Las Vegans tuning in to PBS programs

Judy Moss cooks it all. There's hardly a recipe she hasn't tried.

She owns 300 cookbooks and says "I love to eat. I love to cook."

So it's no surprise that every Saturday, you'll find her tuned in to KLVX Channel 10 to watch the lineup of cooking shows.

What is surprising is how many Las Vegans are joining her.

Moss, 60, a pit boss at the Skyline Casino in Henderson, has watched the shows consistently for the past 10 years.

"For me, it's the ideas I get," she said. "I always watch."

In fact, so many Clark County residents are devoted to not only the cooking shows but other how-to's, that Channel 10, the local Public Broadcasting Station, found itself at the top of the Nielsen charts for Saturdays during February Sweeps.

For three out of four Saturdays during that month, the popular lineup of domestic instructionals, such as "Baking With Julia" and the home improvement series "This Old House," drew in more viewers than Saturday cartoons, sports highlights and movies on local commercial stations.

"Julia Child even beat college football," Debbie McGee, spokeswoman for Channel 10, said.

The popular lineup beginning at 11 a.m. includes other how-to's, such as "Cucina Amore," a 30-minute instruction on creating full-course Italian dinners complete with wine recommendations, "Victory Garden," "Yankee Workshop," "Hometime" and "Dessert Circus."

Representatives from the station say they never fully realized the popularity of their "how-to's" until last fall, when they became part of Nielsen's overnight rating system.

But they had some clue that they ranked well among their members.

"A good percentage of calls we get are about 'how-to' programs," McGee said. "There are so many things we could offer, but we know how responsive the people in Las Vegas are to 'how-to's."'

The local viewers are so responsive, they're also "out-watching" PBS viewers in other cities.

The November sweeps, tracked by TRAC Media, a Tucson company that conducts audience rating and analysis for PBS television stations across the country, reported that KLVX Channel 10 was the most-watched PBS station in the country on Saturday and Sunday during November.

"People are watching PBS proportionately more in Las Vegas than other PBS stations in the country," Patty Thaxton, vice president of programming at TRAC Media, said. "The audience in Las Vegas is very supportive of PBS."

"For a station that was 76th four years ago and not really functioning as a PBS, we've really come a long way," Shelli Jones, program manager for KLVX, said.

Four years ago, the station didn't have a program director. It was understaffed, underfinanced and lacked on-air promotion.

During station breaks, viewers sat through lengthy video footage of the desert. Now viewers are kept abreast of upcoming specials and are entertained by the humorous promotional "image spots" showing the value of watching educational television.

While PBS officials say credit for the weekend popularity is due to the local station's expert staff and the arrival of General Manager Tom Axtell four years ago, some admit that its growing success may be in part to a maturing Las Vegas.

"It doesn't surprise me," Stu Kantor, spokesman for the Alexandria, Va.-based PBS, said. "It just shows how well connected people are to other parts of the country,"

Or maybe it's that other parts of the country are bringing their habits to Las Vegas.

"We're attracting a different kind of person than we did 30 years ago, a more normative person," Hal Rothman, a history professor at UNLV who is writing a book on Las Vegas' changing image, said. "And they're effectively doing what they've always done.

"Las Vegas is attracting more highly skilled people contributing to high-end services, such as doctors, lawyers and architects. We're grafting toward upper middle class. These people are retaining their tastes and insist on acquiring those amenities here," Rothman added.

Some of the transplants are literally acquiring new tastes.

Tracey Davis, who works in admissions at a local hospital, said the Saturday cooking shows have taught her new dishes, an effort she said she never would have made had she stayed in Louisiana, where traditional Southern cooking was all she knew.

"I like the new recipes and to try new things," Davis said.

The 30-year-old moved to Las Vegas from Louisiana five years ago. She noticed the Channel 10 cooking shows while flipping through the stations on a Saturday afternoon and was hooked.

While Davis admits that learning to measure properly was difficult because "back home it was a pinch of this and a pinch of that," she said she has succeeded in serving stir-fried dishes and baked meals to her family, and occasionally to friends on weekends.

Moss, who also learned a few new tricks and tastes from the shows, said papayas were a mystery to her before she began tuning in. "I knew nothing about papayas. I grew up in Kansas. Then I went to the grocery store and it's there."

A semi-Pritikin cook -- she adheres to a no-fat, no-sugar diet -- Moss enjoys mixing the different ideas and flavors she gleans to the more bland Pritikin dishes. "You have to make (the food) livable," she said.

The shows also serve as a source of entertainment and education.

"I love Burt Wolff. You always get to take a trip too," Moss said, adding that she has no clue what other channels offer on Saturdays.

As for Julia Child, Moss loves her, "but she's into baking and stuff."

And Justin Wilson? "For me he has too much fat in his recipes. He never hesitates to put in a cup of butter or two cups of wine," she said. "But I pick up ideas. And he's always got a good joke."

Although the bulk of the Saturday viewers are women 64 and older, the home improvement shows bring in young homeowners hoping to pick up a few pointers on how to tear down walls, build new ones, use a lathe and make raised panel doors for their kitchen cabinets.

"They have a lot of hints and ideas that would help you do things you normally wouldn't think of," Tim Carlson, local resident and home improvement viewer, said, adding that handiwork, remodeling and working with woods are his hobbies.

So much so that he chose his 20-year-old home in Spanish Oaks specifically for the remodeling opportunities.

Carlson and his wife, Lynne, began remodeling their home more than three years ago and just finished last September.

"Home improvement activities are growing a lot because of the help of these shows," Carlson said. "It used to be a craft -- for trained professionals -- now it's becoming more of a hobby."

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