Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 221

On the cover Chs. 20 and 56 opt for optional PBS programming By Marla Hart et's say it's Thursday evening and you're watching the Cosby kids on TV. Or, maybe you zap the remote to catch Bart mouthing off to dad on "The Simpsons." For something completely different, you could punch up "Ethics in America" on WYCC-Ch. 20 and see ex-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop debating with columnist Ellen Goodman and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about a tricky right-to-die case.

Far from a dry intellectual exercise, "Ethics" is a riveting weekly roundtable discussion featuring a panel drawn from Congress, medicine, the law and the media, hashing out devilishly thorny hypothetical dilemmas that challenge both the heart and mind. This is alternative television dished out not by some maverick public-access station but by public television's WYCC. Broadcasting from 6 a.m. until midnight seven days a week, Channel 20 is owned and operated by the City Colleges of Chicago. And it is just one of three alternatives when it comes to PBS programming in the Chicago area.

In addition to WYCC and the stalwart WTTW-Ch. 11, to the south, around the end of the lake, is WYIN-Ch. 56, General Manager Elynne Chaplik Aleskow (above) says WYCC's goal is "to find as wide a range of programs as possible." Meanwhile, General Manager Richard Parker (below with promotions manager Becky Raabe) says WYIN's budget restraints have forced his station "to look to other places for our big bang." speare," a show produced by the British OUR CU COLLEGE find it anywhere, but you can find it on 20!" Once a teacher herself at both the high school and university levels, Aleskow, 45, developed college radio for WNIB in 1969. "They handed me college radio and said, the way, we start in a I almost flipped out," she said. "I thought, 'What do I know, where am I going to get programming, what are they talking about?" Then I calmed down.

My forte is being highly organized." In 1975, Aleskow joined television education at the request of then-Channel 44 President Oscar Shabat. When he acquired a PBS license for WYCC in 1983, Shabat appointed Aleskow general manager, making her, at the time, the only female GM in Chicago. broadcasting out of northwest Indiana. Indiana residents, as well as those in Illinois and Wisconsin, are among the nearly half-million households who tune into WYCC's signal. As a matter of fact, as many as 10,000 students annually earn college credit by watching WYCC's programming in conjunction with teacher supervision and textbooks.

In her Loop office on West Jackson Street, general manager Elynne Chaplik Aleskow flashes the signature smile, familiar from her station's promotional spots, as she explains Channel 20's agenda. "Our whole goal is to find as wide a range of programs as possible," she says. "We look until we're Consider her successes: "Playing Shake- Cover illustration by Robert Porazinski. Tribune photos by Ovie Carter. "This goal," she says pointing to the black TV atop a wire grid shelf, "is to give students options.

Education brings autonomy and autonomy brings selfrespect. Then, one can go and live in this world." As instructional television, Channel 20 has managed to carve out a unique niche while peacefully coexisting with Chicago's better-known public television station WTTW. WTTW President Bill McCarter says, "The relationship works ideally. We're a model of how to broadcast a market to the viewers' advantage. WTTW provides strong local programming, and WYCC provides a special educational And except for the occasional overlap of programs- stations ran "The Civil -the focus of the two differs.

Channel 20, however, remains intent on the offbeat offerings and perhaps that is why, Aleskow says, "We're like a best-kept secret. People are still discovering Aleskow has company. Not far to the south of WYCC studios (at 7500 S. Pulaski Rd.) is WYIN-Ch. 56 located in Merrillville.

But general manager Richard Parker, feeling the frustration of the new kid on the block (Channel 56 is only in its fourth year of operation), admits, "We're the most unknown commodity this side of the state line." Most of WYIN's programming is the same as WTTW's, including staple offerings Broadcasting Corp. featuring actors such as Ben Kingsley and Roger Rees shown in rehearsal with the Royal Shakespeare Company doing different takes on Prince Hal's monologue; documentaries ranging from "The Civil War" to French new wave cinema; "Degrassi High," a soap opera for teenagers; six foreign language courses; "Lap a woman bent like a pretzel teaching yoga; and "Spotlight," an interview program in which people such as playwright John Guare show up and talk about, in all their eccentricity, life in the theater. From canning salsa to gauging Falstaff, WYCC is, well, all over the place. "If you say, 'That's the strangest television I've that's what I want you to say," Aleskow says, beaming. "You can't Continued on page 6.