The opening images flashing across the screen look like they’re from a high school video project. The shot of the Chicago skyline, filmed from a car on Lake Shore Drive, is slightly tilted, and rain splatters the camera. Cut to sheep running through a field being chased by a shepherd. Cut to people dancing on a cruise ship in what seems to be the middle of Lake Michigan, followed by a shot of a red flower, an exterior shot of a restaurant, and a clip of people stomping grapes. So begins Romanian Soul, which appears every Saturday evening from 5:30 to 6 on WFBT TV Channel 23, the city’s all-ethnic low-power television station, in operation for just a year.
Segments on other editions of Romanian Soul are equally bucolic: in one a man with his head wrapped in a bandanna plays the violin on a hillside at sunset. Others seem oddly out of place–un-Romanian, dissonant. A fashion segment features women wearing very heavy eye makeup and lipstick. The models stroll around an antebellum veranda to the tune of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” pausing every so often to give the viewers a sultry look that lasts several seconds. Then Nick Plumber appears, fixing away, still grinning.
The biggest stars in Romania appear on Romanian Soul. Besides Margareta Clipa there are singers Stela and Irima Popescu. “We also have king of Romanian music–I mean king–Ion Dolamescu,” Podrumedic says. “Then I have Arsimel. What Johnny Carson means here, that’s what he means to us.”
In 1967, Howard Shapiro, a veteran broadcaster and Northwestern University graduate, bought stock in Weigel; later he became sole owner and president. Shapiro was the first television broadcaster in Chicago to recognize the potential of UHF television, installing an antenna on top of the Sears Tower to achieve the greatest possible broadcasting range for Channel 26. Today Shapiro, an avuncular 67 years old, is still at the helm of the company that owns channels 23 and 26. He’s also a pioneer of low-power broadcasting, commercial television that uses the same band as UHF but has a much smaller transmitting radius. Because it’s still cheap, Shapiro says, it’s the next wave for beginning broadcasters.
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More than two million households–6.5 million people–fall within Channel 23’s low-power reach, which extends north to Highland Park, south to Gary, and west to Naperville. Shapiro says that by 1994, Channel 23 may be on the air 24 hours a day. “It seems to have started strong, and I think it’s going to stay that way and even get stronger,” he says.
Shapiro seems ideally suited to the “ethnic and oddball” business. The broadcasters admire his dry humor and prodigious eating and drinking habits. Podrumedic, who calls Shapiro “Mr. President,” says, “We feel like it’s our station, and Mr. President, he was in our place. He is a cool guy, and he was here at the restaurant and we hug, and I loved him. He knows how to do the business, very much so.” Shapiro visits his programmers often outside the studio, among them Podrumedic, who gives him meaty stews and butter-cream pastries. “I like to go visit our sponsors,” Shapiro says, “walk in and say I’m so-and-so.”
If sometimes Shapiro appears pretty impressed by network television, at other times he’s ostentatiously unimpressed. One time CNN stopped by Channel 26’s offices at the Board of Trade to interview him. Shapiro introduced himself to the reporter.
