FY1
MONDAY, AUGUST 19
SECTION E
The Lawrence whiz kid
By John Whitted Special to the Kansan
Edmée Rodriguez/KANSAN
Scott Konzem sat at his neatly organized desk wearing shorts, a T-shirt and an Atlanta Braves cap, showing off his latest tov.
"You'll like this," he said grinning.
He popped a cartridge into the portable disc drive hooked up to his PowerMac PC and beamed proudly.
"I was running out of hard drive space on my PC so I bought this drive," he explained. "It holds up to one gigabyte of data on each cartridge." Which is, for those who aren't fluent in the language of computers, a whole lot. Certainly enough to hold the data that comprises 12-year-old Scott's home page on the World Wide Web. And certainly enough to hold all of the other projects this computer whiz-kid is working on at home, at school, and at KU's Special Education department.
The words scream out at you when you first stumble across Scott's Web site: "This is the FIRST page done by an elementary student in Lawrence, KS (launched at 4:24 on Tuesday, 3/28/05)."
Frames filled with colorful swirling backgrounds, flashing exclamation points and scrolling text messages fill the screen, all done with the latest web programming techniques. They're subtle indications that you're not dealing with an amateur here.
From here you enter Scott's world, where you can find KU trivia games he's written himself, KU pictures and sound files, helpful hints to future students looking for report ideas and his own list of cool sites to visit on the web.
But Scott's doing his best to stay ahead of the crowd. Future editions of his page will include Java scripts, which allow real-time animations to frolic across your screen, and VRML programs, which take the viewer into the world of virtual reality. An interactive baseball game will allow participants from around the world to log in and try to hit one out of the park.
These are heady concepts for your average elementary student, but Scott discusses these plans with the matter-of-fact nature of one who has no doubts about his abilities in the on-line world. He looks like your average kid in his sneakers and ball cap, but in his area of expertise, his voice resonates with confident tones that belie his age.
It probably helped that he got an early start on technology road. At the age of four he was poking around in the operating system on his family's IBM PC.
"He could use all of the applications on it," said his mother Patricia, a physical education professor at Washburn University in Toneka.
Scott's parents obviously are proud of his computer endeavors, but they don't have to push him toward it.
Not that those skills haven't come in handy in the Konzem household.
"My dad often calls me for help," Scott said of his father, Richard Konzem, an assistant athletic director at the University of Kansas.
Scott's opportunities were provided through a cooperative effort between his school's gifted program and the KU Special Education department.
Scott's gifted teacher, Elaine Schmidt, said she knew right away Scott had to be exposed to a more challenging environment.
"He had more computer skills than I had, or anybody at the school had," she said. "I knew he needed to be connected to more knowledgeable people."
Jerry Chaffin, professor of special education, agreed to let Scott come up to the University and hasn't regretted the decision.
"He just had an interest in computers when he arrived here," Chaffin said. "But he's made tremendous growth. He's a very thoughtful and responsible kid."
It was at the lab that Scott immersed himself in HTML, the code in which web pages are designed. He didn't choose the easy route, either.
"I wrote it in the actual code. I didn't use the helper programs," Scott said, referring to the multitude of programs that now are available to allow the less computer literate to throw up a web page.
He also designed the official Quail Run Elementary School home page, the first to be done by a student. Scott did the programming himself.
At the school, Scott was known as "Mac Fixit" because he used his free time to solve computer problems the teachers had. He received special recognition for his services at his elementary school graduation.
Scott, not satisfied with just these accomplishments, wanted to wrap his fingers around the actual codes that govern the world of computers. It was this desire that led him to tackle another project: C programming language.
The University provided Scott with a book outlining C programming techniques and turned him loose.
Above: Scott Konzem, 12, has set up his own World Wide Web page on the Internet. He also designed the home page for Quail Run Elementary School.
"He read seven chapters and wrote his first program that night," his mother said.
"Konzem's Mowing Service," he laughed. "I even get mail for it sometimes."
Of course Scott can't spend all of his time at the University, so he has worked to build his own home system. He has an Apple PowerBook laptop and a PowerMac PC that he works on at home, much of it paid for by a local business: his own.
It would be difficult to qualify Scott as a so-called computer geek despite his
Right: Konzem's home page offers, among other things, KU trivia, report tips for students and a list of sites on the Web.
extensive knowledge. He plays baseball, basketball and racquetball, and writes in his spare time, all fairly normal activities for your average kid.
