UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, August 19, 1992
9C
Future host city shuns Games
TV viewing in Atlanta was low
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — When it comes to Olympic fever, Atlanta was next to last as far as television is concerned. The site of the 1996 Summer Olympics ranked 24th among the largest U.S. cities in television viewing, according to figures released last week by Nielsen Media Research.
Atlanta averaged a 13.6 prime-time rating on WXIA, 22 percent below the national rating of 17.5 on NBC. The top rating was in Portland, Ore., at 22.5. Chicago got a 21.6, while Los Angeles was at 21.0 and New York at 18.5.
"Atlanta is the only major American city where a third of the people did not watch the Olympics," NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol said. "That to me is stunning. I really don't know what it means at this point. It's something that should be cause for alarm to them."
Part of the reason is the defending National League champion Atlanta Braves, who lead the NL West. But the Olympics were a consistently poor draw in Atlanta even when the Braves played during the day.
But Billy Payne, president of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said during a news conference that he saw no cause for alarm.
"The Atlanta audience is less than one-tenth of one percent of the total TV audience. It's insignificant. It's ridiculous. You don't sell the rights fees on the Atlanta market. I'm tired of them."
"The ones who raise the issue are simply the networks, who are always poor-mouthing, and they find anything negative they can," Payne said. "The national ratings were great, so they say the Atlanta ratings are bad, so maybe we don't have to pay as much.
Payne has said his group is seeking more than $600 million in rights for the 1996 Games, but the networks say their bids may be below the $401 million NBC paid for rights to the Barcelona Games.
Atlanta, with 1,404,000 television households, is the 12th-largest television market in the United States, with 1.5 percent of the television homes.
Atlanta's share was 24, which was
24 percent below the national share of
38.
The only U.S. city with a lower Olympic rating among the 25 measured by Nielsen was Charlotte, N.C., which averaged 12.4.
The rating is the percentage of television households, and the share is the percentage of televisions on at the time.
Priority Records goes from rap to rock 'n' roll
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — Two things inspired Brian Turner to expand Priority Records, already known for progressive music, into rock 'bail.
One was finding the right person to head the new division, Priority Rocks; the other was similarities he saw between the disparate genres.
Turner met Charles Pavlovsky, the head of Priority Rocks, when Pavlovsky was trying to sell him on a rock group he was representing. Turner didn't sign the group, but he did make a deal with Pavlovsky.
"He impressed me enough to think, Well, here's a guy that could take an entire division like that and maybe make something out of it," Turner said in a telephone interview.
"Rap is still my main thing, and the responsibilities that are involved with some of the groups I have are incredibly time-consuming. Now at least I have (someone) who thought enough like me and and reacted enough like me (and who can) do it the way maybe I would if I had the time."
Turner, who worked at Capitol Records' and K-Tel before forming Hollywood-based Priority Records with former K-Tel sales manager Mark Cerami in 1985, was ready to do something new.
The similarities he saw between rap and hard rock also got him thinking about expanding the label.
"I've been taking rap records for 10 years, and although I still love it, I needed some sort of a challenge, so I tried to stimulate my creative juices," he said.
Turner said going into rock 'n' roll benefits Premium in several ways.
"They're both viewed as an alternative to the mainstream," he said. "They both have a similar age demographic — from say 19 to 25. It's very youthful music."
"It doesn't stereotype us as much — it expands our potential for just increasing our business," he said. "It allows us the creativity of all those things that go into imaging a group and breaking a group and developing an artist, similarly to what we do with rap, without a lot of radio."
Like another young music industry executive, Rick Rubin of Def American Recordings, the 35-year-old Turner has always signed acts outside the
mainstream.
Priority was named Billboard magazine's Independent Label of the Year in 1990 on the strength of such acts as N.W.A. and Ice Cube, two of rap's most controversial artists. The label has garnered nine gold and six platinum records and had a No. 1 pop album in 1991 with N.W.A.'s "EFILAZAGGIN."
Turner has signed Slammin' Gladys, a blues-based hard rock band from Los Angeles, and British guitar virtuoso and composer Maestro Alex Gregory for his Priority Rocks label.
Like Rubin, too, Turner has a penchant for causing a stir, not only with his old acts but with his new ones too.
