Southern Illinoisan from Carbondale, Illinois • Page 28

Page Twenty Eight SOUTHERN ILLINOISAN, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1980 Carbondale-Herrln-AAurphysboro-Marfon to nt Channel 13 A step neaireir reality? Business News 'There were two applications and now there is one. I think I should get it but I'm not going to second-guess the FCC' cation for Channel 13 and he isn't talking. The other principals in the quest to obtain Channel 13 are choosing their words with care but a battle may be in the offing. Bill Varecha, owner of Murphysboro radio station WTAO-FM, is technically the only applicant for Channel 13 now and he says he still very much wants the station. Varecha and Evans were the only applicants for the station in 1976.

A group of Mount Vernon businessmen had successfully petitioned the FCC to allocate the channel in 1970 but later backed off from the project when they realized that it would apparently cost several million dollars to get the station on the air as an independent broadcasting facility. Varecha felt he had a better chance of getting the FCC's go-ahead then because his application was for an independent station. Evan's application was for a satellite and FCC rules mandate a bias in favor of independent stations. But Evans eventually wore Varecha down as lawyers from both sides chased each other with legal briefs through the bureaucratic labyrinth that the FCC has set up for a broadcast license applicants. Varecha withdrew his application in December 1978 after Evans agreed to pay his legal fees and hire him as a consultant.

However, with Evans gone, Varecha's application may still be valid. Varecha says "There were two applications and now there is one. I think I should get it but I'm not going to second-guess the FCC." The FCC's time limit for accepting new applications is long past and he bristles at the suggestion that the FCC should again open up the application process. "I've been working on this for four years. It took me a year just to put my application together.

I don't think it would be fair for someone else to come in at this point" The someone else is William Bums, a Carbondale investor who previously announced his intention to file an appli- By Ed Bean Of The Southern Ulinoisan It would have been the tallest television tower in Illinois, 1,000 feet of freshly painted steel rising out of a hilltop cow pasture near Salem and beaming Bowling for Dollars and old movies to all of Southern Illinois. The tower is lying in the dead grass and mud through, like some great fallen monolith, and it has yet to send a signal out. It was never erected. The tower was brought to the site in November by Southern Illinois Broadcasting Co. (SIBC), a subsidiary company of Evans Broadcasting, the same company that owns St.

Louis Channel 30. The station was to be a satellite of St Louis Channel 30 re-broadcasting the St. Louis station's signal. Evans contended that the market could not provide adequate economic support for an independent station. SIBC had a construction permit and approval to go on the air from the Federal Communications Commission and hoped to start broadcasting by the end of November.

But the Citizens' Committee for Independent Local Television in Southern Illinois, a small but vocal group led by a middle-aged Salem school teacher, Mary Bowers, wanted the last remaining VHF channel in Southern Illinois to be reserved for an independent station. SIBC had apparently won the lengthy legal battle when it received the construction permit last spring but then the FCC rescinded the permit in November and the issue was more uncertain than ever. SIBC announced late last week that it had withdrawn its application for the channel. Spokesman Tom Jackson cited the repeated legal delays. "We felt we had a viable service to offer the people of Southern Illinois," Jackson said, "but faced with what we felt might be years of litigation, we felt it was provident for us to withdraw." The move apparently caught almost everyone involved in the issue by sur- Analysis prise.

Evans Broadcasting is owned by Tom Mellon Evans, a New York financier who has a reputation as a ruthless but efficient businessman. The two companies for which he serves as chairman Crane Co. and H. K. Porter Co.

have made millions swallowing smaller companies and Evans seldom backs off from a legal fight. Jeff Olson, an attorney for the Citizens Communication Center, the Washington public interest law firm that has represented the Citizens Committee before the FCC, says "it's always a surprise when someone just walks away from a proceeding like this lock, stock and barrel. Uusually they want at least to reach a settlement with the other party where they are reimbursed for the costs of their attorneys and anything else they've put money into." Olson speculates that Evans may want to write off as a tax deduction the aborted effort to obtain Channel 13. Evans recently sold Channel 30 in St. Louis and therefore probably has a significant capital gain coming from that sale.

The sale of Channel 30 may have also had something to do with Evans' willingness to drop out of the Channel 13 picture. The Mount Vernon station would have given a tremendous market boost to the St. Louis station since it would have effectively extended its broadcasting area by several hundred square miles. SL Louis Channel 30 has been in a defensive competitive position for several years in the crowded St. Louis market After selling Channel 30, though, Evans may have wondered if the satellite station was worth purchasing.

Only Tom Mellon Evans knows for sure why he decided to drop his appli cation for Channel 13 if the FCC would accept it. Burns says he is optimistic that the FCC will accept his application now and he is consulting with his lawyer to determine what move to make next. The next public move, though, may be made by the Citizen's Committee. Their Salem attorney, David Garner, says the Committee is meeting this weekend. The Citizens' Committee and its public interest lawyers in Washington can't do too much directly to help Burns but they could hurt Varecha's chances if they ask the FCC to consider new applicants.

