Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 17

1 no lasida this section Vednssday, Oct. 8, 1-C3 BOOK BEAT 3 ENTERTAINMENT 5 0 TELEVISION 6-7 Q) FEATURE PAGE 15 1- i xr. II I II i wi txij, yiisinuss DETROIT FREE PRESS Call The Wy Wt Llvt: 222-6610 Can he out-Fox Ilicliio ricVJhiitcr networks? New talk show airs tomorrow Joan Rivers, above. Her show "might not be perfect out of the box no show is. We just have to give it our best shot," says her boss.

Garth Ancier, right. By DIANE HAITHMAN Fret Prnt West Coast Bureau LOS ANGELES Garth Ancier, senior vice-president of programming for the new Fox Broadcasting excitedly describes his job as "a thrill a chance to push the envelope of what television is." "Pushing the envelope" was introduced by the astronauts in Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" and popularized in this summer's movie hit, "Top Gun," the youth-oriented story of the best and brightest young Navy fighter pilots, who become blind to danger in their need for speed. It comes as no surprise to hear the same words from Garth Ancier, the boy wonder chosen to play a crucial role in the launching of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting an alternative to big-three network TV that plans to target the lucrative youth market. The service debuts in 79 major markets Thursday with "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers" (in Detroit: WKBD-TV, Channel 50, 11:30 p.m.). Other prime-time programming will follow in March 1987.

SOME WOULD FIND Ancier's new job less a chance to push the envelope than a good reason to push the panic button. Ancier, product of the TV-addicted baby boom, is the man responsible for Fox's prime-time schedule. As the major deciding voice in what programs will launch the new broadcasting alternative, Ancier carries most of the responsibility for whether FBC flies or crashes. "Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not fun, you know?" Ancier said with a beaming grin, summing up the job in a masterpiece of understatement. "I feel a little uncomfortable with things focusing on me, because we haven't done anything yet," Ancier says, referring to the hot press spotlight that has been trained on See TELEVISION, Page 4B I ut-t -ft, if hi' 4,.

i fS 1 1 i Time brings just reward to the Queen of Glitzania I bought a rhinestone necklace the other day in a boutique that sells second-hand costume jewelry, concrete lawn ornaments and imported Chinese porcelains. Retailing is a mystery to me. Anyway, I was in there looking for a tub in which to plant a tree. I didn't find one. I found the rhinestone necklace instead.

It's about 50 years old, missing only one tiny rhinestone in the clasp which no one will ever notice and I just had to have it. Fortunately, it was cheap. I had to have it because I already have a rhinestone bracelet of about the same vintage. It belonged to my Aunt Adele. I never saw her wear it, but I often saw it sparkling in her jewelry box when she let me rummage there.

When Adele died I begged Mom to let me have the bracelet. She said, "Nobody wears rhinestones any more, and you certainly can't wear it to school." But she let me have it anyway. I didn't wear the bracelet at all, until college. Then I bought some outrageous rhinestone dangle earrings to go with it and wore all these sparklers to a couple of formal dances. I wished then that I had a necklace as well, but I didn't.

A tiara would have been even better. I felt like the Queen of Glitzania. Seize the opportune moment Several sorority sisters said I looked like her, too. They suggested simple pearls would have been a more appropriate choice than these phony diamonds. That's what rhinestones are, of course, phony diamonds made of paste or glass, silvered like mirrors to glitter in overstated imitation of the real thing.

But one must seize the opportune moment. I was pretty sure I would never marry a man who would bedeck me in genuine diamonds, perfect, blue-white, Tiffany's. I was more likely to marry some "simple pearls" type. So, If ever I were to experience the joy of glittering in candlelight, it would have to be rhinestones and soon. When I saw a couple of fashion models in magazines wearing rhinestone earrings, I knew the time was right.

By the time I graduated college, rhinestones had gone the way of Victorian hair bracelets. The only time anyone has worn rhinestones in all the years since has been to Halloween costume parties. I couldn't bear to demean Aunt Adele's bracelet or my own precious ear dangles that way, so they have been packed away in little boxes under a pile of T-shirts. Basic black, slashed to there Now that I have found the perfect go-with necklace, however, and now that rhinestones are back on the fashion pages, and now that I am absolutely, positively grown up in every way without even sorority sisters who are wiser, I can hardly wait to glitter like a Venetian chandelier one more time. Eat your heart out, Joan Collins! There are problems, however.

I have nothing to wear with my rhinestones. The old pink tulle strapless dress, ballerina length, didn't come back. Timing is everything. I figure something in basic black, slashed to there, would work. I'll paint my lips and nails bright red.

Maybe I'll leave little white moons on the nails. I'll get a black cocktail hat with just a hint of veiling. I'll wear Shalimar perfume and sip Pink Lady cocktails. I've only got a couple of months to put this all together for the festive holiday season. I certainly hope rhinestones aren't out by then.

