Citizens' Voice from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania • 4

1996 GERI ANNE KAIKOWSKI 3, October Tube Talk Thursday, The team stays at WYOU promotions. Sook said he wishes to hire two persons in the sales and promotion departments. The station wants to heavily promote itself both on-air and in other media. The November "sweeps" ratings book will be the first major ratings book for Nexstar since it took over WYOU, formerly If you listened close enough this weekend, you may have heard a sound emanating from Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton. It was a big collective sigh of relief from employees at WYOU.

They still have their jobs. The license ownership of Nexstar Broadcasting was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Friday. WYOU general manager and Nexstar head Perry Sook said the company has hired all its existing employees at their current rate of pay. "It was just a matter of formality to have everyone reapply for their positions and to rehire them since this is a new company," he explained. He doesn't expect any changes beyond what has been made since five employees WYOU anchors Rich Everitt and Debbie Dunleavy, health reporter and anchor Jennifer Watson, reporter Andy Palumbo and photographer Jack Juka were let go for financial reasons.

"The team here in place is the team that will go ahead," said Sook. Sook's priorities include improving upon the station's news products, which has been done with set and on-air changes and an extended weekday morning newscast, and stepping up station It's official: Nexstar Broadcasting gets FCC license for ownership of WYOU. owned by Diversified Communications. Although there was a July ratings, the November period is the one that advertisers will watch since it establishes ad rates and sets audience levels. Sook is optimistic that the book will have some favorable time slots for WYOU since CBS has finally moved into second place behind NBC in the national ratings.

Sook acknowledged that since the infamous axing of staffers this summer, he received letters from viewers. While he noted that he respects all viewer opinions, Sook pointed out that some letters responded favorably to the station's new look and faster paced newscasts. "With the increase in revenues we had last month and an anticipated increase in ratings, I categorize things here as positive," Sook said. WYOU can boast of receiving more Emmys than its competitors. While all stations in the TV market received at least one Emmy nomination, WYOU brought home two awards one for sports and one for live news.

Coincidentally, WYOU's live news award for "Full Steam Ahead" was hosed by Kevin Daniels and Valerie Amsterdam Daniels, the husband-wife duo who replaced Rich Everitt and Penny Lindgren on the 6 p.m. newscast. WYOU usually comes home with at least one Emmy each year. Filling vacancies at WBRE: Terri Simonich is seeing faces current staff members and prospective ones. WBRE's new news director, has the task of hiring four new persons in her department.

RIGHT NOW, she is reviewing hundreds of tapes for the openings. The positions she will fill are weekend anchor (replacing Carol McKenzie), morning anchor, (replacing Connie LaGrande), reporter (replacing Joy Dumandin) and an executive producer. She said the station has received a tremendous response from the ads it placed for the openings. Simonich's first priority is to fill the vacancies before she can implement any ideas or changes to the station's newscasts. "We need enough people to get the job done first and to get the load off the people here who have been doing double-duty," she said.

Garry Larson, creator of The Far Side cartoon, will come out of syndication retirement briefly with the publication of four new cartoons in promotion cf his latest book, "Last Chapter and Worse." Larson discontinued The Far Side on Jan. 2, 1995. The -cartoon ran daily in the Citizens' Voice and hundreds of other pers. Despite the "retirement," Larson says he has been more involved with cartooning than before. "My retirement has backfired on me in some ways because I feel like I'm actually more involved in cartooning now than when I was doing the syndication," Larson said.

He is still working on several projects including a number of books and calendars, and another animation project. "The only thing that I'm not doing is the daily panels," he added. Larson's new The Far Side cartoons and an in-depth look at Larson, by his editor, Jake Morrissey, will appear in the Oct. 6 Sunday Voice. Despite the popularity of The Far Side cartoon, Larson is uncomfortable with his notoriety.

He never considered himself to be a very good artists, saying that he struggled with many of the drawings in his cartoons, even aspect that other cartoonist would find easy. "There are so many cartoonists that can draw circles around Larson said. Although his drawings were not always perfect in his mind, he said they were good enough to get his message across. "The whole idea is to communicate something, and it doesn't mean it has to be elaborate. It just has to work." Larson said that by itself, drawing is not the most important aspect of a cartoon, but the words "My retirement has backfired on me in some ways because I feel like I'm actually more involved in cartooning now than when I was doing the Gary Larson Cartoonist and the art must work together to petites for humor are more varied present an idea.

"There are some cartoonists who are incredibly talented and very skilled as artists, but it doesn't necessarily mean that what they are doing is a good approach for humor," Larson added. Larson first got involved with cartooning to fill what he saw as a gap in what cartoons newspapers were publishing at that time. When Larson got his start 90 percent of the cartoons in the newspapers were made up of comic strips, most of which had recognizable characters returning in every story line. The Far Side was successful despite an -beat sense of humor and no returning characters. Larson said that success showed "that readers' ap- Volume Eighteen Issue 361 CITIZENS VOICE Thursday (ISSN 1070-8626) October 3, 1996 75 N.

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than we perhaps thought. I think maybe what it did was to tap into a sense of humor that was already out there." Despite his semi-retirement, Larson said his sense of humor has remained the same, and for the most part there are no cartoons in syndication now that fit his personality. "You know, I don't read (other cartoons) because I think for the most part the comics don't have an interest for me. There's just nothing there these days that makes me want to go seek them out. I'm not trying to say my work wouldn't have sparked that same reaction from somebody else.

There's just nothing there for me personally that's my kind of An Independent Newspaper Published Daily And Sunday By Citizens' Voice Inc. CITIZENS' VOICE EBERHARD FABER, Chairmon of the Board EDWARD A. NICHOLS President ROBERT J. MANGANIELLO, Secretary FRANK M. CUNIUS, EDWARD A.

NICHOLS Publisher PAUL GOLIAS, Managing Editor Justin O'Donnell, Assistant Managing Editor; James B. Gittens, Editorial Page Editor; William DeRemer, Day City Editor; Janine Dubik, Night City Editor; Neil Corbett, Sports Editor; Jerry Kishbaugh, Features Editor; Jack Kelley, Chief Photographer. ROBERT J. MANGANIELLO, General Manager Roger Slator, Production Manager; Charles Sailus, Composing Foreman; Marilyn Franklin, Night Composing Foreperson; Robert Stankiewicz, Pressroom Foreman; Barry Clark, Night Pressroom Foreman; Joseph Stokas, Building Superintendent. FRANK M.

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