Garrison Keillor Would be Proud

Turns out the music heard for two-plus decades on Live at Laurel and Music of the Southern Mountains fits rather nicely into WUOT's programming.

The public radio station recently decided to axe the two locally-produced shows to focus more on classical and jazz music. But at the same time, the station was planning to add a weekly rebroadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor's nationally syndicated show, which has a remarkably similar format and style. (Those plans haven't changed.)

Confronted with many angry complaints, administrators decided there is a place for local programming of this sort.

Enter a new show: Mountain Jubilee, which will be produced by Jubilee Community Arts (producer of Live at Laurel) and hosted by Paul Campbell (producer of Southern Mountains). The new show will combine elements from its predecessors, but will focus exclusively on Southeastern music. Live performances from the WUOT studios will be broadcast, along with Laurel Theatre recordings and vintage records. Starting April 3, it will air Saturdays at 9 p.m., following A Prairie Home Companion and The Thistle and Shamrock.

Folks at both Jubilee and WUOT say they're tickled with the new program and time. "I think it's a good slot, a better slot than we had before, and offers a lot of possibilities, especially the expanded use of the studio," says Brent Cantrell of Jubilee.

Regina Dean, WUOT executive director, says the new line-up still allows the station to tighten its focus. Friday nights will feature jazz programming, and Saturdays will be set aside for folk, country and regional music.

A Day at the Zoo

After two weeks of talking about how Tom "Zoo Man" Huskey used to kill prostitutes near the Knoxville Zoo, the Court TV in-studio hosts have added a clarification to their coverage of the trial of the accused serial killer. At the beginning of each segment, which customarily starts with ominous music and file footage of Knox County deputies carrying body bags out of the woods followed by that scary, 1992 Huskey mug shot morphing into the pudgy "I've been sitting in a jail cell talking to Kyle and eating baloney sandwiches for seven years" 1999 image, the talking head in New York says that the Knoxville Zoo is a pretty safe place, despite the fact that Huskey used to kill people nearby. Head Zoo man Pat Roddy was given some air time to explain that zoos are fun places where nobody gets murdered. Cahaba Lane, where the bodies of the victims were found, is many miles from the Zoo.

Police Beat

Captain Paul Fish is getting some major ink for pounding the city's new walking beat himself, after it was found objectionable by a couple of lower-ranking officers. Fish, known to be extremely close to Chief Phil Keith, had first assigned officer Scott Coffey to the newly-created beat. Coffey, as you know, is the young officer who pulled Keith over last October on suspicion of drunken driving (the now-famous O'Doul's caper), and then complained that he was being harassed by higher ranking officers as a result. When Coffey balked over being assigned to the new walking beat, the KPD solution was to assign it to a senior officer—Kent Bates—who in turn complained walking the beat gave him chest pains. That's when Fish took over, generating newspaper and TV coverage.

"That beat was designed for punishment. It was designed by Paul Fish, for Scott Coffey," says attorney Eddie Daniels, who represents both officers. Kent Bates, as well as his brother, Brian Bates, have been in the KPD doghouse for years because of the political activities of their father, Jim Bates, Daniels says.

"They've had problems for years because their father ran against Lillian Bean." (Bean was a political ally of Mayor Victor Ashe).

Daniels says the beat in question is "huge," stretching from Depot to Emory Place, from Fifth Avenue to Broadway to Cooper Street, and that protocol requires that officers walk the beat in pairs. Unlike Coffey and Bates, who were required to walk the beat from 10-7, Fish walks for 2-3 hours, rarely alone, Daniels says.

"Now they want to justify it as a valid beat," Daniels says.