Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990                   TAG: 9003092142
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEOPLE

They're con artists, said the ABC-TV moderator of "Nightline."

When asked by NBC's Bob Costas if he was surprised that the fall of the Bakkers gave his show its highest ever rating, Koppel said no.

"Quite the contrary," he said on "Later with Bob Costas," to be broadcast March 21. "It had sex, it had money, it had religion, it had duplicity, it had enormous public interest all the way through."

Did he feel compassion for the couple? Costas asked.

"Not once we were on the air," said Koppel. "I was much more concerned about the people who had given their trust and faith to Jim and Tammy. . . . But they really are, they're a couple of shills. He's a con man and she's a con woman."

James Brown is being considered for two jobs outside the prison where he is serving six years for aggravated assault and failing to stop for police.

Neither job has anything to do with music, but they are Brown's two top choices for the South Carolina Department of Corrrections' work-release program, said Brown's attorney, Richard Crane. Crane didn't say what the jobs were.

Brown, 56, serving his sentence in State Park Correctional Center, earned work-release approval last month.

Johnny Paycheck's seven- to 9 1/2-year sentence in the 1985 shooting of another barroom patron in southern Ohio has been upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Authorities said Paycheck, best known for his 1978 hit "Take This Job and Shove It," pulled out a pistol in the Hillsboro lounge on Dec. 19, 1985, and fired a shot after interpreting a remark as an insult, wounding Larry Wise in the scalp. Paycheck was sent to the Chillicothe Correctional Institute on Feb. 7, 1989, with no chance of parole for at least five years and eight months.

The country crooner originally was charged with felonious assault involving the use of a gun, but a jury convicted him of a lesser offense of aggravated assault. He also was convicted of tampering with evidence.