The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 27

3Htt Jpfiilatdpfiia inquirer WEDNESDAY August 31, 1988 BUSINESS, on 10-C MAG SECTION PEOPLE HOME MOVIES THE ARTS TV STYLE BADLY Special places Independence Hall, the Art Museum, the Academy of Music everyone knows them as special places of the Philadelphia area. But a community park built by neighbors in Camden, a vacant lot turned into a stunning garden in Tioga, a proudly landscaped block in South Philadelphia only the residents there know how special these places are. Until now. Today, The Inquirer continues a series with the fourth of five articles on precious places, khere people have made their world better. it jrin ar ti The Philadelphia Inqurar RUN CURTIS Frank Zoppetti works on the Terrace, the median strip that the Colorado Street residents landscape; they also light it up at Christmas time.

PHILADELPHIA8 MM rs JOhNSTy sOy I I pftCKtR AWfcj" 'Pulling together on Colorado St. The Terrace is the community's pride and joy. pioneering Italians whose families came to Colorado Street from the old country just as pioneers settled the Western state who give Colorado, the street, its special character. "In this heat, honey after all, I'm 81 and three-quarters years old I don't feel like coming out and doing this, I'll tell ya," Ann Lawson said. But even as she spoke, the octogenarian came down her steps in a blue housedress, carrying a shovel.

Slowly, yet not stopping to rest or wipe the sweat from her brow, Lawson began to pitch dirt into a plastic garbage bag to make the Terrace beautiful once again. She stopped only for a moment, to ask an idle visitor, "Do (See TERRACE on 4-C) flowers and trees that the folks on Colorado Street had planted. The Terrace is an urban oasis that makes Coloradans proud and passers-by smile. The harsh noise and exhaust from Oregon Avenue, just a few feet to the north, somehow don't intrude here. The sunlight is dappled, the air light and fresh.

The Terrace is a magnet of community pride. "When I drive onto my street," Sam Packer, an automobile upholsterer, says proudly, "I feel like I'm in the suburbs." Colorado, the street, has some things in common with Colorado, the state. Both are landlocked, rectangular territories with grassy expanses. And it is the people mostly By Mike Capuzzo Inquirer stuff Writer The sun was setting on Colorado Street in South Philadelphia, and the pioneers who had tamed the land were nowhere in sight. Norma Pinto was down at the shore, and Frank Zoppetti, who had played 18 holes of golf in the morning, had pulled a few weeds and retired for the evening.

That left Ann Lawson, 81, alone in the middle of Colorado Street with a pile of dirt and the temptation to say something in Italian only for God's ears. The dirt pile was spoiling the view of "the Terrace," a grassy, landscaped parkway and cul-de-sac bursting with Ann Lawson (left) and Denise Papa chat before cleaning up the street. WTGI: A TV channel with a foreign accent 1 -sswi A snapshot taken with one of the first cameras of 1888. By Murray Dubin Inquirer stuff Writer Roberto Vasquez, who lives in North Philadelphia, has never met Young Keum Choi, who lives in West Philadelphia. And neither Vasquez, who is Puerto Rican, nor Choi, who was born in Korea, has ever met -Alfonso Soglia, an Italian-born hair stylist who lives in the Torresdale section of the Northeast.

We bring those three people to your attention because they share an activity that a small but growing number of immigrants and hyphenated Americans in the Philadelphia area seem to be discovering. They watch the foreign-language programming on WTGI-TV, Channel 61, based in Wilmington the newest local UHF station and one that bills itself as "Philadelphia's In- ternational Channel." "We looked at the marketplace and at how many people out there don't speak English," says Daniel Slape, WTGI general manager. And at those for whom English is not a first language. WTGI is on the air 18Vj hours a day, two-thirds of which are foreign-; language programming. The percent- age of ethnic programming is even higher on the weekends.

"It's time that Italians had a pro- gram on television," says Soglia, 42. "It's Rood for my kids to watch, to pick up the language. I like to watch the news, to see what's happening in the old country. I like the movies, and I like the soccer on Sundays." Vasquez, 66. a data clerk, discov- A hundred years of watching the birdie V- I "A i is I i 'r 1inr iimImm "HtLtJ.

vilul ered Channel 61 by fiddling with the dials. "I like the news, news from the world. It's better and clearer than the Inetworkl news, and it's in Spanish," he says. Choi, who was a teacher in Korea, heard an ad for WTGI on the radio and has been watching it ever since. "I like to see the dramas about the history of Korea," he says.

"And I understand the news better on 61." It is difficult to measure the success, economic or otherwise, of a small, independent television station. Rating services such as Nielsen are expensive to hire, and viewers who aren't proficient in English may be reluctant to fill out a television-watching diary, Slape says. The foreign programming, which began in February, is doing well, he says. But it is difficult to prove. "Yes, it's very unscientific," Slape says.

"It's viewer mail, phone calls, the fact that viewers have asked the cable operators to carry us." WTGI began broadcasting on July 9, 1986, as a UHF station with reruns such as Run for Your Life with Ben Gazzara. "We were like Channel 57 or 17," Slape says. That effort failed. In November 1986, WTGI switched to home shopping. "It was a format that provided us money while we decided what we really wanted to do," Slape says.

"I researched the marketplace from an almost radio point of view, going after narrow niches. I decided that the future of small television stations in big markets was defining a niche and programming to it." Slape learned that four or five stations in large cities were succeeding with ethnic programming and that several other stations across the country featured limited ethnic programming. But Philadelphia had no station featuring a large block of ethnic programming He then discovered there were large numbers of Spanish, Italian and Korean speakers in the Philadelphia area, and he programmed his station around them. With the avail-(Sce WTGI on 6-C) By John Corr Inquirer Stall Writer ties and tourist attractions, such as the Liberty Bell. The patent for George Eastman's Kodak camera, a technological marvel that caused something of a social revolution, was issued Sept.

1, 1888. For the first time, ordinary people were able to record the ordinary Eastman's Kodak made America snap and snap and snap. Chaya Goldstein, a 6-y ear-old rose petal from Baltimore, stares solemnly at the Liberty Bell for a moment and then like many of the people around her she points her camera at it. mmmmmmmmm moments of their lives. In the century since then, people have taken an estimated 500 billion snapshots of Uncle Harry wearing a funny hat, George and the kids at Niagara Falls, Tom and his new car, the wedding reception, the birthday party, the dog and the new bahy.

"The idea of easy pictures, snapshots, fascinated people from the beginning." said Philip Condax, director of the technology collections at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. Condax has mounted an anniversary exhibition at the photography museum in the (See SNAPSHOTS on 4-C) Click. And there goes one of the IS billion snapshots Americans will take in 1988, the 100th anniversary of the creation of the snapshot camera. "She loves that little camera," said Chaya's father, Morris. "I do, too.

It's so automatic, it's hard to make a mistake." Ironically, a lot of Americans were saying the same in 1888, when they showed off their brand-new Kodak cameras, the instrument that revolutionized photography. And most of the Americans of a century ago were taking the same sort of pictures that Chaya likes to take with her little automatic family members, pets, par- Indcx Ideas trends 2-C Ann Landers 2-C Miss Manners 2-C Senior forum 2-C Word watcher 2-C The Arts 5-C Going-oiit guide S-C Television 8-C TVradto talk 8 The PMUdelprwi inquirer toiCHAfci irViRTZ Chaya Goldstein photographs the Liberty Bell. -t -n.