Between now and Monday, the focus of Presidential politics is in Iowa, the first test of voter preference. GOP and Democratic candidates are embroiled in debates both on the campaign trail and in formal debates. Pat Blank of member station KUNI in Cedar Falls takes us behind the scenes..

Report:
It's a Saturday morning at Iowa Public Television, and if it weren't for the dozens of satellite trucks in the parking lot and hundreds of people on the lawn, in the lobby and in the hallways, it would be a typical day at the office. But not this Saturday and especially not this year. The Iowa caucus is the first test of strength for presidential candidates and today the six men hoping to make a good showing in the GOP race are readying for a 90 minute televised debate. Nancy Crowfoot is the show's producer and if she's stressed, you'd never know...

Crowfoot "Um, if someone has, ya know, less hair than another candidate, well, we adjust for that. If someone's skin tone is a different color or a different shade then we adjust for that. Um, and that's what some of the work is being done right now."

Crowfoot went through the whole process before, four years ago, and again last weekend when the two Democratic rivals were on stage for a 60 minute program. She admits she's seen and heard just about everything, but didn't have an answer for what she considers a pretty simple question..

Crowfoot: "I've been rattling off this information, ya know, um, several times a day to different campaigns and to, uh, the media that call, and everything. And one question that actually stumped me, that I couldn't answer was when, uh, Vice President Gore was here an he said, um, and I said well ya know we're gonna roll credits over a wide shot of the studio, and, and, and, and that'll be it. And he goes, "well, and what do you expect me to do during that time?' and I'm like, you're asking me for my opinion? I just thought that was kind of funny. I'm like, and I couldn't answer. I said, Well, ya know, you could stand up here on the set I suppose. If you wanna go out in the audience and shake hands I don't care, ya know, we'll just follow you.' But as it was, as it turned out the debate ran a little longer than we thought and we had a time limit that we had to be out by and so the credits were cut short and the long shot of the studio lasted maybe twenty seconds so it didn't really matter what anyone did on the set."

In electronic media the clock is your deadline and timing is everything. That's not the case with print journalism, Crowfoot often finds herself making reminders to her newspaper co-sponsors.

Crowfoot: "One hour is not sixty minutes in T.V. time. It's fifty six minutes and forty six seconds, so, um, ya know, with newspaper people, who're used to working in, ya know, inches of copy and words, ya know, it's a whole new thing for them. So, I would like, time the debate out, ya know, with their answers and I'm also counting the seconds it takes the moderator Dennis Ryerson to say, ya know, 'Senator McCain, your time is up. On to the next candidate.' That's four seconds by the way."

For today's debate, the sponsors issued 340 credentials or press passes which allow reporters into rooms equipped with telephones, fax machines and a large rectangular box that allows radio and television reporters to get the audio from which they'll use sound bites for their stories. And with hundreds of press present this debate has become a world event.

CROWFOOT: "This week for the first time, ah, we have MTV news. I don't know what they're gonna do, what they're gonna cover, but they're coming. Ah, we have, ah, Vanity Fair is here, going to come. At least they've requested credentials, um, we have Japanese television stations that are going to be represented here, um, I was told that there was an Australian news agency here last week. I didn't see them, they're, ya know, there's just a number, a wide variety of interest in these debates."

The initial planning for these debates began almost a year ago, when Iowa Public Television and the Des Moines Register joined forces in a bidding war of sorts to get the candidates to come to Iowa prior to the caucuses. As it turned out the events were scheduled on consecutive weekends. Great for promotional purposes, but a nightmare for those behind the scenes like Crowfoot and her crew...

Crowfoot: "We have, um, like at least forty five people on the Iowa Public Television staff working this debate. That includes, um, people who are just there in the media room to assist with the technical, um, ah, ya know, getting the malt box and the D.A. feeds and to what I call hall monitors. They make sure everyone in the back hallway actually is credentials, um, to, uh, ushers, um, um, people from our staff to help seat, um, people in the studio auditorium. The Register also has volunteers working in the parking lot to direct traffic, ya know, to say satellite trucks can park here, the public can park here, if you're a volunteer or a staff person you park next door, ya know, they're just trying to keep everything, um, as organized as possible."

But even with the best laid plans, there is always unexpected. While the candidates were on the stage, a stretch limousine pulled up in front of the studio. Two people in bright, pink pig suits armed with a briefcase of play money jumped out told the crowd to protest the "pork" in the budget, hopped back in the car and left. Crowfoot and everyone else inside was oblivious to the stunt, in fact she was busy making travel plans for a vacation later this month.

For On the Media, I'm Pat Blank in Johnston Iowa.


