On a national level, Fox has promised to upgrade its prime-time program-ming to make it less outrageous and more suitable for family viewers.

That's one of the reasons Fox Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch brought in former CBS executive John Matoian to head the company's Entertainment division.On a local level, Fox has taken a step in that same direction by dropping the syndicated talk show "Geraldo" because of its content.

"When we originally bought the program 2 years ago, we were promised by Geraldo's people that the show was going to be more news directed, like his CNBC show now is," said KSTU Vice President and General Manager Steven Carlston. "And after one year, it became very apparent that they weren't fixing it.

"I had a personal phone conversation with Geraldo, and he promised me that he was going to clean up the show. But the tell-tale sign from our conversation was when he said, `We have to make sure we reach the mass audience.' And during every single ratings (period), they continually have gratuitous type of programming that offends most of our viewers. And it also offends me."

As a consequence, KSTU dropped the show as of this week. The station must still honor its financial commitments for the program, but it won't put it on the air.

"This is a program I have control over, that I can do what I want with, so we're going to suck up the contract and pay the price that we have to to run the terms of the contract," Carlston said. "But we don't have to run the show."

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"Geraldo" has never done big ratings for KSTU, but it has brought more than its share of complaints from viewers and advertisers. Last week's topics included male strippers, lesbianism and gossip.

All of which flew in the face of what Carlston said were efforts to make Fox a more "friendly environment" for local advertisers.

"We felt that `Geraldo' was not as friendly an environment as we could have," he said. "And after listening to the concerns of our advertisers and some families that have been calling - and me personally having a problem with the programming, we felt it was time to make a change."

Ch. 13 will fill the 11 a.m. time slot vacated by "Geraldo" with with either movies or sitcoms until the fall.

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