscribership at On TV? Norman Lear (a limited partner of the system's co-owner) offers an explanation.

"I think there's something about over-the-air, not laying cable into the house and so forth, that's of interest to people. Also, Andrew Wald (director of programming) has done a terrific Job of programming features. I don't know that we have features the others don't have, but there's something about the way the guys are programming them that's making a lot of sense to people." It didn't hurt, either, to have Sears Roebuck give what Wald calls "its seal of approval" earlier this year by agreeing to help install the decoder terminal at 41 of Sears' Southland locations, vastly expanding the number of homes that could join the "On TV family" per davs In the cozy arrangement, Sears collects the installation fee while On TV is relieved of the need to invest in fleets of trucks. Eager-beaver Wald, ensconsed In a virtually window-less Glendale office stacked high with papers and video cassettes, offers further explanations of the system's success. "It's very simple.

We re asking the consumer to give us a monthly fee. We'll give them everything we have in our programming. They can watch for that one fee and in return they get no commercials, no pitches, no headaches, no Bufferin, no analgesic, no push on who to vote for-they just get to watch and be entertained." Another possible factor: In movie-oriented Los Angeles, a potential market for pay TV was created with the initiation in 1974 of Theta Cable's Channel. But many potential customers were frustrated by the fact that their neighborhoods were not serviced by cable, creating a ready market for On TV, which is available to any home with good reception. There is an admirable dab of daring on On TV's calendar of motion pictures, when it strays from the relatively current features to be found on all pay systems.

A look at the JACK SMITH Unlimited Risibility I -vn tt 4 If 9 ii ir ftfiSSM: A COMPETITOR Andrew Wald, director of subscription television systems in Los Angeles, progromming at On TV, the largest of the checks a video promotion of his operation. Timet photo by George Rose JOB-SHARING PUTS TWO AT ONE TASK Half-Timers in Full-Fledged Careers if 'is BY LORRAINE BENNETT Tlim Staff Wrttw ORANGE Ruth Conn, a personnel analyst with Orange County 10 years, was considering an early retirement Her husband, employed in management with the telephone company had accumulated substantial vacation time and wanted to thaust it in long weekend trips instead of leaving lie for several weeks at a time. Mrs. is longed to go with him, but her job was preventing her Dave Car. aw, a former personnel officer, had quit his county jou Begin his own personnel consulting business.

Carlaw wanted to keep his hand in the field, and Mrs. Conn didnt want to quit her job altogether. They solved the dilemma by splitting the county position. Laura Dennison, also a personnel analyst, wished to reduce her working hours to care for her new baby. She suggested that her supervisor find someone willing to share the job.

Helen Bjerum, who had preceded Ms. Dennison in the position, heard about the shared job prospect Ms. Bjerum, who was working full time elsewhere, felt a shared job would give her more time at home to devote to family health problems. There are about 25 county positions in a variety of classifications and departments which are split or shared, according to a report compiled recently by the Orange County Commission on the Status of Womea The jobs range from clerks and personnel analysts to community mental health psychiatrists. In view of the belt-tightening mood forced by Proposition 13, the prospect of getting two employes to share one county position seems even more appropriate.

The four county personnel analysts who share their jobs all indicate the main advantage of their new working arrangement is the increase in free time, which leaves them Please Turn to Page 10 CoL 1 "Do you know any old people who laugh?" asked Ruth McDonough of Laguna Beach. "I do not." My first impulse was to say yes, and dismiss Mrs. McDonough as an unhappy troglodyte. But that seemed unfair. Perhaps she was close to some truth that I didn't want to explore.

I read further. "Married for 40 years, my husband and I sit stony-faced while our children and grandchildren are 'falling about' as the British say A phone conversation with my sister from Ohio last week brought this maybe major point into focus. She said, 'Ruth, do you laugh Since this was long distance and I did not want to waste words, I said, "She said, 'Do you remember when we laughed till it And I did. That smothered gasping gurgle in class, the hardly suppressed paroxysm in church, the leaning against Mr. Rockefeller's iron-fenced park in East Cleveland as we walked home from school, and begged, 'Don't say any more, I'm Where has it gone?" Mrs.

