The ultimate call-in contest

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 9, 2001

YORK, Neb. (AP) -- Radio station KAWL is holding another contest. This time, though, the prize is the station itself.

Prairie States Broadcasting decided to unload its 47-year-old station with a radio trivia contest that costs $1,000 to enter. Provided 1,000 people sign on by May 31, the winner will get the station free and clear --if the Federal Communications Commission approves the new owner. "In our business we've been creating promotions for customers for years. Why not have some fun and do it for ourselves?" said Tom Robson, who manages the station for Tom Gleason and his family, who own a second station in the state.

The winner must correctly answer 30 trivia questions about radio, such as what do AM and FM stand for. In case of a tie, contestants will be matched in a word-find puzzle containing radio terms.

The contest was announced last week at a radio industry meeting in Dallas. Three hundred entry blanks were handed out. By Wednesday, seven people had returned them with the $1,000 fee, which will be returned if 1,000 entrants are not found.

The York station, which serves a largely farming audience in the region 45 miles west of the capital, Lincoln, is also running a promotion that offers two lucky listeners $12,000 in farm supplies, including enough seed, fertilizer and fuel to grow 80 acres of corn or soybeans. "It's definitely a local station," Robson said, adding by way of salesmanship that it's making money.

Small, steady and surely fanantical

NEW YORK (NYT) -- Book publishing, like many entrancing enterprises, has its own quiet outskirts of charm and profitability that few think about amid the glamour of huge advances, mega-selling authors, celebrity agents and star publishers. But the fantastical obsession for filling up those small empty white squares with J's and I's and L's and S's until they become words is one of those inaudible amusements that generate sales in the many millions of what is really an esoteric genre, the crossword puzzle book.

Who buys these books? The answer is inferential. It is generally believed in publishing that the puzzler population is small but steady, and surely fanatical, made up of pencil wielders (or pen wielders in the case of the truly confident) with an implacable will to tackle something difficult but attainable every single day.

In fact, it is probable that most puzzle people buy nearly every serious book of crossword puzzles offered for sale, which accounts for the numbers. Demographically, people 40 and older are the crossword militants. The industry wisdom is that younger people play video games and spend their time on the Internet. (One can work crossword puzzles on the Internet, but to the crossword addict there's nothing like paper.) Of course, we seem to be a game-playing country -- poker, bridge, trivia, all very popular -- but Peter Osnos, publisher of PublicAffairs books, said: "Many people do crossword puzzles the way other people exercise. It's the original inactive game."

Osnos was formerly publisher of Random House's Times Book Division, the premier publisher of crossword puzzle books. "We sold 5 or 6 or 7 million copies a year," he said. "I wasn't particularly a crossword visionary; it was simply a way to make money." In addition to puzzles from The New York Times, Random House published crosswords from The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, among others, all under the direction of Stanley Newman, who is Random House's director for puzzles and games. (The New York Times puzzles are now being published by St. Martin's Press, although Random House retains the backlist.)

Random House, Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press are the Big Three of puzzle books, although there are some smaller presses in the business, like Merl Reagle's puzzle book series, published on the West Coast, and Sterling Publishing's crossword books. The word "book" is actually a misnomer. What we are talking about are spiral- notebook-type publications that sell mostly in the $10 range and are cheap to produce.

Yesterday, when I was young

NEW YORK (AP) -- Today is the 40th day of 2001. There are 325 days left in the year. Here are some business and legal highlights from this date in history:

In 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

In 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was established.

In 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.

In 1950, in a speech in Wheeling, W. Va., Sen. Joseph McCarthy charged the State Department was riddled with Communists.

In 1964, The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Utah vs. N.C.

SALT LAKE CITY (NYT) -- When American workers abroad were counted for the 2000 census, only federal employees were considered, a rule leaving out a large group that included more than 11,000 Mormon missionaries from Utah. As a result, the final state-by-state population figures, which are used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives, showed that Utah missed qualifying for the 435th and final seat by 856 people. That seat went to North Carolina instead.