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Opinion Column
For the week of November 1 through 7, 2000

Willis and Moore deserve Hailey’s gratitude

Commentary by PAT MURPHY


Hailey Chamber of Commerce directors presumably were unsettled by the comment of executive director Sallie Hanson when asked about the divorce of actors and Hailey residents Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

"I’m sick and tired of talking about them," Ms. Hanson was quoted in The Idaho Statesman. "If they left, it might be better for the town because people would buy and use the buildings they own that are sitting empty."

Tsk, tsk. Such ingratitude.

There was a time when the Hailey chamber smothered the acting duo in lavish appreciation for settling in the Wood River Valley and buying a home, making substantial business investments and enrolling three daughters in school. Even when Willis-Moore marital eruptions made tabloid headlines, their presence yielded more national attention for otherwise obscure Hailey than anything the Hailey chamber had ginned up in its existence.

Willis’ sponsorship for several years of the annual Fourth of July fireworks, to the tune of about $30,000 annually, produced a true spectacle, drawing thousands of spectators to Hailey.

The empty buildings Ms. Hanson deplores would be eyesores had Willis not bought and refurbished them. An entire block of Main Street in downtown Hailey has escaped the rundown appearance of blight. Willis’ restoration of the Liberty Theater provides first-run movies as well as a venue for amateur actors.

And their financial contributions in tens of thousands of dollars to valley charities and philanthropies – many anonymously – have been generous beyond words.

Whatever else critics think of them, Mr. Willis and Ms. Moore surely have helped, not damaged, Hailey’s economic and cultural life.

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One of broadcasting’s articles of faith – that 18- to 35-year-olds are sainted sources of buying power – always has rankled me.

I say that as a radio talk show host for four years on the Phoenix affiliate of ABC and a year on the NBC affiliate, a year on the CBS affiliate in Miami, Fla., in the 1970s, and still a weekly guest on an independent Phoenix station.

Those over 35, so I was told over and over, are a marginal audience.

But now with the graying of America, could broadcasters be pampering the wrong demographic group?

Happily, local broadcaster Scott Parker may have sensed this faulty logic. Exhausted, he says, by older residents’ beefs about programming on KECH and KSKI, Parker is planning a third local station with music, news and talk shows tailored to mature, thinking people who also have bucks.

Parker seems to understand that many of us who were young in another generation can’t endure what might be described as little more than sheer noise spewing from KECH and KSKI, a deafening collection of cacophonous clatter that Third World terrorists could use to torture confessions out of captives.

So, to escape, we pay $9.95 a month for cable music, or turn to NPR, Minneapolis Public Radio or CDs.

Maybe help finally is on the way for those who want to listen to radio, not be tortured by it.

 

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