The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 109

Star TV Radio March 30-April 5 1986 Page 3-1 Late bloomer Harold Gould enjoys new roles as romantic lead the story certainly true in our movie There is great emphasis on the appreciation of the mind the wit and how they enjoy life and each other including the physical relationship It's something rather wonderful to The change in viewpoint surprising he said re seeing a population shift to older people the over-50s and over-60s a segment of the population going to have be taken care of by the entertainment industry They can be a powerful force Not only are we living longer and in better health our interests are broad Young people are starting to realize that life over at Mr Gould has more than 20 feature films and more than 250 television shows to his credit including He start acting until 1960 when after 10 years of teaching speech and drama at universities from Cornell to Stanford he decided that better get out and see if I could practice what been the highlight of a Mr Gould said worked with people like Colleen Dewhurst and Sada Thompson but this lady is something The transformation of Mr Gould 62 into a romantic lead he said with a chuckle started last year when he did an episode of of Lost with Miss Dewhurst Earlier this season on there was a romance with Betty White Mr Gould started playing older roles before he qualified by age he said remember a movie with Barry Newman almost 20 years ago I played an elderly man even For years Mr Gould said movies and television made fun of older characters especially in the sitcoms But the trend lately he said is one of greater understanding and sensitivity seeing stories in which the older characters are more than observers They generate By Bettelou Peterson Knight-Ridder Newspapers I seem to be going at this in Harold Gould said I am at my age playing a romantic lead and with such a The lady is Katharine Hepburn and Mr Gould is the object of her affections in Delafield Wants to a CBS-TV movie to be seen at 8 pm Sunday (on channels 5 and 13 in the Kansas City area) Mrs Delafield (Miss Hepburn) is a widow wealthy aristocratic and WASP Dr Marvin Elias (Mr Gould) is divorced of humble beginnings and Jewish think call it social said Mr Gould by phone recently from California brings a Jew into this alien atmosphere and then the reaction of their children who are horrified because not acting their age comedy incisive but no less a Working with Miss Hepburn Katharine Hepburn and Harold Gould star as elderly lovers in Delafield Wants to at 8 pm Sunday on channels 5 and 13 Wormington continued from pg 1-1 costly and it might get more audience for us but we know Besides Mr Wormington relishes his ability as manager of an independent station to experiment with programs He would rather try to find a way to break through the traditional news mold than return to tried-and-true sitcom reruns Next month Channel 41 plans to broadcast a new half-hour prime-time program produced by former Night host Dick Wilson have to admit more innovation than the other stations around town have been he said Born in Dodge City Kan Mr Wormington went to school in Emporia before attending Washburn University in Topeka where he earned a degree in English and history He enjoyed writing figured on a career in newspapers and earned a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas in Lawrence At KU he was encouraged by a member of the faculty to consider the fledgling television industry As a student he visited new stations in St Louis and Seattle and helped out at WDAF-TV preparing the station for broadcast in 1949 Upon graduation he and his twin brother Bill were hired to sell commercials for TV station and for radio station WDAF-AM by day and work on TV production at night (Bill Wormington now works in the satellite television industry in New York) Called into service during the Korean War Mr Wormington was stationed in Long Beach Calif where he and a dozen Under his management Channel 41 was the second station in the country to have its own earth station only going to succeed if we he said that mean that everything we do is going to be a In recent years Channel 41 has introduced and Night shows that use local hosts as video disc jockeys who entertain between segments of films and network re-runs Less successful at least so far is the 15-minute anchorless newscast broadcast at 10 pm weekdays Introduced last June it has attracted only about 2 percent of the TV audience Mr Wormington said he had not given up on the think we ought to be in the news he said a station that fundamentally counterprograms against news and so and been very successful at those people who are not the traditional news viewers So the question is: How do we reach those people with a newscast? what still working on evaluating the news to see whether on the right track right Mr Wormington said the station must decide whether to give the program more time add anchors or make other changes have a hard time developing news audiences and we think going to take a long span of time easiest thing for us to do would be to scrub any news and just go with entertainment programming It would be a lot less others put together the first Air Force television unit His training took place in network studios where he rubbed elbows with early elite As a result he helped produce some of most popular shows of the early 1950s including Colgate Comedy Red Skelton and Show of Shows Back in Kansas City Channel 4 had become a sort of regional bureau for NBC For several years NBC originated more programs out of Kansas City than out of Chicago Consequently Mr Wormington directed more than 100 network programs He rose through the ranks at Channel 4 until in 1965 he was named general manager of the station He held the position until he was fired four years later The dispute was over news A short-sighted corporate management demanded huge budget cuts in the news department Mr Wormington would not go along For a year he ran a color production company Then he accepted an offer to become the first general manager at Channel 41 then called KBMA-TV When Channel 41 went on the air on Sept 28 1970 it consisted mostly of four Butler buildings one of them housing a studio about the size of a closet Yet it was the first computer-automated station in the country It was four years before the station turned a profit had to have enough faith in the people you had and what you were he said Since those days the staff of 24 has grown to about 100 The station was purchased by Scripps-Howard in 1977 Its call pursue the case on its own Today running an independent station can be every bit as challenging as ever On one hand the prevalence of movies on videocassette has somewhat diminished the importance of movies once a staple of independents On the other hand the recent growth in the number of independent stations is beginning to make it economically feasible for production companies to produce and syndicate more and more shows that have never been seen on the networks Mr Wormington sees the availability of first-run programming as an advantage independent stations have not had danger is that always putting programming on on the downside of a program he said "The advantage of first-run programming is the opportunity to experiment without having 100 episodes of a show You can put something on for a year or six months like the networks do and if it work try something else If it works you keep it going rather be on the development side of the This fall Mr Wormington says Channel 41 expects to have hours a week of first-run programs easily a record amount for the station His biggest achievement he said is getting the community to accept Channel 41 as a full-fledged member of the TV broadcast community In October Mr Wormington turns 60 think fortunate that had the opportunity to live all these years in a rather volatile Industry and stay in one he said letters were changed to KSHB-TV in 1981 when it moved into its spacious and modern quarters at 4720 Oak St The best program decision he ever made Mr Wormington said was the decision at the outset to aim Channel 41 at the baby boomers The younger audience was more willing to try out a UHF station even if it meant buying a UHF converter for older model TV sets that equipped to receive channels 14 through 81 Meanwhile he joined about a dozen other independent TV managers in battling over the rates being charged for transmission lines The meetings led to the formation of the Association of Independent Television Stations which has become a strong voice in the industry From 1978 to 1980 Mr Wormington was chairman of the association (he now is treasurer and a member of the executive board) While he was chairman he and other members of the association met with the NCAA to try to ease restrictions on televised coverage of football games Based on the strength of their arguments he said the Justice Department charged that the NCAA was guilty of antitrust violations The argument taken to federal court allowed colleges new discretion in selling rights to their own football games they the NCAA given an inch we would have been tickled pink because all we wanted to do was a couple of football games each Mr Wormington said NCAA refusal he added forced the TV association to go to the Justice Department because the organization had no funds to.