THE BELL CURVE:Mixed signals on KOCE sale

For a columnist to take public issue with his publisher would normally be considered counter-productive (have you been following the brouhaha in Santa Barbara?), but when the issue is the ownership of our local public television station and the publisher is Tom Johnson, the downside seems to me minimal. So here goes.

You surely know the drill by now. When Orange County’s public TV station, KOCE, was put up for sale, the winner and highest apparent bidder was a local foundation that would continue to focus on Orange County programming. This outraged a Christian TV network called Daystar, headquartered in Texas, that had offered more cash than the foundation bid, which depended on some dubious credit manipulation. So Daystar sued to overturn the sale and has won two court decisions that ? if not appealed ? would put the station up for grabs again, when the highest cash groper would clearly be Daystar.

In this situation, our publisher took exception in his regular Pilot column last week to a statement by Mel Rogers, currently president of KOCE, that accepting what seems to be inevitable “could take the people’s station away from the people and leave Orange County viewers at the mercy of Los Angeles-based news stations.” Johnson’s disagreement is mostly with the latter part of that statement. My concern is with the front part.

Johnson went on to suggest a number of ways of covering Orange County through approaches to existing media while applying the influx of funds from Daystar to local educational needs and avoiding the cost of additional court appeals. The letters published on the Forum page that have taken issue with Johnson’s column ? including one from Marian Bergeson ? have dealt primarily with what we would be losing. My main concern is with what we would be getting.

I consider myself part of what Rogers calls “the people,” and as such, I have a vested interest in airways devoted to public service. Turning the only one dedicated to Orange County over to a rich and powerful organization that would use it to get more rich and powerful while propagating a single religious view is not my idea of public service. Nor should money be the only arbiter in deciding how best to use our public air space.

Surely somewhere in the legal process there is a place to consider the issue of how the people can best be served. The answer is decidedly not Daystar.

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On Monday mornings, my wife goes directly to the Health section of the Los Angeles Times, while I head to the baseball and football scores. I can always depend on her passing along to me any advice that would have me replace my many bad habits with allegedly healthy ones. I listen, more or less, before pointing out that I’m remarkably healthy ? especially given my age ? and it would be foolish to tinker with success.

Sometimes we get mixed messages from this section. Like last Monday, when the Times reported a new study, finding that after the age of 70, all of the standard pressures for a formalized exercise program ? including what the study called regular “power walks around the neighborhood” ? are superfluous as long as one expends energy on simple chores around the house.

Sherry took this as commendation for having assigned me a multitude of household tasks over the years; I took it as vindication for ignoring most of the suggestions that I create and observe an exercise program. Some activities ? like dishwashing ? fall into a shadow land between these two places and may be subject to negotiation. But I can still shoot a basketball from 3-point range and am allowed to participate in family touch football as long as I stay behind the line and throw passes. I also climb a lot of steps every day. And now that I’ve got the experts with me, I can take over the power and just walk when I’m going somewhere ? like up the ramps at Angel stadium.

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I went to see “Superman Returns” over the weekend and was bored stiff. I spent a lot of my time while they were crunching plastic sets in the movie trying to remember if I was ever hooked on Superman at any age. I came out of the theater with my usual wash of guilt, which happens every time I can’t get my head into entertainment or public issues that seem to engage everyone else but me.

I’ve been feeling that way for weeks as I read the seemingly endless letters on the Forum page over the location of Newport Beach’s new City Hall. It astonishes me that this issue has pulled more response from Pilot readers than any other in recent memory. And that pushes my guilt button because I really can’t get worked up over where to put the city hall. I guess, on reflection, if I had to vote on a site I would be guided mostly by a strong urge to protect parks.

Then there was my guilt over the opening public concert in Fashion Island last week. To surface my bias up front, I should admit that I had two excellent martinis at a cocktail party the Irvine Co. threw prior to the opening. As Peter Buffa pointed out in the Pilot last Sunday, there will be four more such concerts on subsequent Wednesdays with big-time acts to follow Righteous Brother Bill Medley’s opener.

My guilt is over the fact that I’m not familiar with any of them. I’ve scanned the list carefully, and there isn’t a single Glenn Miller band. Or Keely Smith. Or Barbara Cook. Hell’s fire, we aren’t all dead. However, I’ll have an open mind about the acts coming up if they are preceded by a martini or two. I sell out easy.