Komo-TV Ends Production Of Popular `Front Runners'

It has won more than 60 regional Emmys - more than 200 awards in all over nine years on the air. It's an upbeat alternative to cynical programming, and it has a loyal following.

So why is "Front Runners," the home-grown series of positive profiles on KOMO-TV, going out of production?

It's not ratings, says Channel 4's program manager, Mark Stendal - although the ratings aren't what they once were. And the show's worldwide syndication will continue next season. That revenue seems to be intact.

KOMO has decided, however, to devote its production resources to a new project for broadcast next fall.

The last first-run episode of "Front Runners," a retrospective, will air June 10 in the program's usual 7:30 p.m. Saturday time slot. After that, there will be weekly reruns of the smartly produced series. In the fall, the reruns will be broadcast at a new time.

Stendal is tight-lipped, but he said Channel 4 is formulating plans for other non-news programming that will involve the current "Front Runners" production team and probably Steve Pool, the station's popular weather forecaster who has hosted "Front Runners" from the beginning.

KOMO could have continued production of the show for another decade, Stendal said, but there are 361 "Front Runners" programs available for rerun, "and my gut feeling is the time has come for us to be front runners and take a step into the next unknown."

Said Pool: "We went on the air with a message that I think was very important, and we told that message for nine years, which is a heck of a long time, and now I think everybody's ready for a new genre, a new format."

"Front Runners" each week profiles people - many of them celebrities - who have excelled in their fields, often defying long odds and the skeptics, or people who are striving to do so. Pool cited two segments as particularly memorable.

There was the young man who had no limbs, who worked to become the world's fastest amputee sprinter. And Pool once interviewed a girl who had advanced-aging disease who aspired to be a beautician.

"When you sit down and talk to somebody like that, it's the classic, you know, `I think I've got problems,' " Pool said.

"Front Runners" hit the air on Feb. 1, 1986. KOMO syndicated the series in 1992 and this year the program was airing in 13 other U.S. markets, including Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as overseas.

Locally, the show has slipped in the ratings. In May, it reached an estimated average of 85,184 households in Western Washington. That's down from February, when "Front Runners" reached 110,152 households. A year ago, an estimated 101,366 households tuned in and in February 1994, "Front Runners" reached 128,493 local households.