TV & VIDEO - Nov. 24, 1988

From our Hype Imitates Life folder: Alert Southern California drivers have noticed that some of the 550 billboard advertisements promoting talk show host Geraldo Rivera’s program have been . . . altered. Now, according to a spokeswoman for KCBS Channel 2 (which airs the show locally), about 50 of the billboards are sporting bandages over the host’s nose--reflecting the broken nose Rivera suffered during a racially inspired melee on his show. The idea was a KCBS promotional idea, generated by the station’s marketing staff “as a gesture of publicizing Geraldo’s nose for trends in society.” The ads stay in place until the first week of December.