University Daily Kansan / Monday, August 26, 1991
3b
Patrick G' Brungardt/KANSAN
Not quite sure what to say, 7-year-old Chante Neaves (left), of San Diego, looks questioningly at disc jockey Tami Hale, Wichita senior, during a live radio broadcast on KJHK from the Merchant Fair at South Park. The station sponsored events Thursday and Friday as part of its annual fair and auction.
Infomercial network will start Labor Day
What's my line?
The Associated Press
NEW YORK— Sooner or later it had to happen: an entire, 24-hour, satellite-delivered TV network that totally, completely and almost lovingly dedicated to infomercials.
Infomercials are the 30-minute paid programs that have driven bad old movies and "Gilligan's Island" rurals from the slack spots and "dead time" of broadcasters' weekend days and predawn nights.
You've seen them all: hand-hammered woks, a amazing slices, stain removers and tooth whiteners. Fire-creams are a key element of the beautiful. Diets of the skinny.
It's a relief, almost, that Home Shopping Network Inc., the biggest telemarketing company in the world, got there first with Infonet, scheduled to launch on Labor Day. HSN prides itself on satisfied customers.
"We are taking this art form to a new level," said Earl D. Greenburn, president of HSN Infonet Inc. and HSN Entertainment Inc., distribution and production subsidies of HSN, which had $1 billion net retail sales last year.
In addition to its three Home Shoping Club channels, which generate 72 hours of live programming every day, Infomet will air other companies' info-
mercials and produce 40 hours of its own infomercials this year.
That is an ambitious business plan, said Steven Dworman, author and editor of the industry's fledgling newsletter, Infomercial Marketing Report. Industrywide, infomercials have an 85 percent failure rate, he said.
There are other hurdles, as well.
"Only one out of seven shows suc-cess," Dworman said. "I think they're going to have a very difficult task in producing a product that's going to work."
Objectively speaking, Infonet picked a lousy time to get into the infomercial business. Sales, hammered by the recession and the Persian Gulf war, are down at least 20 percent for 1991.
But Dworman said the company had the resources and talent to make the infomercial network a success.
Costa Rica dig may determine prehistoric diet Twenty students can go to Golfito to search for food remains under discarded shells
"I'd say it'it's going to take about six months for them to get on their feet, before they really start getting a feel of what they're doing and what's going to work," he said.
Renker said, "The key question is, do their new infomercial products closely match the mass audience? Or will they have been misled by the relative predictability of their loyal audience?"
By William Ramsey
Kansan staff writer
KU students will have the chance next spring to leave behind Mt. Oread and spend a semester in a rain forest.
"it's hard to imagine a place less like Kansas than Costa Rica or Golito," Hoopes said. "The rain forest is, like, the opposite of the prairie."
About 15 undergraduate students and four or five graduate students will work on two jobs in Giffoft, Costa Rica, with John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology.
The students will spend four weeks studying Spanish at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose, and another 11 weeks in the coastal town of Goliforte. Golfito is on the Pacific side of southern Costa Rica, above the Panamanian border and on the edge of a rain forest.
The students will search in the area of a prehistoric village near Golfite for organic and food remains which have been preserved in buried piles of discarded shells. Of these two piles, or shell middens, one dates from 200 to 600 A.D. and the other dates from 700 to 1500 A.D.
"It's hard to imagine a place less like Kansas than Costa Rica or Golfito. The rain forest is, like, the opposite of the prairie."
-John Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology
Hoopes, whose research is paid for by a grant from the National Science Foundation, said the information would help determine the diet of the prehistoric people and the local ecology during the period.
"We are trying to understand the intimate relationship between a small village and the tropical forest environment prior to the arrival of Europeans," Hoopes said.
He said the findings from the field school would be sorted and counted by the students, who will rotate jobs during the semester.
Nason Kloppenborg, Lawrence graduate student, accompanied Hoopes on a field survey of the area last year. Kloppenborg will
assist him at the field school
Klipppenbott, who is working toward a master's degree in archaeology, said the sites in Golito were good because local thieves who take valuable artifacts were not interested in the scattered and broken remains from the prehistoric village.
"The number and size of artifacts just laying on the surface is amazing," Kloppenborg said.
Hoopes said the students would be able to learn not only from their course work, but from the area and from an independent study period, for which they receive two of their 12 credit hours.
Mary Elizabeth Debicki, director of the KU Study Abroad program, said the program was open to all students, but was recommended to those with knowledge of Spanish or archaeology.
There will be an informational meeting about the program from 3 to 5 p.m. Sept. 4 in the Walnut Room of the Kansas Union. The trip costs about $3,100, plus airfare.
Jennifer Hoeffner/KANSAN
John Hoopes' research is financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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