Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993 TAG: 9304160096
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEAN PRESCOTT KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NICKELODEON AIRS LETTERS TO MOTHER EARTH
Independent producer Bob Altman's mission was an exhilarating if daunting one. In a global sweep of 25 nations, he was to gather young people's video messages and compile a piece to prove that every little effort makes a difference to the life and health of this planet.Nickelodeon viewers can see the results in "Letters to the Earth," a 30-minute special that premieres Saturday (encores Sunday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., and at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Earth Day).
"This program has some precedent in a special ("Self Portraits") we did last year for Showtime," Altman explained.
"We retained managers, free-lance producer, in those countries and supplied them with all of the equipment and training materials they needed for this project.
"Initially kids from all over the world wrote handwritten letters to Mother Earth," Altman said. "Then we selected video shooters from among them."
Over three months, start to finish, Altman's global network captured sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant, always intelligent personal stories. They've been stitched together with a bit of MTV-style graphics and served up free of grown-up commentary.
"What you don't see," Altman revealed, "is the 300 hours of bad film. Initially we had some problems with . . . focusing on those who took this seriously."
What we do see bears no evidence of problems. Tasmanian kids adopt an orphaned wombat. A girl from Ghana is grateful for clean water. In Israel, young people reforest their war-ravaged country. And a child from Kuwait talks about the Gulf War fires: "No kid should witness what we did," he says.
American youngsters get into the act to buy forest land in Oregon. A Nashville, Tenn., teen-ager ignored by Washington, D.C., puts up 250 billboards to bear her environmental message.
"I'm grateful Nickelodeon wanted a global view," Altman said. "So many people think Americans don't care, but I think our kids have no notion of how bad it could be . . . how bad it is in other parts of the world."
"Letters to the Earth" shows them.
A Brazilian newsboy, who educates himself from the papers he sells, confesses that he lives in the smelliest place on earth, beside one of the world's largest sewage treatment plants. In his video, we see him and young friends wearing surgical-style masks at play.
"I got a lot of feedback, too, about the camcorder as an empowerment tool," Altman said. "It's a way for kids like (the Brazilian boy), who have no other access to kids from other countries, to connect.
"Across the board, these kids took this as a tremendous opportunity. The technology wouldn't have let this happen a few years ago."
\ Other Earth Day programming for kids:
"Captain Planet and the Planeteers" Marathon, 24 hours beginning at 6 a.m. on Earth Day, Cartoon Network.
"Real News for Kids" Earth Day Special, 7:05 a.m. Sunday, April 25, on TBS. \ Elsewhere in television
"Dateline" co-anchor Jane Pauley is miffed because her husband, "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau, will appear in the May 20 "Cheers" finale, but she wasn't asked. (Have a beer, Jane.)
Pauley has never done a sitcom, and has turned down such shows as CBS' "Murphy Brown." But for NBC's "Cheers," she would have changed her tune.
"I'm a fan," she says. "I probably would have suspended any good judgment had I been invited. I would have stepped off that moral high ground I have so self-consciously occupied all this time. Truth is, I was really jealous of Garry."
Ironically, Trudeau's invite came just after Pauley's return from L.A. for a "Dateline" segment on the finale. Trudeau, who has mentioned "Cheers" in "Doonesbury," will do a scene with ex-NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff, who started "Cheers" in '82.
\ Judy Woodruff, chief Washington correspondent for PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour for almost a decade, will join CNN soon as an anchor and senior correspondent.
Based in Washington, Woodruff will co-anchor two weekday programs - "Inside Politics" with Bernard Shaw and "World Today," with Frank Sesno. Also, she will co-anchor coverage of such heavyweight events as political conventions and summits.
Woodruff, 46, was NBC News' White House correspondent from 1977 to '82. Her husband, Albert Hunt, Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, is moderator of CNN's "The Capital Gang."