Commentator David D'Arcy - Baywatch Hits Prague

There's a specter haunting post-communist Europe, the specter of commercial television. What had been controlled by the state is now opening to private exploitation. One American who has tried to do just that is cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder. Lauder started a television network in the Czech Republic to bring Baywatch to Prague. After a successful start, the investor has gone public with a dispute with his partner and the Czech government. reports that there" more at stake.

Report

Outside the Czech Republic, the battle over television there is seen as a fight between a wealthy interloper and a local populist. It looks like that because the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder is suing the former president of the private network, Nova Television, Vladimir Zelesny, for hundreds of million of dollars. But just a year ago, Lauder and Zelesny were partners in venture to bring commercial television to a promising former communist market. Lauder had hoped to create networks like it all over the former East Bloc - and he has. But in the Czech Republic his former partner has taken over. By law, a Czech had to be the official owner of the Broadcast license. That was Vladimir Zelesny The goal was to reach as broad an audience as possible, with the lowest common denominator of programming. Stefan Uhlik, who produces a film program for Czech State television, explains.

UHLIK - "There was a big competition-..the commission made two mistakes -- they in the very -normal stupid private television is doing."
Once Nova got on the air, Uhlik says, public service went out the window.

UHLIK "already in the first night-..they should immediately stop them."
But they did not, and Nova grabbed more than 70% of the audience in the Czech Republic. Just as quickly it started making money. Lauder's broadcast projects had not been able to do that in other East European countries. But the scheme unraveled. Zelesny transferred ownership of the broadcast rights to his company. Lauder fired him in April. Each party fired lawsuits at each other, and Lauder's firm has invoked an investment treaty that the United States signed with the Czech Republic in 1991. Zelesny set up shop in the old empty Barandov film studios outside town and published an autobiography which depicts Lauder as a new incarnation of the Soviet aggressors. Lauder's most recent response has been full-page newspaper ads discouraging investors from putting money in the Czech Republic - a real threat to a capital-starved country and the television network he's set up is a threat to what's left of the Czech film industry, which is largely funded by Czech State television, which has lost much of its audience to NOWA.

In a larger country like Poland, which has a population of 35 million, outsiders like Lauder have a more difficult challenge to penetrate the media market. In the Czech Republic, film critic Radovan Holub is concerned. If the public can't become accustomed to seeing good films funded by Czech Television, public standards will drop.

RADOVAN HOLUB "comes with the kind of films"

Holub says what's most frustrating about commercial television, as represented by NoVA TV whether it's owned by Ronald Lauder or by a Czech intellectual, is that it has just as little respect for the audience as television under communism did - except now private TV in the Czech Republic has more credibility.

RADOVAN HOLUB "you can feel it-..this the same pattern."

So far, Czech intellectuals are far more concerned over the fight over television than the general population is. CME investor Ronald Lauder's office in New York referred us to CME's London office. Its president was never made available for an interview. CME's grievance will come before a European arbitration panel this spring. Lauder's former partner, Vladimir Zelesny, is currently in violation of the panel's order to reinstate Lauder until the dispute is resolved. Lauder is also pushing the US Congress to hold hearings on his dispute with the Czech Republic.

For On The Media, I'm David D'Arcy


Andrea Bernstein - Sitcom Families

It's no secret by now that working parents face challenges every single day balancing the demands of work and family. When parents are forced to work overtime, or children are sick, or babysitters cancel, a delicate balance can morph instantly into a crisis. There isn't a working parent who doesn't know this. Except for the ones on TV. On the Media's Andrea Bernstein reports.

In the land of "ER," there are plenty of working parents. Dr. Peter Benton is frequently portrayed taking his son in or out of child care, or looking pained because the evil Dr. Robert Romano is forcing him to work overtime yet again. Dr. Mark Green has part time custody of his daughter Rachel. Physicians Assistant Jeannie Bouley quit her job after becoming a foster parent to spend more time with her son. And just recently, nurse Carol Hathaway gave birth to twins Tess and Kate. Six weeks later she returned to work.

Dr. Green: "Carol, can you get an IV set for exam 2."

Carol: "I'll get to it when I can?"

Dr. Green: "It's been in the rack for an hour."

Carol: "I just checked the rack. Was it in the wrong slot?"

Dr. Green. "Doesn't matter. Lady's got pneumonia."

Carol: "And this gentleman has chest pain. I can only do one thing at a time. Mark, I'm moving as fast as I can."

Dr. Green. "I know it's your first day back and its going to take a little while to get back into the flow."

Carol: "I don't think any of my patients have suffered from my being a little rusty as Dr. Kovacs put it."

Dr. Green. "I didn't mean to imply that-"

But if Carol's co-workers are bending over backwards to be sympathetic to her attempt to balance life as a nurse with 12-hour shifts and as a single mom with twins, over in another corner of TV-land, single mom Jesse Warner isn't so lucky. She quits her job as a nurse's assistant when her supervisor tells her she can't leave work early to attend her son's hockey game.

