The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 20

Enter tainm mi INSIDE: TV. 10 Cult murders inspire movie 10 The Vancouver Sun Tuesday, July 30, 1996 Arts Entertainment Editor Bart Jackson 732-2120 FAX 732-2521 B8 Vancouver will get new ethnic-music radio station in 1997 TIM CARLSON have made money in the last year. The new station aims to serve at least 20 different cultural groups in a minimum of 15 different languages. The CRTC attached numerous conditions to Newco's licence, including: The new station may not broadcast certain types of Chinese programming on weekdays, 6 a.m.-3 p.m., which would put it in competition with CJVB and CHMB. It must remain committed to serving 20 different cultural groups in at least 15 different languages.

It must introduce nine hours of programming directed at seven currently under-served ethnic communities. It must spend $65,000 per year on Canadian talent development initiatives. Vogel said the commission will be assessing the station's performance in five years two years after the licence-renewal decisions are made for the other Vancouver stations. tion. In about two months, they will be hearing from the CRTC on a proposal for a sister station in Calgary.

For listeners yearning for cutting-edge rock, it's back to the university stations. The commission was unconvinced by the Telemedia and Radio One marketing studies that argued their proposals could bring in new listeners rather than just steal them from other stations. "With 15 commercial radio stations now operating in the market, the likelihood of there being any significant amount of untapped radio advertising revenues is questionable," the CRTC said in the written decision. A disappointed Paul Sullivan, Telemedia's vice-president of editorial services, said "the time has never been better" to launch an alternative rock station. He says Telemedia's surveys revealed there were 8,000 people who would listen.

He added that 1996's radio market results should prove that advertising revenues are going up something the CRTC is unconvinced about. Sullivan said Telemedia, which owns TVGuide, Vancouver Magazine, Western Living and 26 radio stations primarily in Quebec, might write up a new application next spring if the "96 numbers support the proposal. "There is a dedicated community which really supported us. I would hope someday there will be station that is that community's true voice." Why is the CRTC so protective of other licence holders, rather than letting listeners decide which stations survive? Commission representative Margarite Vogel said, "The licence gives exclusive right to a frequency, a precious resource, the CRTC want to ensure is used well and that the stations can survive." The programming at CJVB and CHMB, Vancouver's other ethnic-format station, is aimed predominantly at the Chinese community. Both stations groups with a contemporary ethnic sound," said Ed Ylanen, vice-president of operations CJVB.

"There are lots of young, vibrant ethnic groups who are not being served Caribbean, Latin American, Canto-pop and world music, for instance." The CRTC will issue the licence Aug. 31. Ylanen said it will be 1997 before the station is on the air. The owners may take up to a year under the licensing terms. The new station will share space with CJVB on Richards Street.

Ylanen could not make any job creation projections. Fung is chief-executive officer of Fairchild Media, owned by Y.B.C. Holdings, the licensee of CJVB, one of Vancouver's two ethnic AM stations. Charest, of Edmonton, controls O.K. Radio Group which has stations in B.C.

and Alberta, including Victoria's CKKQ and Edmonton ethnic station CKER. Y.B.C. and O.K. Radio will each have a 50-per-cent ownership in the new sta Vancouver Sun An eclectic fusion of ethnic music will fill the airwaves when Vancouver's new 96.1 FM station goes to air in 1997. In a condition-heavy decision issued Monday in Ottawa, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission granted a five-year licence to Thomas Fung and Roger Charest, who will now incorporate as Newco.

Listeners thirsty for an alternative-rock format are still out in the FM wilderness, however, because the commission decided Telemedia's proposal on the 94.5 frequency would endanger advertising revenues of other rock stations. Radio One's proposal for a poptalk format at 94.5, was denied. A lack of competition, close ties to Vancouver ethnic AM station CJVB and a growing ethnic market sold the CRTC on the Newco proposal. "We will be serving ethnocultural CRITIC'S CHOICE J.R. returns Larry Hagman is back as oil baron J.R.

Ewing in a forthcoming Dallas TV movie 1 1 i PASADENA, Calif. The man who made J.R. Ewing a household name is talking about a subject dear to his heart: Money. Filthy lucre. Not a mere fistful of dollars either, but a goldmine full, a veritable mint, enough to bankroll a Magazines Rob Hall, one of the most experienced guides ever to work on Mount Everest, lost his life on the mountain this spring, after using his cellular phone to say good-bye to his wife.

That odd combination of technology and pathos is a standard part of mountaineering these days. Bruce Barcott, a Seattle writer and editor, surveys eight recent books about climbers and the mania that drives them, in "Cliffhangers: The fatal descent of the mountain-climbing memoir," in the August edition of Harper 's Magazine. "Despite the peril," Barcott concludes, "one closes these books not with a heightened respect for the high peaks and the people who climb them but with a peculiar kind of sadness." Michael Scott' Internet The closest Lollapalooza is coming to Vancouver this year with -its lineup including Metallica, Ra- mones, Screaming Tree, Psychoti-ca and Devo is The Gorge in Washington State. But that doesn't mean you can't attend today's concert. All you have todoispointyour web browser, equipped with the Re-.

alAudio plug-in, of course, to httpwwwAollapalooza.com and you should be able to hear the all-day concert through your computer. And if you're tied up with something else, or, as often happens with these live Web broadcasts, things don't work out then you should be able to catch the Irvine Meadows show on Aug. 3 and 4 at the same Web location. Peter Wilson Theatre Tapestry: The Musk of Carole King, a revue featuring more than two dozen of King's hits performed by Sibel Thrasher, Shari Ulrich, Densil Pinnock, Diane Lines, Keith Bennett, Harris van Berkel, Bill Runge and Peter Padden, has been held over until Aug. 31.