McDonough and her husband watched Abbott and Costello on TV one night when they did the old "Who's on first?" routine, but it moved them only to grin and remark "Well done," not to laugh. "The next morning," she says, "I had a dentist's appointment. He is a young guy, a bag of bones, and reminds me of our paper boy. Absolutely lovable. He looks at you with the curiosity of a bird." As he was cleaning her teeth, this bag of bones asked Mrs.

McDonough, "Do you ever listen to Lomax and somebody in the morning? I do, when I'm taking a shower. It's really great to start the day off when you can laugh out loud." This reminded Mrs. McDonough of her question, and she asked the dentist what he thought. He said, "Don't you think that humor has to have an element of surprise to it? Maybe your generation has heard so many jokes and variations of them that there is no surprise left." "This thought has stuck with me since last Thursday," Mrs. McDonough concludes.

"Is it true? Do you laugh with real abandon anymore? Do you know any old people who laugh? I do not. This particular fact was brought home to me last week, at a visit to a convalescent home. They are morose. Have only sad memories remained as they stare into space, or some corner of their minds where only sad events are real or just indifference and freedom from pain? Where has all the laughter gone?" Having already misjudged Mrs. McDonough by thinking she might be a troglodyte, I hesitate to offend her further, but I can't help believing that her complaint is a bit disingenuous.

In the first place, I am suspicious of a woman who describes her dentist as a bag of bones who looks like her paper boy and has the curiosity of a bird, and then says she never laughs. I believe her when she says he's young. He would have to be young to think that life is not as funny as you grow older because you've already heard all the jokes, and there are no more surprises. Actually, life is not nearly as funny to children as it is to old people, because the older we get, the more we have seen, and the more we know the more we are struck by the incongruities of life and the folly of our fellow men. The more complex a man's mind, the more jokes it can perceive.

A child of 6 laughs only when his father slips on a banana peel. A man of 60 laughs every time he thinks about politics, or sex, or human vanity and gullibility. His mind is a bag of 10 million jokes, waiting to happen. If Mrs. McDonough would try something besides visiting her dentist and watching old Abbott and Costello movies on TV and talking long distance to her sister in Ohio and visiting convalescent homes, she might find something to laugh about.

I have even seen people laughing in convalescent homes, though of course their humor tends to be morose, and you don't see them falling about ecstatically. We post-adolescents rarely fall about in those delicious paroxysms of youth, but children don't laugh that way because life is funny. They laugh that way because life is so" painfully wonderful and beautiful and everlasting, and they feel so good. Yes, I can still laugh with real abandon. That movie "Smokey and the Bandit," with Burt Reynolds, had me falling about not long ago.

But mostly I just find myself momentarily stunned by the wonderful surprises and incongruities that abound in almost every human confrontationthe sort of things Neil Simon not only notices, but makes up; and I just hold my breath, and shake a bit, which is my way of laughing. Actually, I find almost everything funny, but I do resent Mrs. McDonough's implication, in asking me her question, that I am old enough to answer it. Now that isn't funny. ROBERT BLOCK operates SelecTV on Channel 22.

past few months' calendars reveals a repertory revival movie house sensibility with such titles as "Lord of the Flies," "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "Grand Illusion," Bergman's "Seventh Seal," this year's gripping Academy Award winning short, "Gravity Is My Enemy, silent classics such as "Birth of a Nation," "Metropolis" and "Monsieur Verdoux" and "Modern Times." (There are also box office losers such as "Mr. Billion" and "92 in the "On TV," Wald explains, "has its own look which we have designed for Los Angeles. Sometimes some people ask, 'What are you guys running over there-a film Then there are the sports: selected live Dodgers, Lakers, Kings, Angels, Aztecs and Surf games, along with occasional racing from Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. And boxing: on Dec. 9 the world bantamweight title fight airs.

