Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1983-04-21

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75th Year No. 187 Good Morning! It's Thursday, April 21, 1983 2 Sections 14 Pages 25 Cents
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Technicians prepare cameras and lights Wednesday fortonight's production of " Viewpoint" in Jesse Auditorium BnmCNeiH
' VIEWPOINT' STRATEGY
ABC army ready for climax of costly battle plan
By Silvia Ascarelli
Mlssourian staff writer
When you flip your dial to Channel 8 for " Viewpoint"
at 10: 30 tonight, you will see a slickly produced pro-gram
with smooth camera movements, even lighting
and a studio- lik- e set
The signal will originate in Jesse Auditorium, where
the program is being broadcast, and then travel 2,400
miles back to local television sets, compliments of the
latest satellite technology and some old- fashion- ed tele-phone
lines.
Crews have put in hundreds of extra hours to make it
happen. For the small army of technicians using thou-sands
of dollars worth of equipment and miles of wiring,
going on the road to Columbia means extra effort.
ABC producers began drawing up the battle plan for
this massive effort a month ago. The network's army
consists of 30 handpicked staff members and 13 Universi-ty
students. The support battalion has brought miles of
wires, 100 lights, a couple of dozen television sets, 16 mi-crophones,
eight cameras, cooking faculties and per-haps
even a partridge in a pear tree.
The cost to the network will be almost $ 200,000.
It may not cost quite as much as World War II, but the
logistics involved could boggle the minds of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.
D- D- ay is 10: 30 p. m. central tune. All the planning,
which began when ABC accepted School of Journalism
Dean Elmer Lower's invitation to broadcast " View-point"
from here, comes to a climax tonight.
This behind- the- scene- s planning is what the viewers of
" Viewpoint" won't see:
y-- D- D- ay minus 30. Senior producer Bill Moore spent a
day in Columbia scouting potential facilities. He looked
at several local theaters, and m the end chose Jesse Au-ditorium,
despite its size. Although " Viewpoint" prefers
a cozier setting usually the size of the auditorium's
balcony tonight's audience will be 1,800, the faculty's
capacity.
But with all the events going on this week, Moore says,
" This basically was the best of what was left."
Armed with a set of floor plans, Moore and those in
charge of the set, lighting and cameras made their plans
over the next few weeks.
The set, designed for Jesse Auditorium's dimensions,
Mows the " Viewpoint" look: a semi- circl- e of six seats
for the guests, three on each side of moderator Ted Kop- pe- L
The set was trucked in from New York.
A tower on each side of the stage contains seven tele- -
Focus on ' Viewpoint' program Page 8A
vision sets on which the guests and audience can watch
CBS correspondent Bill Moyers, who will participate via
satellite from New York. The television sets also will
show what is being broadcast across the country
Other monitors, spaced closer to the back of the audito-rium
and in the balcony, will be linked to a " remote"
outside.
Eight cameras will be used, five on the stage and three
m the audience. As many as 11 have been used in pre-vious
broadcasts of " Viewpoint"
ABC also is using 16 microphones two for moderator
Ted Koppel, two at each of three stations in the audience,
one for each guest and a couple of spares.
Wires lead to one large cable that links it all to the re-mote,
a truck rented from St. Louis that is a complete
television studio Senior audio engineer Vincent Perry
estimates the audio equipment uses approximately a
half- mil- e of wires
Apublic address system was brought in from New
York to ensure everyone in the auditorium can hear
the panelists and questions clearly.
General Telephone Co provided temporary phones
and hues leading to and from Jesse Hall
To light Jesse Auditorium, lighting director Walt
Palmer says he will use 100 lights rented from Kansas
City, Mo., the most he has ever used for a " Viewpoint"
program.
He will use two- and- a- h- alf miles of cable and 840 amps
of power.
For the first'time, he also is using two trusses, black
metal contraptions suspended from the ceiling, to hold
some of the lights. To focus the lights, a man will use a
metal trapeze ladder to reach one of the trusses and will
rappell from the ceding to reach the other. Those goings- o- n,
ABC hopes, will not appear on camera.
- D- D- ay minus three. The crew began arriving. The
trickle will turn into a flood by Tuesday.
Koppel arrives the day of the broadcast.
