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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995                   TAG: 9508020005
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SACRAMENTO, CALIF.                                LENGTH: Medium

THIS TELEVISION TALK SHOW IS JUST FOR MEN

Fred Hayward has the antidote: a talk show about men.

Hayward's ``SacraMENshow'' isn't coming to a network near you. Instead, it started last month in the Wayne's World of community access television.

But Hayward, executive director since 1977 of a nationwide advocacy group called Men's Rights Inc., has big plans for the show.

``Forty percent of the viewing public is men, and nobody is competing for them at all,'' said Hayward, 48, in between caring for his infant son.

``SacraMenshow'' will focus on what Hayward calls discrimination against men on television. Too many talk shows present only women's perspectives, he says.

``If one of them is doing a show on men who work for women bosses, they might talk to 100 guys and 99 say `I don't care if I work for a woman or not,''' Hayward says.

``But one guy is going to say `I don't want to work for a woman, she should be home picking up the house,' and that's the guy they put on TV. It's a very unrealistic view of men.''

Women are taught to blame all their problems on men, who usually are portrayed as jerks, Hayward contends.

When it comes to talk shows, he may have a point. See if you can guess the villains in a typical one-day lineup of talk shows in Sacramento:

``Jenny Jones,'' five women after the same man.

``Geraldo,'' delinquent daughters.

``Montel Williams,'' one-night-stand pregnancy.

``Gordon Elliott,'' conceited men.

``There's a lot of really serious things happening to men that people are not talking about,'' says Hayward, who has appeared on many daytime talk shows to present male views.

For instance, nobody on talk shows seems much concerned that men, on average, die eight years before women, he says.

``If this were happening to women, it would be on front pages every day,'' Hayward says. ``It would be the No. 1 health issue of our time. We'd be talking about gender genocide.''

Even if the issue of male life expectancy comes up, it is presented as a woman's problem, Hayward says, with talk of the poverty or loneliness of widows, or the shortage of available men for them to date.

``It's packaged as if dying is one more thing men do to make problems for women,'' he says.

In regard to abortion, Hayward says, the debates center on the rights of women to end pregnancies. But how about the consequences for men who may not want children but are saddled with 21 years of child support if they make a woman pregnant?

Women can demand abortions if they don't want children, Hayward says. ``If a man says the same words, the same people who call themselves pro-choice say he should have thought of that before he had sex,'' he says.

Or take child custody. Hayward contends American fathers in divorces too often get stripped of their legal rights to see their children.

``Feminist organizations are leading the fight against joint custody,'' he says.

Yet Hayward believes that as long as women overwhelmingly get custody of children, they can never compete equally for jobs.

For him, this is a personal issue. Hayward is locked in a court fight with an ex-girlfriend over visitation rights to their son.

There are other examples where men fare worse than women, Hayward says.

Mandatory military service is one. If President Clinton wanted to take decisive steps to end the nation's day-care problems, women would rejoice, Hayward says. But if his solution was that at age 18 every woman had to work for two years in a day-care center, he would be vilified.

``I'd rather work in a day-care center for two years than fight in El Salvador,'' Hayward says.

Or take boxing. ``If women were being beaten into unconsciousness on television and we called it entertainment, legislation against boxing would occur,'' he says.

``My job is to raise awareness of these issues,'' Hayward says.

For now, that awareness will be limited to weekly shows broadcast in Sacramento. His first program will focus on what happens when the parent with custody after a divorce teaches a child to hate the other parent.

``A lot of women out there are sick of the talk shows,'' Hayward contends. ``They want to hear what is really going on with men.''