The United Auto Workers union is finding that controversy in a TV commercial, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
The union has hit the airwaves with tough 30-second messages underlying members` support for quality, increased competitiveness and saving U.S. jobs. They`re the handiwork of Washington`s Greer, Margolis, Mitchell & Associates and are tied to ongoing contract negotiations among the union, General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp.
It has been learned that CBS and ABC rejected one of the three ads for airing on their networks, on stations they own or both. But NBC and CNN did not have a problem with the ad, titled ”Expendable,” nor did more than 100 stations in nearly 30 markets nationwide, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
In the disputed ad, an autoworker declares, ”We want to build products Americans can be proud to own. And we`ve got the skills to do that. But we won`t beat the competition if American workers are considered expendable . . . if our good jobs are shipped overseas.”
CBS and ABC were convinced that the depiction was unfavorable to corporate America. Some observers would say that, for some companies, that`s exactly the case.
Beth Bressan, a CBS vice president who reviews ads, said CBS believed that some words-presumably ”expendable” and ”shipped overseas”-were
”highly charged” and that the ad violated a network ban on commercial time being used for advocating a view on controversial issues.
An ABC spokeswoman said the company believed that the other two ads were more ”corporate and institutional.” ABC, asked to clear the three ads for stations it owns, decided that ”expendable” was just that.
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A fact about fiction: Literary magazines start, and die, faster than people write lousy poems.
So the folks at TriQuarterly, based at Northwestern University in Evanston, should knock on wood, dispense with academic understatement and applaud themselves. They`re celebrating a 25th anniversary as one of the nation`s finest and most engaging literary publications.
For starters, a little context: Reader`s Digest sells about 16.3 million copies of each issue, TV Guide about 16 million, National Geographic about 11 million, Time about 4.3 million and Playboy about 3.4 million.
TriQuarterly, which surfaces three times a year, has 2,500 subscribers and prints 5,000 copies of each issue. And that`s big for the world it inhabits, one that includes New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, Swamp Root, South Dakota Review, ZYZZYVA, the Chariton Review, Story and Conjunctions, among others. Perhaps 50 have circulations over 1,000.
TriQuarterly was founded by Charles Newman, a member of the university English department who essentially recast a small campus magazine by the same name. Then, as now, it was different from most by being eclectic, heavily into fiction and both national and international in scope. It was disinclined to publish literary criticism-the often mind-wearying crux of academic literary life-or to seek out what might be deemed ”regional” fiction.
For sure, it did have some famous folks in initial issues, including Lionel Trilling, James T. Farrell and Richard Brautigan. But the focus has been less on big names than in discovering lesser-known talents and in pushing creative boundaries. It`s had issues on Zen, creativity and the Soviet Union, Latin American writers, South Africa and Sylvia Plath.
”I like a magazine that surprises me, doing things that others wouldn`t do,” said editor Reginald Gibbons.
The entire staff consists of two full-timers, including associate editor Susan Hahn; two part-timers; Gibbons, who teaches in the English department;
and some students. Northwestern pays salaries and benefits and a small amount toward expenses. Most funds to produce and ship it come through earned income or grants, including Chicago`s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Lannan Foundation of Los Angeles.
Gibbons underlines three basic problems. First, the act of reading each of the 10,000 stories and poems submitted each year so it can use about 100. Second, the need to raise about $60,000 or $70,000 a year. Third, huge problems with distribution, including distributors who destroy copies unsold in bookstores instead of returning them.
It`s getting tougher to run such a publication, Gibbons said: ”You find little or no support for literary magazines. One constant of American universities has been an abiding hostility to contemporary fiction and poetry. The leading edge of academic criticism holds that anyone who writes a poem or story is a naive, deluded fool.”
Much of what the publication receives is less than inspiring. ”We find just a little bit more than we can use,” Gibbons said.
Notably, a 580-page anniversary issue is devoted to fiction of the 1980s. There`s a fashion, Gibbons says, to deride the decade`s fiction and poetry as insipid compared with the ”great masters of the past.” He finds that to be bunk. For example, he ranks Australian Patrick White as the ”most
extraordinary novelist in English today” and up there with the five greatest ever.
You won`t get rich writing for Gibbons and Hahn, as they pay $3 a line for poetry and $40 a page for prose. But you may be a bit richer for the experience of enjoying their provocative and playful product for $18 a year via 2020 Ridge Ave., Evanston, Ill. 60208.
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After a long investigation, New Orleans police ruled as suicide the death of Marilou Hunter, wife of former WMAQ-TV anchor Ron Hunter. She had called Hunter`s radio show and, without identifying herself, complained to a Hunter guest, a sex therapist, about her turbulent marriage. She died in bed, beside Hunter, that evening.
Hunter, who was lionized by former colleague Maury Povich on ”A Current Affair” right after the death, surfaced on the show again last week. He pointedly noted his job availability, having been canned by the radio station. – – –
Conspiracy theorists who assume that Tribune Co.-owner of the Chicago Tribune, WGN-TV, WGN-AM and the Cubs-always gets its way should be informed of a bigger force: Illinois Bell.
WGN radio and the phone company have been involved in protracted wrangling stemming from station problems with phone calls to shows such as those of Bob Collins, Milt Rosenberg and Eddie Schwartz. At times, few, if anyone, could get through, but not necessarily because others were calling the same show.
A special mass calling, or ”choke,” system using the 591 prefix may be the culprit. The system, sold by the phone folks to TV and radio stations, was intended to prevent disruption of household and business phones, but it hasn`t worked up to snuff. WGN phones have been jammed because of calls to other 591 numbers, perhaps a WBBM-TV viewer poll, another radio station`s giveaway or Oprah Winfrey`s recruiting of guests.
Schwartz contends that as few as two calls from any other single exchange may get through to his show, regardless of how many open lines there are.
Lorna Gladstone, WGN program director, had a series of meetings with Bell personnel and says she got nowhere initially. Then, an entirely new crew of phone folks showed up, pledged to review the entire 591 system and try to upgrade WGN`s system. Gladstone is awaiting a proposal, then will solicit response from the station`s ”talent.”
The 591 system dates to the late 1960s, having first been used here by the Internal Revenue Service. There are about 60 working 591 numbers in Chicago, including TV and radio stations and the City of Chicago for a once-a- year program involving rent subsidies. The most calls generated-several million-were in response to a radio station giveaway of two Mercedes-Benzes.
Schwartz is passionate about this subject, as he is with others. Late Monday, he showed a guest what he perceives to be the problem.
During a commercial break, he picked up a phone in his WGN studio and dialed his show. Although several lines were open, Chicago Eddie got a busy signal.