They could also question Varecha's qualifications. Varecha and the citizens committee have enjoyed a rather paradoxical rel-tionship in the past. Varecha's original proposal for an independent station provided the citizens committee with much of the ammunition that it used to refute Evans contention that an independent station would not be economically viable. But the committee and Varecha have been less than amicable since Varecha joined forces with Evans. In its efforts rc New York (AP) With prices, interest rates, unemployment and taxes rising, and real incomes, savings rates, housing starts and confidence falling, could recession be worse? In fact, will anyone even recognize that we missed a recession if we do? Or spot it if it comes? The questions are provoked by a peculiar situation that has recently developed.

It is this: Good news is often bad news, and official economic expansion quite often means personal recession. While people rejoice in having averted the onset of official recession, their economic lives have deteriorated steadily. Economists and laymen ask what greater damage could a recession do. The answer lies in the future, but the damage resulting from the so-called economic expansion cannot be denied. Incomes are rising but buying power is shrinking.

Statistics say families are well off, but families feel deprived. The odd situation is not difficult to understand, but it may be more difficult to explain. The plausible explanation is this: Could It Mw ootII Is "lite iif Wt Several years ago when Varecha, in his own words, was "knocking on every door in Southern Illinois" in an effort to get financial backing for the station, Burns was one of the people who turned him down. Burns says he declined to finance Varecha only because the proposal was not attractive; he was intrigued with the idea of Southern Illinois having an indepedendent TV station "that would focus on some of the issues that are important to this area." His interest in the communications industry also led him to approach a representative of the The Southern Ulinoisan last spring about buying the newspaper, but he said negotiations between the owner Lindsay-Schaub Newspapers, and Lee Enterprises, which bought The Southern Ulinoisan and The Decatur Herald and Review in October, were already too far along. The citizens' committee will have succeeded in its objective to make Channel 13 an independent station if either Burns or Varecha get the go-ahead from the FCC.

But now Olson is saying "We have to also be concerned about the quality of independent station we get" If the citizens' committee or Bums convince the FCC that the best way to get a high-quality station is to re-open the application process, it may be several more years before Channel 13 finally begins operation. Olson calls competing applications "about the most time-consuming process you can get involved in." On the other hand, "if everybody found a way to make everybody else happy we could probably get a signal up in a month," Olson says. If that doesn't happen and the legal sparring before the FCC drags on, Olson says that the citizens' committee may find its success in getting Evans to withdraw its application is a hollow victory. "After all this," he says, "we still don't have an independent television station." wo it terest rates rising before falling gradually. Questions beg to be answered: Is it logical therefore to talk about the recent expansion as if it were the opposite of recession? Because the statistics say the economy is expanding and therefore not in recession should we applaud? For individuals, the best measure of whether times are good or bad is not the official pronouncement that we do or do not have a recession, but the immediate condition of the pocketbook and the savings account.

And their condition, and that of the credit account as well, are generally in pretty poor shape. Worse, perhaps, than in many an official recession. Lauderdale Decker Insurance Agency, Ltd. has mm We look forward to seeing you at our new address: 312 E. Main Street Carbondale, IL.

457-0471 Chuck Decker Darrell Lauderdale Ken Gearhart BillTallman Roger Tedrick Loran Goodman Velma Lauderdale Sharon Glasco Sybil Springer Cathy Swayze Rita Jones In Anna Jim Clary Becky Snyder P.O. Box 665 200 East Main Anna, IL 62906 833-2142 In Pinckneyville: Frances Kiehna Connie Crawford 4 East Water Street Pinckneyville, I 62274 357-6211 DO Carbondale's first office condominium will have private Bill Varecha to demonstrate the FCC that an independent station could pay its own way, the committee has tried to show that Varecha did not succeed only because he could not muster sufficient financial resources. The committee has questioned Varecha's credibility and the validity of some of the financial information he has provided the FCC in the past. Neither Garner nor Olson will say that they want to oppose Varecha's application but they appear to be far from convinced that Varecha could provide the best independent television station for Southern Illinois. "An applicant must demonstrate three essential criteria from the beginning," Olson says.

"Those are proper character, financial qualifications and technical qualifications. We're still waiting for Vrecha to demonstrate all three." Whatever his other qualifications are, Burns has the edge in financial resources. Whereas Varecha has had to scramble to line up financial backing Burns says he could put the station on the air entirely with his own funds. be People are making lots of money but inflation and higher taxes, partly for Social Security, are taking it away. They have material comforts, but they have to borrow and cut into savings to get them.

Rather than going into a shell of depression, families are maintaining economic activity, perhaps because they feel that is the way out of the trap. Money is circulating. Economic activity is fairly strong. And official economic measures reflect this activity. Many economists warn that families are losing the ability to maintain buying activity.

