The Daily Times from Mamaroneck, New York • 33

I 0 SectionC i Television 2 Ann Landers -6 Comics Bridge 8: 1 Lifestyles Editor Ellen Hale: 694-5070 r- Gannett NewspapersThursday, September 3, 1998 TELEVISION TOMSHALES New shows just same old, same old of the Times Square Business Improvement District, at the information desk of the new state-of-the-art Staff ptoloRotort A. Sab visitors center in Times Square. Gretchen Dykstra, president By Mitch BradwStaff Writer At last, a visitors center worthy of New York I he New Years Eve Ball 1 Drop is such a hit, theyve decided to run it a little more often: Everyday. Oh sure, the daily ones fake. But then, thatll cut down on the crowds.

Dykstra sqys. Weve made Times Square safe and dean; it was time to make it manageable. I'm moving to San Francisco next month. But I stayed to see this finished. It wasn't quite finished Monday night, when Dykstra unveiled it briefly to tourism types.

But even then, she announced, there were signs that the center would be embraced: Dm told the bathrooms are being used, even though there are no doors cm them yet The bathrooms are among the first things you see when you enter the building on Seventh Avenue between 46th and 47th streets. Another is the Automatic Currency Exchange machine. Clearly, the Times Square BID has its priorities straight i- tour booth, six computer terminals with Internet access, four automated teller machines, a worldwide newsstand, a city-souvenir stand and a currency exchange machine. Plus the fake ball drop. And Times Squared only public toilets.

All in an elegantly restored former newsreel theater. Like the Times Square restoration itself; it was an idea whose time has come. But mostly, it was the idea of Gretchen Dykstra. Dykstra is the president rathe Times Square Business Improvement District For one more week. She kept the job to make sure her dream came true.

We wanted to make it easy and firn and wonderflil for tourists to find their way around New York," Or maybe not The fake ball drop more of a visitors center than the city is one ofthe attractions at the new has ever had. And maybe more of a Times Square Visitors Center. And visitors center than any cityk ever considering the eveivswellihg hordes had. in the city, it could get as hard to The typical visitors center consists belly up to the fake drop as it is to of racks of brochures, and maybe a shove in toward the real one. couple of attendants who might know The center, which opened yester-.

something you dont day, is billed as the city's first com- This center has its brochures and prehensive visitors center, and attendants. But it also has a transit depending on your idea of compre- information booth, a Broadway-tick- hensive its true. Its certainly et booth, a bus and boat sightseeing-: Please see WELCOME, 3C Summers ending, Labor Day looms, and itls time to predict which of the new fall TV shows will be hits. Tliatli especially easy this year because there arent supposed to be any. Not all die programs are ready to be reviewed yet, but a quick overview and a casual reading of tribal chantings from within the TV and advertising industries suggests we wont have any new Seinfelds or ERls on our hands.

In feet maybe not even a new Dharma and Greg, which was ABCs sole new hit last season and which seems to be feding already. -One show generating a happy buzz iint on any of the three major networks or on Fox. Itls on the WB, the upstart gnatwork from Warner Bros. The series, Felicity, is aimed at a teen-age audience, but Keri Russell, the young actress in the title role, is such a charmer that adults may watch, too. To say that Felicity felicitous is putting it mildly.

But even if the show is a hit for the WB, that wont be much of a positive charge for the beleaguered networks as a group. Thats because the WB has a smaller number of stations and smaller potential reach than ABC, CSS or NBC. A show thats a hit on the WB, like Dawson's Creek, which premiered midseason, wouldnt necessarily remain a hit if moved to the bigger arena. The big arena, though, isnt as big as it used to be. Zenith Media Service, an ad agency that charts TVs ups and downs, has found in its summary of the 1997-66 TV season the lowest level of return for new programs in recorded TV history.

Tliat means far more failures than survivors: Of the 35 series that premiered last fell, says Zeniths annual fell forecast, only five survived the season, an abysmal 14 percent success rate. This is in sharp contrast to the 45 percent return rate of fell 96 freshmen. Thirty shows canceled out of 35 intro-, duced an extraordinary accomplishment, in an utterly appalling way. TVenty-three more shows premiered later during the 97-96 season, and of that number, a mere 16 have died. The irony is that many of this years new shows are from the same producers who came up with last year's 46 flops.

Each year the networks go back to the same suppliers. And each year the same basic suppliers have more customers to supply programs to, what with the addition of new networks, like the WB and UPN, plus shows produced for syndication to local stations. And cable, which gobbles up pro- gramming. At Does all this mean that net-work television is a dying business? Yes and no. Its never goiiq to be what it was, but the networks are adapting in order to survive.