What on earth would I do with that dippy hat? 'il' fA, jr. 4 New network takes on tough, established competition The heavy hoopla of the moment is focused on "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers." But the Fox Broadcasting Co. will never realize its dreams of becoming a full-fledged fourth network unless it can also create regular comedy and drama series that lure viewers away from NBC, CBS and ABC. Phase Two begins next March, when Fox plans to launch a two-hour Saturday night and three-hour Sunday night block of prime-time programming. Even if Rivers and some of the new shows click, it will be some time before alphabet familiarity sets in and America begins saying FBC the way it says ABC or NBC.

"Down and Out in Beverly Hills," a Disney sitcom version of its hit movie. Fox is also developing an hour-long mystery series, two more sitcoms and two half-hour non-comedies. For further down the line, Fox is working on a tart alternative to the glut of sweet, huggy-bear family comedies on the networks "The Cosby Show," a family comedy that might be along the peppery lines of a "Honeymooners" for the '80s. Who knows, maybe Fox really is ready to make like Ralph Kramden and give the other networks the bang-zoom-to-the-moon treatment. Not likely, but it's an interesting dream nevertheless.

Mike Duffy dependent stations, is going after the young, affluent viewing audience by cutting deals with acknowledged hit makers and talented writers. So big Nielsen numbers may not be as important as the type of audience Fox attracts. DEFINITE FOX PLANS for new series next spring include: "Undercover Kid," a "Mod series about young cops who go undercover in high schools to fight drugs and crime. Stephen J. Cannell A-Team," is the producer.

"Duet," a romantic comedy from "Family Ties" producer Gary David Goldberg's Ubu Productions. ONE MAJOR OBSTACLE to Fox success may be the fact that so many of its affiliates, including WKBD-TV, Channel 50 in Detroit, are independent UHF stations. Some UHF stations have weaker signals and are much farther down the dial from their more powerful VHF competitors, the network affiliates. The heaviest viewing tends to be clustered among the low-numbered VHF network affiliates, such as Channels 2, 4 and 7 in Detroit. One recent NBC market study revealed that the 79 Fox affiliates and Fox-owned stations averaged a 2.3 rating in prime time, compared with an 1 1.9 average for NBC affiliates in the same cities.

But Fox, by styling itself as a national, satellite-delivered program service for in introducing MARC LEMIEUX: Canada's new consul general in Detroit QQfiDQillfe 1 f.f A VM A rr- PROFILE: Although he joined the foreign service to see the world and "get out of my limited geographical milieu," he says he didn't realize what diplomacy was until he got into it. "It's like falling in love," he says. "You begin to understand it gradually." Diplomacy has its humorous side for Lemieux. Most people have trouble with his name. "After giving my curriculum vitae and business card to a man introducing me at a luncheon in Dallas, he got up and introduced me as Mac Lemoo, a councilman from France.

And before sitting down, he said, 'Take it away, The foreign service has allowed him to see the world: Rio de Janeiro like it for Hong Kong great for its way of doing Addis Ababa. But the drought and famine in Ethiopia has made an indelible Impression. "I will never forget my experience in Ethiopia," he says, reflecting on his tour there, which ended in August. "The sounds, the sights. The moaning from people dying.

Nine and 1 0 people to a bed. You see a nine-year-old child of normal height weighing about 56 pounds. "My wife worked in a clinic in Addis Ababa. The needs of the sick were overwhelming. If doctors and nurses here had to do that much work, they would collapse.

When you find that people have nothing, not even energy, you realize how lucky you are. I still don't know how long it will take me to readjust to North American life. It's taking time just adjusting to gadgets in our house. There's no need to turn the knob on the television. Just press a button." WHO HE IS: Newly appointed Consul General of Canada in Detroit, he heads a staff of 34.

Before this he was ambassador to Ethiopia for two years, director of the South and Southeast Asia Division of the Department of External Affairs (Canada's state department) for a year, consul general in Rio de Janeiro for three years and deputy director of personnel in the department for three years. Lemieux (pronounced, roughly, Le-mew) has been in the foreign service for 21 years. AGE: 50. EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in geography, Laval University, Quebec City; master's degree in economic geography, Laval. FAMILY: Wife Lise, a former nurse; daughters Diane, 22, an education co-ordinator for World University Services Canada (a private humanitarian organization concerned with refugees and students), and Dominique, 18, a freshman at McGill University, Montreal.

HOME: A two-story, six-bedroom brick house in Gresse Pointe Farms with a large garden and lots of red and flowers, Canada's colors. LIKES: Reading biographies of 20th Century political figures and contemporary history. DISLIKES: "I dislike belonging to an organization that meets every Tuesday night. I like to do things when I want to. I also hate to compete." I flRST i say 'TOlION THEM VOL) CAY I'D FOLLOW YOU Marc Lemieux says he didn't realize what diplomacy was until he got into it.

"It's like falling in love," he says. "You begin to understand it gradually." PS fiSN rk r-- Tha Way We Live is expanding, beginning mstion on what's new In the publfsNng world, teyr a new pag9 caSad Book Marks, who's reilng what and what the rtVagszincs ncrs nd Information for readers of- ere reports, turn each Wednesday to Book erJ fr-rncs. For a8 the latest infor- Mrks, on Pass 3 of The Way We Live. 3l Hf 4.1 4.