Slammin' Gladys vocalist David Brooks was nearly arrested at a recent show in Yale, Okla, on obscenity charges. The cover of Alex Gregory's debut album, "Paganini's Last Stand," shows him urinating on two tombstones.
He conceded that controversy helped sales of N.W.A.'s record, but thinks that isn't as much of a sales factor now because people are "numbed."
"You can see now with the Ice-T record — I don't even think the 'Body Count' album (the subject of a scattered boycott against Time-Warner Inc. because of its song, 'Cop Killer') has really picked up tremendously.
"You can only hear it so many times, and it's exploitative at some point. Everybody's using it as a marketing tool, so when everyone starts to try to generate controversy, people get numb, and they don't really believe it anymore," he said. "I think we've sort of tapped out the controversy thing."
The rock division likely will account for very little of the label's $50 million in revenues this year, said Turner, who has handled rap and only three for rock.
"I'm not like a major label who hires 15 people and staffs a label and says, 'OK, go and have hits.' I'm the kind of guy who has the hits and then staffs up," he said.
"We're very, very encouraged by the response we've been getting on Slamm' Gladys, and if this starts to hit and make money, I don't need to take that money out and pay my bills — I'm going to take that money and put it back into the rock division and let it build from there."
It's a Picasso sculpture; its identity is unknown
The Associated Press
CHICAGO — It was 25 years ago that then-Mayor Richard J. Daley pulled a code to unveil a five-story Picasso sculpture and launch a debate that continues to this day: What is it?
"To me it looks like a bird. It's got wings," said Rico Resonace, 24, a California native who moved to Chicago last year.
"But the face. I don't know, it looks like a horse. See how it has a long horse's nose?"
"But I've seen a couple Picasso paintings in the Art Institute, and so it looks like a woman.
The 50-foot sculpture has two sets of lips and a long bob-on-lace face with close-set eyes, framed by flowing hair—or may wings.
When asked in 1967 to explain the sculpture, Picasso, who died in 1973, wouldn't say what he had in mind.
Whatever it is, the 162-ton engram was wearing a striped blue and yellow hat with a red star on top of its birthday celebration Friday.
"I remember people saying, 'What the hell is it?" recalled David Scott, who works in suburban Lombard. "People were outward, wondering how the hell this guy was to put this thing in Chicago.
In 25 years, feelings about the artwork have mellowed, though time has not settled the debate.
"I always thought it looked like a
Russian wolfhound or an Afghan."
Among those on hand for the ceremony was 95-year-old architect William Hartmann, credited with bringing the sculpture to Chicago.
Hartmann felt an outdoor sculpture by the "greatest artist alive" would be just the thint to accompany its 's new downtown Civic Center.
So with gifts and smooth talk, Hartmann visited Picasso several times at the artist's studio in the south of France. Eventually, Picasso agreed to design a sculpture for Chicago.
A selling job was needed at the other end, too. Daley — father of current Mayor Richard M. Daley — had to be convinced the puzzling mountain of steel was something the city needed.
Picasso donated the design, but benefactors had to come up with $300,000 to build the sculpture at a steel factory in Gary. Ind.
The sculpture was shipped from Gary in pieces on custom-built flatbed trucks, and then assembled on the spot.
To 8-year old Erin Freier of suburban Burr Ridge, the sculpture looks like a baboon. To Darren of Chicago, 24, of Chicago, it's an eagle.
Carol Liberty, 54, compared it to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
There was "a lot of controversy at the beginning," she said, "but now it's one of the most loved things in the country."
'Unforgiven' holds on to No.1 spot
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" held on to the No.1 spot at the box office in its second weekend of release.
The Western made an estimated $11.4 million over the weekend, for a total of about $33.8 million, industry sources said Sunday.
The thriller "Single White Female," starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bridget Fonda as new roommates,
opened in second place with an estimated $10.5 million.
The figures include estimated Friday and Saturday ticket sales and projected Sunday receipts. Final figures were to be released today.
Among other new films, "Stay Tuned," a comedy starring John Ritter and Pam Dawber, was sixth with $3.4 million and "Diggstown," with Louis Gossett Jr., placed a disappointing 11th. It made $1.4 million.
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