THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 6, 1994 TAG: 9407060023
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY BONKO
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
NAMES, NEWS and notes on local TV to ponder while you get over the disappointment of knowing that Hampton Roads is not part of ``The David Letterman Coast-to-Coast Tour With Mujibur and Sirajul'':
Now that's what I call a people mover - The cable folks who produce all those scintillating programs out of Washington, D.C., on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 have dropped in on Norfolk this week in a zillion-dollar bus that is equipped to tape programs and beam out TV signals. I boarded the bus at the national cable forum and exposition in New Orleans not long ago. Cool.
Tidewater Regional Transit doesn't have a thing to touch it. The local C-SPAN bus tour includes a stop today at the great, gray Nauticus in downtown Norfolk.
Shows that are taped here today will be seen on C-SPAN next week.
Bye, bye Yvonne - Yvonne Simons, who was dropped recently from the early-morning anchor team at WTKR, didn't waste her time pouting. She put resumes in the mail. Simons left Channel 3 last week for WRAL in Raleigh, N.C., where she will be a reporter on the education beat. . . . Also at WTKR, it's adios for a program that was a guilty pleasure for many of us. Channel 3 pulled the plug on ``Love Connection,'' which came on at 35 minutes past midnight. The syndicator will soon stop making the shows. Pity. Loved ``Love Connection.''
If you win the lottery, here's a tip on how to spend some of the winnings - W. John Grandy of San Louis Obispo, Calif., who is a broker in the business of buying and selling radio and TV properties, estimates the value of the three VHF network affiliates in this market (WTKR, WAVY and WVEC) at between $80 million and $100 million. The way Rupert Murdoch is buying up stations for his Fox Broadcasting empire, who knows? He may soon be shopping in Hampton Roads, which is America's 38th largest television market. We're big and getting bigger.
Do you remember streetcars in Norfolk? The Kiptopeke ferry? The Gaiety Burlesque? - Producer Mike Sinclair is finishing up ``Gone but Not Forgotten,'' a special about life in and around Norfolk in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
That's the era when 85-year-old John Slaughter of Norfolk was a motorman on the streetcars that ran to Ocean View from downtown. The cars are gone but not the tracks. You'll find them on Norfolk's streets if you dig deep enough, Slaughter said. Slaughter spent much of his working life on the streetcars and had a ball doing it, he said.
Sinclair's special will air in August when WHRO launches its midsummer pledge drive. Sinclair used interviews from 200 people and looked at 10,000 feet of film in putting the special together. An hour isn't enough time to tell it all, he said. Make it a two-parter, Mike.
More from WHRO: The PBS outlet will soon show all the episodes of the best series ever made about World War II, ``Victory at Sea,'' and will repeat the controversial ``Tales of the City,'' first seen in edited form last January. This time around, the nude scenes will be left in. Oh no! Oh yes!
Does this mean we're all grown up now and can handle such hot programs as ``NYPD Blue,'' which continues to be blacked out in this market?
Buzz bites - No word yet on when the ``Wheel of Fortune'' crew will arrive in Norfolk to tape a week of shows, or if Vanna White is coming here with Pat Sajak. Published reports say she's taking a year off to watch her infant son grow up. . . . The kids in Marie Childs' first-grade class at Atlantic Shores Christian School in Virginia Beach appear in a national commercial for a reading program called Sing, Spell, Read and Write. . . . The New York Times rubbed it in recently, noting that Hampton Roads is the largest TV market in which ``NYPD Blue'' is blacked out by blue-nosed broadcasters. The shows I've seen lately on tape smuggled across the border have had nothing offensive in them. Zero. Nada. You are being denied superior TV drama, friends. by CNB