They have tried mightily; they have strained their resources, and still they cannot make much headway. As they run out of financial and psychic energy, the consumer economy could take a tumble, and there is little evidence that other areas of the economy can step in to fill the gap. The result, say pessimists, is that things could get even worse, with unemployment rising more sharply while prices remain high kept there by forces such as oil that do not quickly react to supply and demand and in In Brief the United States, says an industry publication. According to Energy User News, the system will be tested in a Phoenix office building because climatic conditions in the area are similar to those in Saudi Arabia. Officials believe the system could lead to a breakthrough in solar cooling and help reduce high-peak demand levels created by air-conditioning use, the journal said.

It added that the system will generate electricity that can either drive an air-conditioning unit or be fed directly into an electric transmission system when cooling is not needed. Suney reveals job trends in Canada Montreal (AP) If you're a tax accountant go north, young man. And if you're a woman the best thing to be in Canada is a personnel director. These are the job candidates in greatest demand in Canada today, according to a recent survey about Canadian employment trends. Also among the conclusions gathered: One in five employed Canadian managers has a resume circulating.

This is a surprisingly high figure to most employers, yet not as high as in the United States, where 29 percent of managers are considering a change of jobs. The study also concludes that when managers leave their jobs their action comes as a complete surprise to three out of five employers. The survey was taken among the Canadian affiliates of National Personnel Associates, a network of independent personnel agencies throughout the world that cooperate in filling management-level positions. SSD0O International Harvester gets contract in China 4 ri? 1 Ci, --kSx-c patios for each tenant professionals looking for office space. Peak and Halstead hope to be more than observers of the continuing retail development that is taking place nearby in the University Mall area.

They have tentative plans to build a shopping development on the 20 acres that sits to the east of the A and restaurant on Illinois 13. The development would border the planned extension of Giant City Blacktop to connect with Illinois 13. They are currently negotiating with two potential anchor stores and Peak says a number of smaller stores, a restaurant and a theater may also be part of the shopping center. The development could be built either as a strip center or an enclosed mall, Peak says, depending on the wishes of the anchor store. Plans for the shopping development could be announced within the next month, Peak says, and construction could begin by September.

surrounds the building is designed to provide insulation condominium office going up in Carbondale Chicago (AP) International Harvester Co. has announced that it has received a construction machinery order to equip a reforestation project in the Jilin Sheng province located in the northeastern section of China. The company did not reveal the total value of the order, but said it included crawler and rubber-tired loaders, bulldozers, service parts and maintenance tools. The equipment will be produced at IH factories in Libertyville and Melrose Park, and Candiac, Quebec. Paul E.

Johnson, an IH staff vice president of corporate development who is in charge of the firm's sales to socialist countries, said the firm would train Chinese operators in equipment use and service in the United States. Banks, utility agree on nuclear financing Chicago (AP) Commonwealth Edison Co. and the Bank of America have signed a credit agreement committing up to $300 million for financing the acquisition of nuclear fuel for the utility. Along with eight other banks, the Bank of America said it will support the issuance of short-term promisory notes by the utility over a five-year period. The proceeds for the short-term notes will be advanced to Commonwealth Edison to finance nuclear fuel that will be leased to the utility.

The Bank of America said the agreement is believed to be the largest ever arranged in the nation for an investment-owned utility. Arizona pfans to test solar air-conditioning New York (AP) A new system of solar air conditioning will be tested in Arizona under a joint $1.4 million research project sponsored jointly by Saudi Arabia and The mound. of dirt that Area's first By Ed Bean Of The Southern Ulinoisan The slanted roof, cedar siding and cobblestone walkway of Carbondale's newest office building under construction at East Walnut Street and Lewis Lane make it an eye-catcher but that is not what makes it the area's most innovative concept in office real estate. Office in the Park, as it is called, Is an office condominium the first in Southern Illinois. Residential condominiums have been around in some parts of the nation since the late '50s but the first office condominiums weren't built until 1973.

Office condos have yet to share in the boom that has characterized the market for residential condos but Office in the Park developer Jim Peak says "We think it's an idea whose time has come." Peak is a partner in the project with West Frankfort chiro building practor R.L. Halstead. Amenities such as fireplaces, hardwood floors, track lighting, wet bars and individual patios take these offices a step beyond typical office space. Peak hopes to sell the units to physicians, attorneys, accountants and other professionals who can afford the luxury and who can take advantage of the tax benefits that the condos provide for someone in a 50 percent-or-over tax bracket Each of the condo's 10 units sells for $78,500 and Peak recommends that investors who want to rent the units after buying them price space at $9 per square foot Each unit contains approximately 1,073 square feet of space. None of the units have been sold so far but Peak thinks that the continuing commercial and retail development on the community's east side will make the condos attractive to investors and 4.

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