The networks themselves will be involved in the production of more of the shows they air this year than ever before, the result of a relaxation of FCC rules that it had locked them out of out-; right ownership. And the networks can pro-: i duce all the informational, -1, newslike programming they want, which is why NBC plugs any holes in its prime-time schedule with yet another edi- tion of its laggardly Date-line i magazine. CBS, the network t- with the least promising prospects, is even going to 1 1 clone that national institution 60 Minutes," with a second version on another night pre-! miering later in the season. One TV tradition that began lari season has already been continued this year. Fox has 'canceled a program, even before its premiere, just as it did with I Rewind in 1667.

More new shows than ever, it i being reworked and recast, up to the last minute. Are they worried that view-, ership will dwindle and that even more shows will flop than last season? No, 1 not worried. Theyre terrified. Heh heh hei. Syndicated columnist Tom j- Shales writes for the Washington.

screening suggested for women over 50 I Did you hear about the By Marian Uhlman Knight Ridder Newspaper! A teri to check whether the thyroid gland is working prop-. eriy has been added to the recommended list of screening tests for women over 50. The newly merged American College of Physicians and American Society of Internal Medicine recently developed new screening guidelines to find more cases of thyroid disease. The thyroid gland produces hormones that play an impor- tant role in controlling metab- cactuses? HhutntfOfV Knight Rkkter. JACOBSON olism.

Too little hormone can make people appear sluggish, depressed and forgetful. They can feel chilly and gain weight Too much hormone can make them nervous, heat-intolerant and prone to weight loss. The symptoms of thyroid, disease can be masked in older women because they resemble signs of aging. The medical group says a simple blood test can help detect the disease. Mark Helfend, who helped do research for the guidelines; said thyroid disease can be I tm: video'll overlooked because doctors often are focusing on other health problems.

If you are 68 or 70 and if you have high blood pressure, you talk about blood pressure, said Helfend, an internal medicine and critical-care 1 specialist in Portland, Ore. 1 You might have dry skin and uted to old age. So I think it is unsuspected. Among women over 50, the medical group estimates that one out of every 71 has sympto-matic thyroid disease that should be treated. Women over 50 are considered most at risk for the disease.

In all, about 11 million Americans have hypothy-' roidism, which involves the gland's producing too little thyroid hormone. Less com-. mon is hyperthyroidism when the gland makes exces- sive hormone. It affects about two million Americans, mostly women between the ages of 20 and 40. Hypothyroidism Can be easi-.

ly treated with a daily pill con-. taining synthetic thyroid hormone. Hyperthyroidism is often treated with radioactive iodine, surgery or pills that block hormone formation. Until this summer, the American College of Physicians, which develops" medical guidelines for many V-illnesses, had not recommend- ed routine screening and instead suggested the test only if people had obvious symp-' toms of thyroid Dr.JohnR.Fbussner.who was involved in approving the new guidelines, said research has made it clear that detection benefits patients who are showing symptoms, but dont know they have the disease. People make decisions based on Churchs, Snapple, Procter Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger and Ikea are just a few 1 companies that have had to fight- off unfounded rumors.

Urban legends are always told; as true stones. And they're always attributed to a friend of a friend, rather than to any actuaT Kn who can be named, writes rist-author Jan Brunvand, a retired college professor The spiders-in-the-cactus story is this: A friend of a friend notices the hew cactus she bought is shaking, calls the store where she bought it and is told to evacuate her home immediately. Store employees in protective gear show up and just then, the cactus explodes, sending hun-, dreds of baby spiders (in some scorpions)skittering all over the house. Brunvand wrote that versions he heard in the early '90s cited Frank'S Nursery in Michigan as the source ofthe exploding houseplant but he tracked down -a mid-BOs stray where the culprit -was the British store Marks Spencer. In the freshest version, Ikea gets a chance to be the bad guy.

In the past 10 years, slot of- Tinth be told, urban folk tales are bad for business By Sheryl Harris Knight Rkkter Newspapm Once upon a time, folktales had foxes and gnomes. they have, Fast-food chicken from Company that can make you sterile just by eating itr fl Cactuses from Company that are so fell of baby spiders theyll explode when you get 1 them in the house! The designer who doesnt want Asians wearing his clothes! Who needs the Weekly World News when you can rely on the friend of a friend for juicy tidbits like this? yrban legends, the folk tales of the 20th century, can sway consumers and affect companies bottom lines. Are the tales absolute fiction? Definitely. But who cares? It doesnt matter in one way if it happened or not If people think it happened, it's almost as important as if it did, says Dundes, who teaches folklore at the University of California at Berkeley, ofurlgn legends. 'h Jr i You're VCR's all set, Mr.

Grayson. Your kid's Titanic never play in here again. Please see TALES, 3C.