On Monday, the " focus spot" for the program was
produced in New York with Jeff Greenfield, ABC's
media and political analyst. It outlines the topic the
media's coverage of presidential campaigns for the
audience and panel and will be broadcast at the begin-ning
of the show.
D- D- ay minus two. Local groups with a special inter-est
in the topic were invited to send representatives
That helps ensure an audience willing to ask questions,
Moore says
" There aren't a whole lot of people who want to get on
television, believe it or not," he says
JDay minus one. By 9 a m , the auditorium has be-come
a beehive of activity as almost everything is set up
Today the lighting will be finished, and a mock rehearsal
will be staged to find the best camera angles The crew
usually has three days to prepare, Moore says, but the
Oluo Ballet performed in the auditorium Tuesday
" We can do it in two days," he says In Columbia,
they've had to.
- D- D- ay minus one hour. The audience settles in and
becomes accustomed to the lights.
v D- D- ay minus 20 minutes. Koppel and the panelists
take the stage and test their equipment Koppel then tells
the audience the ground rules No speeches Keep the
questions concise and direct
D- Da- y. The opening tape rolls from New York all
pretaped parts will come from there
" Viewpoint" will go from Columbia to Chicago by tele-phone
wire and then via a Westar 4 satellite to New
York. Bill Moyers's voice and picture will be added in an
ABC studio, and both it and the live show being beamed
to 5 6 million television sets across the country will be
sent to KOMU via a Comstar D3 satellite
A temporary link built by GTE brings those signals to
the remote outside Jesse Hall.
Moore estimates it will take one to one- and- a- h- alf
seconds for the signal to make the 2,400- mi- le trip
Outside Jesse Hall sits the remote " Viewpoint's"
version of a command center. All wires lead to here.
Moore, George Watson, the ABC vice president in charge
of the show, and others will monitor the show from there
The show will run upwards of two hours. Because noth-ing
follows " Viewpoint," it is not limited to its one- and- a- h- alf
hours. Later in the program questions tend to get
better as the audience becomes more comfortable with
the cameras and more involved with the subject, Moore
says.
y D- D- ay plus two hours. Another show finished, the
crew will tear down the set by 3 a. m. Then it's back to
New York and Washington, D. C., to prepare for the hour- lon- g
version of " Nighthne" that debuts Monday.
17K7
9: 30 a. m. Boone County Court meets, county
courtroom, County City Building
7: 30 p. m. Spring programs at Fairview, Benton and
Grant elementary schools
7: 30 p. m. " Robin Hood," musical at West Boule-vard
Junior High
8 p. m. Guest Artist Series, Music from Aspen,
Fine Arts Recital Hall, f. ee
10: 38 p. m. ABC " Viewpoint" with Ted Koppel,
Jesse Auditorium '
Inside
Bulne .......................... ....................... .......... 6B
Omitted ... . . 4- 5- B
Opinion ... 4A
Sporti . m ......... ...................... ......... .1- 2- B
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Ptopl ......... 5A
' The embassy endures'
Diplomat recalls brush with death i
BEIRUT, Lebanon ( UPI) It
sounded like rolling thunder. Then
there was a flash, a wall collapsed and
Dundas McCullough was struggling to
breathe in the dust- filled'ldarkne- ss of
the VS. Embassy.
His head still bandaged and his voice
trembling, McCullough recreated those
terrifying moments inside the embassy- whe- n
the bomb containing approxi-mately
300 pounds of TNT went off and
killed at least 35 people.
McCullough said he was speaking
with someone when he heard a rolling
thunderous sound.
" There had been a thunderstorm ear-lier
in the day. But this went on too
long.
" I realized my chin was on the coun-ter,
and there was a big flash of light m
front of me and then the wall separating
s
the file room from the waiting room fell
on me and my interpreter," said the
diplomat, a native of Berkeley, Calif.
In the complete darkness that enve-loped
the waiting area of the consular
section immediately after Monday's
blast, McCullough said he struggled to
get on his feet
The disintegrating concrete was
choking him and he wondered if he
would survive the blast only to suffo-cate.
" I wasn't sure whether it would be
possible to breathe," he said. " But I
was able to stand up and the air cleared
and there wasn't much left.
" I walked into what had been the file
room," he said. " I realized then that
the whole front of the building was
gone. I had to make sure I didn't step
off the ledge
" There was one person who was un-- j
derneath some debris, and I tried to i pull the debris off her. But then I real- -
lzed she was dead." 1
He found another person auve and 1
pulled him out of the rubble But that J
man could hardly see.