Son: "I can't believe you quit your job over a hockey team."

Neighbor: "Especially that one, you guys stink on ice."

Jesse: "Excuse me for trying to be a good mom."

Neighbor: "C'mon really happened-was it that Curt guy?"

Jesse: "I took on too much, I'm in over my head, it is too hard for me alright? I am not superwoman. I am rather incapable girl."

But if you think television is pretty sympathetic to working parents, think again.
Lauren Asher is Communications Director for the National Partnership, and organization which lobbies congress on work a family issues. Their 1998 study of prime time television found that, of 820 characters sampled, only 21 had any kind of recognizable work/family conflict. And an update performed last fall found that little had changed.

Asher: "What was really striking was the degree to which work family conflicts were just ignored. -very few of the parents on TV showed any indication of concern about child care, who was with their children. Television has in fact caught up to women's participation in the workforce, but its missed an important piece, which is that many of those women are mothers. It's twice as hard to find a working mom on TV as it is on real life. Two thirds work in really life, just one third on TV."

Take an episode of the hit show "Frasier," which features single mom Roz Doyle.

Roz and Frasier are temporarily unemployed when their station switches formats from talk to salsa music. Roz has had to borrow money, after complaining how expensive it is to raise a baby. But then Roz brings Frasier a gift

Roz: "That decanter is not just to say thank you. It's also to say congratulations! The station manager called me a half an hour ago I made him promise to let me tell you the board has reconsidered. They're changing formats. They're bringing us back! We start tomorrow!"

Frasier's Dad: "What's going on?"

Frasier: "Good news Dad we got our jobs back at KACL!"

Frasier's Dad: "Congratulations."

But amidst all the back-slapping, there's one thing missing. What will Roz do with baby Alice? Roz doesn't even have to make one phone call to arrange child care. How she pays for child care is never brought up. Even Jesse - our rather imperfect girl - doesn't have to pay for babysitting. She seems to have a limitless supply of neighbors who can watch her 11-year old son when he gets home from school - for free. That's typical, says childrens' media researcher Katherine Heintz-Knowles, who did the research for the national partnership study. She says that those very few shows that do recognize work family conflicts tend to gloss over the problems. That even happened in the recently defunct "Mad About You," which at least tried to deal with baby-raising issues in an honest way. In one episode, Jamie runs into the political consulting team of James Carville and Mary Matalin in a restaurant, and is immediately offered a job.

Jamie: "Will you be okay with me thinking about working?"

Paul: "Sure."

Jamie: "Really?"

Paul: "Absolutely. In fact, here's a deal. You stay home from work, I'll take care of Mabel."

Jamie: "Look at you, a guy makes one loaf of bread."

Paul: "Ahh."

Jamie: "Is this a little John and Yoko fantasy you're having."

Paul. "No, I thought of this all myself. For your information, A I like taking care of her, and 2, I happen to be very good at it and three I got nothing to do."

Any working mom would be left breathless at how easily Jamie's child care problems were resolved, says Heintz-Knowles

Heintz Knowles: "She could go back to work very easily because her husband could stay home with the baby and this perfect job opened up for her that would allow her to come back at a level that she was comfortable with at a job she was perfectly comfortable with and it was sort of the best of all worlds."
Not only that, Jamie's employer was so understanding she could change the baby's diaper on a desk in the course of a job interview. Even so, in the middle of the episode, Paul runs downtown to do an errand - alone. Who's minding the baby? We never find out.

Okay, okay, maybe we're getting a little persnickety here. Andrew Reich is a writer for Friends who also worked on Jesse. He says get a grip - these are sitcoms we're talking about.

Reich: "Work and family issues, sure you don't see sitcoms dealing with it that much but there are many things you hardly ever see them going to the grocery store you don't see every aspect of their lives you do show what you need to tell funny stories."

Anyway, Reich says, when it came to Jesse, viewers didn't really want the working mom story line. They were much more interested in Jesse's relationship with on-again off-again boyfriend Diego. And on Mad about You, viewers used to a story line about childless adults were unwilling to stick around when baby came along.

Reich: "You want television to be something that people can relate to but you also don't want to showing something where people say I don't need to be watching television to see this, I could just look around and this is just a drag."
Well maybe. TV analysts say that sitcoms themselves are on the decline. After Seinfeld, they say, viewers are less willing to accept your ordinary sitcom about, say, a single guy and his two roommates and their airhead neighbor. For now, more dramas are on order. And with their longer format and broader character portraits, dramas, not sitcoms, lead the way in exploring work and family issues.

For On the Media, I'm Andrea Bernstein.