OPRAH’S SWEEP THROUGH GEORGIA

Feb fever . . .

Like November and May, February is one of those months when TV most resembles a carnival. At stake are ratings that set local advertising rates. More than ever, it’s a time of titillating sales pitches and TV tailored solely to enticing viewers.

So buyer beware.

Occasionally, though, the schmaltz gives way. February’s best and most spectacular TV to date--last Monday’s “Oprah” segment from nearly all-white Cumming, Ga.--was on KABC-TV Channel 7. It was an amazing show, a hell raising in the sun.

Yes, “Donahue” aired five segments from “The Soviet Union” last week (on KNBC Channel 4), a remarkable advancement in freer broadcast expression between the two super powers. Even if Phil Donahue was an unwitting pawn in a Soviet public relations campaign, as some insist, his shows spoke for themselves.

For sheer audacity and ratings smarts, though, nothing has topped black Oprah Winfrey’s venture into an area whose white-might ugliness had recently attracted global media attention.

(That Monday’s “Oprah” had the show’s highest national ratings ever, drawing a 69% audience share in Atlanta and 65% in Denver, for example. In Los Angeles, “Oprah” attracted 30% of Monday’s 3 p.m. audience, compared with 25% for Donahue’s first Soviet segment.)

You could have chosen your menace that day, Red or white. Donahue was merely an uppity capitalist in the Kremlin, Winfrey an uppity black in Klanland.

This was infamous Forsyth County, after all, a reported Ku Kluxing, Old South anachronism near Atlanta where blacks were unwelcome and unsafe.

Civil rights demonstrators sought to change that. A Jan. 17 march there by a small group of them led by the Rev. Hosea Williams was terminated by epithet-shouting, rock-throwing counterdemonstrators whose racist tirades were captured and shown on newscasts everywhere. Still more media were present when Williams returned Jan. 24 with 20,000 marchers, and were there when 60 ranting, unruly counterdemonstrators were arrested by policeman.

Moderate Forsyth Countians--who do exist, apparently--protested the tone of the news coverage.

And two weeks later, “Oprah”--the hottest syndicated talk show in America--was in tiny Cumming, telecasting from a restaurant, shrewdly letting Forsyth County residents sound off on national TV.

Williams and seven other demonstrators were arrested outside the restaurant while protesting Winfrey’s decision to include only local residents and thus exclude blacks

from the show.

She was right, the demonstrators were wrong.

Her stated purpose was to provide a forum for Forsyth Countians who felt unjustly maligned by the media. Yes, the show was self-serving, just as the news media always exploit the problems of others for a good story. Yes, Winfrey knew that showing her black celebrity face against a sea of Forsyth County whites promised blockbuster ratings. But that didn’t invalidate the premise of the show.

Winfrey was a one-woman ambassador, surely the most curious Southern belle many whites inside the restaurant had ever seen. TV talk shows can’t really destroy prejudice, but in this hour, at least, the good guys got the last word.

The show had everything: spontaneity, drama, conflict, tension, peril, anger and honesty. Emotions were high and raw. Forsyth County’s record of barring black residents is no fantasy. Yet the vast majority in the room preached racial harmony, and only a minority--only a handful of Klan, Nazis and other white supremacists present--spewed hatred.

Just picture Winfrey standing eye to eye with racists and not flinching:

A bearded white bozo defines the status quo--accepting Negroes as “blacks’ and those who come there “causing trouble” as “niggers.” Another white man, who can barely put two sentences together, tells Winfrey blacks lower the level of education.

She keeps her composure.

Then moderate whites attack the extremist whites. One white woman says that bigots are the real “niggers.”

It would have been nice if someone had noted that good thoughts were not enough, that any of these so-called moderates not fighting racism in their community were a party to racism.

Still, the hour was great TV and great Oprah, one small step for humankind before renewing business as usual for the rest of the week. Her Friday topics were leather and lingerie.

If Channel 7 had had the best of February, meanwhile, it also has had the shabbiest. That label applies to Dr. William Rader’s rousing 11 p.m. news series on bald people, which beat out even Channel 4’s series on people seduced by their therapists.

Where do they come up with these topics, in a bar at 3 a.m.?

You just had to love the expression on Rader’s face as he probed the anguish of the balding set and their spouses. Channel 7’s resident shrink was somber, contemplative, scholarly, understanding, doctorly. After all, these people poured out their hearts.

One can only speculate about Rader’s next grim topic. Here’s one vote for people with dandruff.

winfrey caption; note: no credit; pr photo