A Marine in a gas mask escorted f"
them to the waiting ambulances that t sped them to American University Hos-- . j
pital. In the carnage of the moment, his j
wounds were not severe enough to war- - j rant immediate treatment 1
McCullough said he has no intention 1
of asking for a transfer out of Lebanon ;
despite his brush with death.
" The embassy endures," McCullough 1
said. " There's not much point in giving
the people who place bombs in our em
bassies the satisfaction of driving us out t
early." t
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Dundas McCullough and his wife, Re- ecc- a,
sort recovered documents.
i
City to end
UE pact
Rates to stabilize
By Reno Tawa
Mlstourian staff writer
Electric bills won't be so shocking after the city pulls
the plug on its contract with Union Electric Co on June
1, Water and Light Director Richard Malon said Wednes-day
The decision to stop buying electricity from the utility
is part of the city's long- ter- m plan to reduce rates Al-though
utility bills will rise 5 percent in August to offset
the costs of buying electricity elsewhere, rates will stabi-- i
hzein the long run, Malon said Tuesday
Kates would have increased more rapidly had the city
continued to rely on Union Electric for power City con-sultants
estimated that rates would have jumped from $ 5
to $ 15 per kilowatt hour.
" In the long haul, it's going to be very significant,"
Malon said. " Ultimately, over a 30- ye- ar period, the sav-ings
will be in millions of dollars to the city "
The city's plan to purchase small blocks of power from
other utilities is its most economical option, Malon said
The Nearman plant in Kansas City, Kan , will provide 20
megawatts of electricity annually, and the Sikeston, Mo ,
plant will provide another 30 megawatts The largest
portion 86 megawatts a year will come from Colum-bia's
own municipal power plant, which is to be reno-vated
during the next few y ears.
" We want to be flexible and to diversify our resources
so we're not dependent on one utility or plant," Malon
said
By investing in other power plants, the city also will
have more control over rates, Malon said Like a home
owner who pays a fixed mortgage rate, the city's $ 5 6
million payments to the Kansas Board of Public Utilities
will not increase
" We anticipate what this will do is fix our costs," Ma-lon
said " There may be minor increases from tune to
time, but the major cost of the plant will be fixed "
Because the city's costs are fixed, utility rates also
should stabilue, Malon said.
Under the Union Electric contract, the city could have
bought up to 50 megawatts a year until 1991. The agree-ment
to break the contract calls for the city to pay to use
Union Electnc's transmission lines to carry electricity
from the Nearman plant to Columbia
Utility believes
ruling won't halt
Callaway plant
JEFFERSON CITY ( AP) A U S Supreme Court de-cision
Wednesday allowing states to ban new nuclear
power plants until the federal government finds safe
methods to dispose of radioactive waste apparently will
not stop construction of the Callaway nuclear plant
That's the view of spokesmen for Missouri government
and the utility building the plant
Jay Johnson, a spokesman for the Missouri Public
Service Commission, which regulates utilities, said the
commission's legal staff believed it would take a voter- approve- d
referendum, such as one rejected by Missouri
voters in 1980, to halt or prevent construction of nuclear
power plants in the state
Johnson and a spokesman for Union Electric Co of St
Louis, which is building the Callaway plant near Fulton,
said it is not likely the decision will affect plant construc-tion.
The 1980 proposal known as Missouri's Proposition 11
would have established a law banning the construction of
nuclear plants until a safe radioactive waste disposal
method was found
The Callaway plant is scheduled to begin operations in
early 1985
In a 9-- 0 ruling, the court upheld a moratorium on new
nuclear plants that was enacted by California in 1976
The opinion did not specify what effect the ruling would
have on the 57 nuclear plants now under construction na-tionwide.
Only four of those plants are in states with laws
or rules against new plant construction
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who won
the case for the state of California, said the decision
means states can prevent all 57 of those plants from be-ginning
operations
However, Dick McAleenan, manager of nuclear infor-mation
for Union Electric, said the ruling solely address-es
economic concerns of California that future nuclear
plants might one day be shut down because the federal
government had not found a way to dispose of radioac-tive
waste.
Such an interruption in electrical service would have
drastic economic consequences, California officials have
said.