And there are the occasional made-for-pay-TV entertainment specials to be found on most pay systems, such as Bette Midler's nightclub act-uncut and uncensored. Yes, the programming at On TV is pretty good, and at the same time the selection at SelecTV on Channel 22 is far better than one could reasonably expect of a system not yet 19 weeks old. It debuted on July 23, yet in sheer numbers it plays more features than its competitor, concentrating almost exclusively on more recent films. Robert Block, American Subscription Television's president and principal stockholder, operates SelecTV out of a city-view suite in a mid-Wilshire highrise. He describes the programming differences thus: "I would say it's not easy for customers at this point to differentiate between our program schedule and On's although we have a much larger selection of films 40 some-odd pictures and they have 25 or 30." Even though it is at a disadvantage in the sports area (On TV with its 18-month lead snatched up many exclusive contracts with local teams), SelecTV is currently showing some live USC basketball games, and will be Please Turn to Page 23, Col.

1 The Judy Garland Auction 'WOMEN OF CRISIS' Sisterhood of the Spirits mSMih A. 'DO I HEAR $300? Pleased buyers at Monday's auction of Judy Garland memorabilia and artifacts included Jane Withers, right. Event was in Beverly Wilshire ballroom. Times Photos by Larry Armstrong THE VIEWS INSIDE 3r Memories Are Going, Going, Gone BY BEVERLY BEYETTE Tlmtt Stiff Wrlttr It was half past midnight-Tuesday morning-and Sid Luft, glass in hand, stood in the bar of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel's grand ballroom and reflected on the marathon just ended-an 11 -hour event billed as "The Judy Garland Treasured Memorabilia and Art Auction." Throughout the day Luft had sat in the back of the ballroom, or paced, smoking, as some 425 items, ranging from Miss Garland's false eyelashes (which fetched $125) to her black 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300S (which brought $60,000) Please Turn to Page 8, Col. 1 This is the fourth article in a series excerpted from "Women of Crisis," published by Delacorte PressSeymour Lawrence.

BY ROBERT COLES and JANE HALLOWELL COLES Lonw, a young Eskimo woman, as a child was regarded among the villagers as especially sturdy, independent, self-reliant and imaginative, but "strange." She dared suggest that the Eskimos had done rather weU before the American adventurers from the "Lower Forty-Eight' arrived. This excerpt begins after she has grown up and married, and she recalls when fate suddenly intervened with an airplane flight to Fairbanks. One day, quite unexpectedly, Lorna found herself standing on a street corner in downtown Fairbanks, knowing no one and without a penny in her pocket. A pilot had given her a ride from her village and had written his phone number on a piece of paper. He would be glad to take her.

back, he said. It was her first glimpse of a large city. She walked a few blocks, stopped, stood on the corner of a street, watched intently the people walking, the cars passing. She lifted her eyes constantly, surveying tall buildings. She peered at store windows.

The cars enthralled her-a steady flow of them, up and down a well-paved street. She wondered why they started and stopped, eventually figured out that the traffic lights Please Turn to Page 6, Col. 1 ART: "The Potter's Art in California 1885-1955" and June Wayne exhibition by Suzanne Muchnic on Page 16. BOOKS: James Thomas Flexner's "Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action" by Robert Kirsch on Page 4. MOVIES: "Bahia" by Charles Champlin on Page 1 7.

"Perceval" by Kevin Thomas on Page 19. MUSIC: Pasadena Chamber Symphony by Ara Guzeli- mian on Page 1 8. Sonor at Monday Evening Concerts by Joan La Barbara on Page 20. "Brand by Terry Atkinson on Page 18. STAGE: "Prizes" by John C.

Mahoney on Page 21. AND OTHER FEATURES Bridge Page 1 2 Dr. Solomon Page 1 4 Comics Page 25 Things Page 3 Film Clips Page 1 5 Peter Weaver. Page 1 1 Jody Jccobs. Page 2 Television Pages 22,24 SID LUFT Judy would have loved it.".