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Profanity on the air is a sign of changes

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, Saturday, June 22, 1985* 15°U Profanity on the air is a sign of changes I still get an uncomfortable feeling when I hear profanity on the tube. I'm not a prude. And I'm not really offended by it. It's just that I grew up in an era when television was squeaky clean and no one dared say "damn" or even "hell." In my youth, profanity was reserved for behind-the-barn jokes and those rare times when the hammer missed the nail and hit the thumb. So sounds odd to me today when it comes off the little screen. But on the pay cable services such as HBO and Showtime, which run unedited and uncensored movies and racy comedy specials, you're likely to hear just about anything. And at 10:15 tonight on Home Box Office you can see just how offcolor today's young comedians will go to get a laugh on "The Detroit Comedy Jam," a made-for-cable special that features the stand-up routines of Howie Mandel (from "St. Elsewhere"), Paul Rodriguez (remember "a.k.a. Pablo"?), Dave Coulier and Mike Bender. On cable specials such as these, the humor is sometimes juvenile, sometimes genuinely funny. And the language is always adult. Meanwhile, viewers of Showtime can tune in for adult yuks from former Tampa resident Gallagher, who pokes fun at the IRS, accountants and other deserving targets in "Gallagher: The Bookkeeper" at 8 p.m. Linda Scott leaves Linda Scott, host of WTOG, Channel 44's, morning children's show, "44 Kid's Club," is leaving town. Scott, who has worked at 44 for three years, says she is heading to WMBB-TV in Panama City to anchor a 5 p.m. news report. "I'm going to miss all the friends I've made in the Bay area, but this is a job opportunity I need," she said. Scott, a former co-host on "PM Magazine," also once worked at WXFL, Channel 8, as a "weather girl." Scott's last day at 44 is June 28, but viewers of "44 Kid's Club" may see her on the air through early July in previously taped programs. Then again, Channel 44 may find a replacement before July 1. Auditions were this week. Ratings digested Have you ever seen "Creative Cooking" at Saturday noon on WEDU, Channel 3? How about "Can Do Clinic" which sometimes follows at 12:30? "Can Do" isn't on today, but the show, with Tampa-based home economist Ruth Ann Fowler as host, cleaned up in the May rating sweeps, ranking as one of the mostwatched Saturday daytime programs. According to the A.C. Nielsen rating service, Fowler and her homemaking tips reached into an average of 39,000 Bay area TV households during May. "Creative Cooking," with Tampa's Sue Sutker, drew 42,000 TV households. That's not bad, considering the Saturday TV daytime audience is usually small. These two locally produced shows packed a punch that beat out such offerings as "44 RPM" on Channel 44 (which drew 26,000) and "Tarzan" on Channel 8 (which drew only 10,000), The show also beat "Laverne & Shirley" reruns on Channel 10, "Daniel Boone" on Channel 28 and the movie on Channel 13. I know all this because the May rating "books" arrived in town this week, and officials at Bay area TV stations are mulling over the results. They're bragging about the high points and glossing over the low points. May is one of those months when the Arbitron and Nielsen rating services ask thousands of viewers in this 11-county, 17th-ranked (nationally) market to keep track of what they watched on TV. The results are then translated into ratings to represent the viewing habits of the 1.013 million TV households in the Bay area. Here are some wild vid bits from the Arbitron book: WTVT, Channel 13, the CBS affiliate, is the top-rated station in the market from sign-on to sign-off (that's why they call it "Big 13.") Jack Harris' "Pulse Plus" show on Channel 13 averaged 151,000 TV households in May - almost half the people watching TV at noon weekdays. Walt Belcher Television His nearest competitor during the first half-hour was Channel 8's noon news, which averaged 32,000 TV households. Almost no one watched "SCTV" at 11 week nights on Channel 44. The show didn't even register in the ratings. Next month 44 will replace it with reruns of "The Untouchables." "Guiding Light" is the toprated daytime soap, with 88,000 TV households, "General Hospital" is second with 80,000 households. • Although Channel 8 got a lot of flack from fans of "Santa Barbara" for moving the soap from 3 p.m. to 9 a.m. weekdays, the station apparently made the right move. "Barnaby Jones" at 3 p.m. is drawing about 20,000 more TV households than the low-rated "Santa Barbara" did when it played at 3 p.m. "Action News" a at p.m. on WTSP, Channel 10, has a solid lock on second place behind WTVT's "Pulse News" with Hugh Smith. Channel 10's news used to be in fourth place but now averages 161,000 TV households, Monday through Friday. Channel 13's 6 p.m. news averages 202,000 TV households. Channel 8's "NewsWatch 8" at 6 p.m., which used to be in second place, has dropped a whopping 12 share points during the past three years. The show now averages 116,000 TV households Monday through Friday. It makes you wonder about those Channel 8 ads that ask, "What do you do with a team like Bob Hite and Bill Ratliff?" • Reruns of "The Newlywed Game" at 11:30 week nights on Channel 13 beat the first half-hour of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." • "Wheel of Fortune" at 7 week nights on Channel 10 draws 214,000 TV households, beating Dan Rather and the "CBS Evening News," which gets 173,000 households, and the doomed "Family Feud" on Channel 8, which only gets 72,000 households. "The Cosby Show" Thursdays on Channel 8 averages nearly 300,000 Bay area households, while "Magnum P.I." gets about half that - 180,000. About 85,000 households are tuning into the "M*A*S*H" reruns at 5 p.m. weekdays on Channel 8, but only 74,000 stick around to watch "Taxi" at 5:30. That's a weak lead-in for Channel 8's news program. • "Fantasy of Florida," a local program on Florida architecture produced by Linda Bassett for Channel 3, drew a whopping 40,000 households in May. That's big for a PBS outlet, and impressive considering it aired at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, when it was up against NBC's blockbuster lineup and CBS' "Magnum P,I." • "He-Man, Masters of the Universe" (Channel 28), once the toprated afternoon show for children, was clobbered by "Scooby-Doo" (Channel 44). Arbitron shows 30,000 TV households watching "Scooby-Doo" and only 18,000 tuning in for "He-Man." The May Nielsen book was one of the best ever for WEDU, Channel 3, with many of Channel 3's 8 p.m. programs drawing larger audiences than "Kojak" on Channel 28 (which is averaging 31,000 homes) and the 8 p.m. movies on Channel 44 (which draw about 29,000), Channel 3's top-rated 8 p.m. programs in May included "Nova" (52,000 households), the "Heart of the • Dragon" series about China (41,000 households) and "Nature" (59,000 households). One theory is that Channel 28 and Channel 44 have split up what appears to be a limited audience for reruns and movies, while PBS is enjoying one of its greatest seasons ever. You have to wonder how good Channel 3's ratings would be if it did swap places on the dial with WTOG, Channel 44. With numbers like these, perhaps $30 million cash (WTOG's offer for the valuable VHF signal) is a bit cheap. / No wonder WTOG, which has seen its ratings drop considerably ever since WFTS signed on, is looking for a solution.
Article from 22 Jun 1985The Tampa Tribune(Tampa, FL)
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