But that doesn't mean he doesn't spend a fair amount of time pursuing his computer hobby.
"I spend about five hours a week on the Internet, Scott said. His mother made a disbelieving noise.
"Okay, maybe 10 hours," Scott added. "I'd say 15," his mother corrected. Scott just smiled.
"He's going to be the next Bill Gates," his mother joked.
http://www.sped.ukans.edu/~scottk/skhome.html
Talk shows to trade trash for positive programming
By Scott Williams
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Tall, beefy Gordon Elliott heaves a sigh of relief when he talks about repositioning his successful, syndicated talk show for its third season.
"The marketplace has changed in our favor," the jolly Australian said, after producers of the Gordon Elliott Show announced plans to relaunch the show this fall, moving away from in-your-face issues to humor, celebrities and breaking news.
"We're not so much relaunching as exploiting my strengths, which we were not doing in the conflict-generated talk arena," Elliott said. "The ratings have shown that people like what we do with this tall, rather odd Australian."
Elliott's makeover, one of several due this fall, was announced following the success of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, which debuted in June with a blend of comedy and celebrity chat — and has won the highest ratings since Oprah Winfrey's first year.
answered those critics, and allows us to take the show in the direction we've wanted for the past two years."
"We've had people tell us, You can't do it. It won't rate," Elliott said. "Rosie has
"Look at Phil and Oprah. The up-marker works," Elliott said. "If you do go down
Ricki Lake and her relationship-driven Ricki hit the road this fall, with live remote broadcasts from U.S. cities and shows that are more solution-oriented, her syndicator said.
market, there's always somebody who's prepared to undercut you."
Maury Powich hopes to fold his topical talk show and, in 1998, create an early evening syndicated news magazine with his wife, former CBS anchor Connie Chung.
Sally Jesse Rafael
Another makeover is slated for Geraldo Rivera, who said in January that he would fold Geraldo! and rechristen it The Geraldo
Rivera Show, refocused on current events and his strengths as a newsman.
Rivera, still remembered for the broken nose he received in a studio brawl, said he realized the audience was fed up with trash talk's ambush interviews, excessive conflict, even violence.
"I absolutely loathed my participation," he said. "I was getting to the point where I had to hold my breath before I walked on stage, and my show was never that bad. Compared to some others, I was doing Masterpiece Theater."
last year was a tough one for talk shows. Syndicators trotted out seven new shows, all patterned after Ricki, and watched them die in the ratings one by one by one.
"I think we got below the lowest common denominator," said Richard Perin, president and CEO of syndicator MG-Perin Inc. "The advertising community was distinctly unhappy with the direction that talk was going.
"The big gorillas in daytime — the F&Gs,
the Bristol-Meyers; the Levers, the Colgates,
the Kraft Foods — those people are
sensitive," he said. "They want to reach
Sure, there are still shows specializing in shock, schlock, sex and the dysfunctional you-fill-in-the-blank, but Jerry, Sally Jessy and Jenny seem to have turned down the heat.
people, not offend them."
"The new Jenny Jones still has titillating topics," said Janeen Bjork, vice president of Selelt, representing stations in ad sales and program purchases. "Where it used to be 'My Lesbian Girlfriend Beats Me Up,' now it's 'Please Makeover My Lesbi
Makeover My Lesbian Girlfriend."
Ms. Blork said talk shows, with bored or
"Rosie O'Donnell is telling us something about viewers," Ms. Bjork said. "She came along just about the time people were saying a variety show couldn't work. They were saying that about sitcoms just when The Cosbui Show came along."
Geraldo Rivera
disenchanted viewers and leery advertisers, were dealt a crippling blow from an unexpected source — the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
"You want prurient interest? All the things that these talk shows appealed to were there," she said.
Talk show ratings had peaked by February 1995, just as the prosecution's case against Simpson went into high gear. Then they slumped, and they have yet to return to pretrial levels.
The only shows that were unaffected by the Simpson case were The Montel Williams Show, with its emphasis on social issues, and the breezy, celebrity-driven chat of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.
Live, in turn, paved the path for Rosie O'Donnell, who subbed for Kathie Lee and found she liked the work.
The Simpson trial also helped Rivera. Despite his misgivings about *Geraldo*, he devoted his CNBC nighttime show entirely to the trial and found his focus.
"I'm going to cover pop culture. That's my mandate," he said.