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

DATE: SATURDAY, August 21, 1993                   TAG: 9308210286
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-18   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JACKIE HYMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Medium

ZAP! `TOP SECRET TELEVISION' CHANGES CHANNELS FOR YOU

The sportscaster and host of the syndicated series "Roggin's Heroes" has put together what may be the ultimate channel flipper.

It's a one-hour special called "Top Secret Television," airing Sunday on NBC, in which Roggin will introduce short video clips from around the world.

"Conceptually, we will change the channel on the show," Roggin said. "We'll get bored with something and change it before you get a chance to change it.

"We're going to look at unusual, bizarre happenings from the world of television - things you don't get to see in this country," he said.

"We click to a channel. It could be Austrian television. Then, you may be on the BBC in London."

Don't get excited, Masterpiece Theater buffs. We're not talking about watching Jeremy Irons in "Brideshead Revisited."

"A lot of foreign television is sight gags," Roggin said. "I think that our television is more sophisticated in this country and more conservative. If we've seen a guy get hit in the head with a watermelon, we've seen it a thousand times, but in other countries it plays big. Also, game shows are reckless in other countries. They ask people to do things we could never get away with."

There is, for example, a costumed Japanese man who sneaks up behind people and screams. That goes over like gangbusters in the land of the Rising Sun, along with a survival game whose climax is too scary to be shown on "Top Secret Television."

And, in case you wonder whether people in other nations act as stupid as some Americans, there's evidence from home videos among the 100-plus film snippets.

Who is this man, and why does he want to sub for your channel-changer?

The video and film clip show has become something of a specialty for the 36-year-old Roggin, whose own production company put together "Top Secret Television."

It was his use of thumbnail bloopers, packaged as entries in a "Hall of Shame," that first made Roggin a standout sportscaster.

Then, one night, a bartender made a suggestion: "Hey! `Hogan's Heroes!' `Roggin's Heroes!' Funny, huh?"

Roggin recalls his response as: "It'll never work." But he hightailed it home to put together a syndicated series.

"Roggin's Heroes," with theme Conceptually, we will change the channel on the show. We'll get bored with something and change it before you get a chance to change it. Fred Roggin music borrowed from its old television namesake, is a half-hour of comical peeks at the great and nowhere-near great.

"I learned that `the package' was everything," Roggin said.

He entered sports broadcasting shortly after high school, where he had broken his nose twice while participating in sports.

"It looked like a casaba melon," Roggin said. "I loved sports and I loved to talk . . . so I decided to go into radio. I had a face for radio."

He became Uncle Fred at tiny KIKO Radio in Globe, Ariz., broadcasting from a trailer.

"You'd call up and request a song. I'd say, `You know where the record store is? You'd better go out and buy it or we can't play it.' "

Over the next four years, Roggin got his nose fixed and began working in television in such cities as Yuma, Ariz., Austin, Texas, and his hometown of Phoenix. He landed in Los Angeles at the age of 23.

"When I started, from a confidence viewpoint, I've never believed I was the greatest on-air talent," Roggin said. But he has picked up nine regional Emmys as a sportscaster on KNBC-TV in Los Angeles.

"I've always believed the key is production. If you produce well and you're creative, you can plug somebody into that. That's been my strength," he said.

"My acting talents were showcased on a made-for-television Perry Mason movie (NBC's `The Case of the Tell-Tale Talk Show Host' in May) and I think after witnessing it I'm surprised I even have a job," Roggin said.

"I think if I could play me, which is an adolescent goofy adult, I think I could do that," he said. "Or a deranged person. Anyone could work themselves up and start screaming."