Dr. Laura, Best Of Herman Make Their In Life Debuts

FOR THE RECORD: 3-10-98 Station wrong: Dr. Laura Schlessinger, radio’s most-listened-to psychologist, can be heard from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to noon Sunday on KGA-AM (1510). The wrong radio station was cited in a Saturday IN Life story.

Look for two new offerings in the IN Life section. One might help you sort out some of life’s problems, the other will tickle your fancy.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, radio’s most-listened-to shrink, can now be read in a weekly question-and-answer column that will appear Saturdays. She replaces Cheryl Lavin’s Tales from the Front column, which has run for nine years, on page E2.

Dr. Laura, as she’s called, has written two best-selling books and recently published a third, “Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives.”

Her radio program, which generates 9,000 calls each day from its 20 million listeners (give or take a few), is broadcast locally at noon each weekday on KJRB-AM.

She’s known for her no-nonsense, straight-to-the point advice about relationships, kids and life’s crossroads.

Schlessinger fell into the talk-show biz 20-some years ago. She was listening to a Los Angeles program geared toward women and intimate discourse and called in to respond to a question. The host was so intrigued by her personality that he had his producers call her. She was invited to share the mike with him once a week, and a year later began her own program.

Dr. Laura has a doctorate in physiology from Columbia University Medical School, and certification in marriage and family therapy from the University of Southern California.

Fans of the comic strip “Herman” felt a keen loss when author/artist Jim Unger retired in 1992.

They’ve had to console themselves with assorted “Herman” merchandise and with the many books - some 2 million copies - which have been sold.

But those same fans can now rejoice.

United Features Syndicate has decided to bring the strip back, offering newspapers 10 years of “the best of” Unger’s work.

Unger, 60, produced 18 years and 6,000 “Herman” panel strips in all. Now living in the Bahamas, he personally supervised the cartoons that will be re-released. He even made changes in an attempt to improve the gags.

He may even offer a selection of new work.

“I’m still creating new material,” he said in a United Features press release, “but I doubt I will ever do this full-time again.”

At its height, “Herman” ran in more than 600 newspapers and boasted more than 40 million readers in 25 countries.

Look for the new “Herman” strip to run Monday through Saturday beginning next week. It will replace “Bizarro.”

, DataTimes