Our little Margie: Big time, big loss

Loosely Speaking by Nancy Gaines

Much handwringing at WCVB Channel 5 these days as editorial director Marjorie Arons-Barron prepares to leave for a big-bucks job as director of media communications at BankBoston, leaving fears of a rollback in the station's commitment to editorials. Arons-Barron was recruited by Ira Jackson, the bank's executive vice president, who was previously an aide to Boston mayor Kevin H. White and a Dukakis cabinet official. Arons-Barron, a former Phoenix writer, not only set the national standard for television editorial research and comment, she busted it. During her almost 20 years at Channel 5, Arons-Barron was the only editorial director in the country to win the industry's top prize more than once. She won it five times.

Is it Armageddon for Planet Hollywood? Well, no, probably just Deep Impact. At least in Boston. Which may be the Terminator point in this chain of "eatertainment" sites. The parent company of the long-awaited/long-dreaded movie-theme restaurant under construction on Boylston Street at Fairfield Street (once the locus of a Sunoco station) is scrambling to survive. Amid layoffs, selloffs, and stock plunges (investors who bought at the 1996 high now hold paper worth less than 10 percent of what they paid), Boston Planet maintains its promise to open with great fanfare in April. One who won't be there is a certain local investor, who owned 5000 shares of the company founded by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Demi Moore, and Bruce Willis, along with Hard Rock Café impresario Robert Earl and, later, Sly Stallone. He says when he learned there was to be a Boston opening, he called Planet headquarters in Orlando, asking to be put on the guest list. Sorry, he says he was told, those invitations only go to "important people." So he dumped his stock, marking about 10 percent of the shares moved in the corporation's market that day. Harrumph. The parent company, which lost almost $16 million in the first nine months of this year (compared to a profit of more than $52 million in the same period last year), is suffering, by all accounts, because its cachet was tied to celebs whose fame is fleeting. Still, the Boston location is prime; the developer is renowned Tishman Corp. of New York; Planet has obtained a liquor license; and even though it paid restaurateur Charlie Sarkis what most say is an inflated $10 million for the site, it stands to win by selling the real estate and leasing back the restaurant portion of the big building. Investors in the eatertainery could get stiffed, but those in on the real-estate deal would be eating pretty. Which, say some, is exactly the point. "It's the food, stupid" -- more suited to Kindergarten Copland, they complain, never mind the fact that the movie-theme concept is just damn tired. "But Boston is still lusting for a place like this," says one competitor. Why? "It's Boston." Nah, says a national expert with local roots. "This is even too tired for Boston."

When the other top stations in Boston abandoned regular editorial comment (Channel 4's Geri Denterlein now runs public relations at McDermott/O'Neill; Channel 7's Don Lowery is spokesman for the Patriots), Channel 5 management and news staff pointed with pride to the station's continued commitment to local issues. "It's what made 5 feel superior -- and be superior," as one local leader put it. "They had political clout, and were taken seriously within the business and decision-making community."

In addition, Arons-Barron was the brains and brawn behind Five on Five, the only locally produced Sunday-morning think-talk show. (Loosely, as one who's appeared on the program, knows that Margie's briefing books were what made any of us -- Avi Nelson, Micho Spring, Hubie Green, etc. -- instantaneously omniscient. Sorry, guys.) Station general manager Paul LaCamera says Arons-Barron's jobs will be filled in-house, and while there will still be editorials, their frequency is questionable. "Does that diminish our standard?" he asks. "I don't know."

Uphill skier

A modest MIT PhD and (why are we not surprised) Cambridge high-tech alphabet soup company owner has thousands schussing softer and better these days on K2 skis and snowboards. But you ain't seen nothing yet. Two years ago, the company began selling "smart skis," equipped with a gizmo (okay, a piezoceramic module) that, in essence, eliminates vibrations. The innovation was produced by Ken Lazarus, head of Active Control Experts, who we hear was a helluva party guy in his undergrad days at Duke, and who now quietly plans to revolutionize the aerospace and automobile industries with his company's brainchild. Consider: jets that don't shake, disk drives that don't quiver, and cars that don't vibrate. Consider.

'I root for blood'

So said Boston's TV statesman of equipoise, WHDH Channel 7's John Henning, answering the hoary question of where lay his rooting interest when his hometown Pats played his brother's team, the New York Jets. Dan Henning, short-lived Boston College football head coach ('94-'96), can now lay claim to being the quarterback coach for the Jets in the career-making year of quarterback Vinny Testaverde, once relegated to the scrap heap. The Brothers Henning grew up in New York City's Queens Village, just across the line from Elmont, in Nassau County, Testaverde's home. "It's like a homecoming," said the newsman, noting that Dan Henning and Jets coach Bill Parcells first coached together at Florida State in 1970. Rooting "is a tough call," added Henning, the veteran political reporter. In the end, though, blood's thicker than water, "and I gotta think about my brother supporting his family."