THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 3, 1995 TAG: 9511030066
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
LOCAL TV NEWS and views to consider while you wait for Forrest Gump to settle down on his bench Saturday night at 8 on HBO:
What's this? Late-night television without infomercials? - With its new transmitter up and running, the local public television station in this market, WHRO, becomes a 24-hour-a-day service starting in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
In a break for night owls who have had it with pitches for miracle mops and magic car polish, Channel 15 on Tuesday at 1 a.m. rolls out some pretty classy programming.
It includes repeats of the ``American Experience'' series as well as the Charlie Rose talk show and ``The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.'' Rose and Lehrer lead off the late-night schedule Monday through Friday to be followed by selected PBS programming.
Tuesday at 4 a.m., an hour devoted to the Battle of the Bulge will be followed by a program about the late, great Iowa-class battleships.
Why go late-night on PBS? Because the viewers asked for an alternative to old flicks, ``Odd Couple'' reruns and infomercials, said a station spokesman.
It's not what I would call a done deal - When the 27-year-old owner of the Shreveport (La.) Pirates was in Hampton Roads recently, trying to sell us on re-locating his Canadian Football League team to Norfolk, Lonie Glieberman suggested that the CFL is huddling with CBS about a TV deal.
True or false? Well, my sources at CBS in Manhattan tell me that the network is ``discussing'' a TV contract with the CFL but not ``negotiating.''
``It's a long shot,'' a network insider told me.
This family makes it look so easy - Remember way back in the spring of 1994 when people by the dozens came to downtown Norfolk to audition for ``Wheel of Fortune''? Bet you've been wondering ever since if anybody selected by the contestant coordinators in Norfolk hit it big on the show.
Is winning $80,780, plus vacations on the Nile, trips to New Zealand and England hitting it big? That's what happened to a 35-year-old Smithfield woman last month when she became a ``Wheel'' grand champion at tapings in Los Angeles.
Kristin Wilda and her sister, Kieran Kramer of Winston-Salem, N.C., auditioned in Norfolk, and both won big at ``Wheel'' tapings.
Kramer came home with about $34,000 in cash and prizes. ``We just have a knack for this game,'' said Wilda after returning home from Los Angeles. (Contestants pay their own expenses, you know).
Wilda's run for the riches pops up on WVEC starting Nov. 28 at 7 p.m.
``Come out of that car with your hands where I can see them!'' - When Virginia state trooper Carl Lans of Virginia Beach was on patrol early this summer, a camera crew from the syndicated ``Real Stories of the Highway Patrol'' tagged along. The crew was there when the 30-year-old Lans busted a driver who had marijuana and two handguns in his car.
The man was stopped because his taillights were out. Was it a tense moment?
It's always tense when there are firearms involved, said Lans. His bust is scheduled for ``Real Stories'' on WAVY at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
Nobody mentioned the sun, surf and saltwater taffy - On MTV the other night, Virginia Beach got some national exposure that it could live without. During one of its ``unfiltered news'' specials, MTV made the point that kids who cruise Atlantic Avenue in vehicles are not welcome here.
Sure, it's against the law to pass the same point on Atlantic Avenue more than twice in three hours. But did MTV have to make it look like Virginia Beach is the city from hell for summertime cruisers? Come to think of it, Virginia Beach is the city from hell for cruisers, who according to City Hall, create gridlock at the Oceanfront. MEMO: You can reach your humble columnist by dialing up Infoline 640-5555,
Category 3333. by CNB