Performances are Monday to Sat-' urday at the Arts Club Mainstage. For tickets and information, call 687-1644 or 280-3311. Barbara Crook small invasion, conspicuous consumption carried to calamitous extremes. Larry Hagman, the man who took CBS to the wall over Dallas and came out of it a rich man is holding court at a Texan-style barbeque, and it's getting hard to tell where Hagman ends and J.R. begins.

A pair of helicopters, packed with paparazzi, buzz angrily overhead, like pesky mosquitoes in the hot San Gabriels sun. A war vet from Arkansas says the noise is 4 Alex STRACHAN At the Television Critics Association annual summer press tour mmm HEALTHY OUTLOOK: Larry Hagman is back on TV after a liver transplant Hagman is one of the few TV stars to have taken on a major network and won. Naturally, it's only a matter of time before the Friends dispute comes up. Only he's never heard of the show. "Friends is very successful, is it?" he asks nobody in particular.

"Good for 'em. Let 'em go for it. When you figure the money CBS made out Dallas billions, I think I think the actors ought to get a piece of that. Anybody can make a Dallas but it was the way it was done, the family that we had, that made it successful. I think they ought to get a good hunk.

God knows we did Reruns of Dallas have just been sold to the Nashville Network. Hagman didn't know that either. "K-CHING!" he shouts suddenly, mimicking a cash register. His ten-gallon Stetson bobs in a sudden, unexpected burst of southern California wind. His hair has greyed, but the look is unmistakable: It's J.R.

all over again. The helicopters buzz closer. He looks around, blinking. "Pretty young out there, these kids." Dallas will soon begin running on TV in Russia, he tells nobody in particular. "I've been asked to go over there and plug it.

I think it'll be really interesting because I think it brought the downfall of the Soviet empire in the first place. I swear to God. We had a friend come over he was a director in Russia and we used to exchange VCRs and tapes for caviar. He'd smuggle them back in somehow. I'd hear from people from there all the time 'Why don't we have that over here? Why don't we have those cars and that glitz and all that stuff? You mean people actually live that thought it was all American propaganda." Amazingly, the conversation comes back to money.

Please see Hagman, B10 starting to remind him of Vietnam. There was a time, not so long ago, when Larry Hagman would have scowled skyward, let his blood pressure get the best of him, and turned purple with apoplexy. Not now. No, sireee. He's still recovering from his recent liver transplant, y'see.

The doctor has given him strict instructions: No more alcohol. And no more mixing it up with the paparazzi, in or out of helicopters. Instead, Hagman, 65, basks in the glow of attention, beaming widely. Dallas is coming back as a TV-movie, some time this fall, on CBS the same folk he took to the cleaners. The TV-movie will reunite Dallas's usual suspects: Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and executive producers Leonard Katzman and Lee Rich.

Self-titled CD is Abdul's latest step on the road to recognition MURRAY WHYTE put in touch with Abdul through the Na-tional Songwriter's Association last year. Now, Ronneburger plans to stay on for what he hopes will be Abdul's ride to fame. With a stack of awards and more than 30 television appearances already behind him in his two-year career, the youngster appears to be well on his way. He is a four-time winner of the Abbots-ford Northern Rising Star Search talent show, a privately run contest that no longer exists, where he outdid more than 100 carefully selected competitors. He sang recently for a crowd of 10,000 at the Color It Surrey Festival, and he belted out the national anthem to a packed house at B.C.

Place to launch Canada Day celebrations last year. And if there is one thing that Abdul Mansour is not, it's shy. "I get excited by the crowd, once they start to cheer," he says. "And the bigger the crowd, the better." When he appeared on the Dint Perry Show in April this year, dressed in a sparkling vest and black pants befitting a Las Vegas headliner, she gushed at his performance and told him he would be a big star. A video showcasing his talents, entitled The Prodigy by his manager, trainer, most devoted fan and father, Mohamad, shows the four-foot-tall crooner singing his heart out, warbling, through Whitney Houston standards as well as his own songs, hitting the high notes with the power of a polished pro--fessional.

"He's a super-high talented kid," Mohamad says with obvious pride. When Mohamad was young, in Lebanon in the 1970s, he sang in a band with his five brothers, but never achieved the fame he has planned for his son. "I was always hoping one of my children would be a singer," Mohamad says. His first attempt was with his oldest son, Nabih, but the boy didn't have the same taste for fame as his younger brother. Abdul started singing at four years old and hasn't looked bade.

To Mohamad, who teaches Abdul vocalization as well as stage presence and showmanship, his son's talents are innate. And Abdul, not one to hold his tongue, couldn't agree more. "Most of it is natural," he says, "but my dad teaches me, too." On stage, Abdul is a showman, casting longing glances at his audience or clenching his fists with sincerity as he sings. Says Abdul: "Hopefully, I'll get a record deal with a big company and make some money. That's what it's all about, isn't it?" Vancouver Sun Abdul Mansour pulls his Chicago Bulls hat on backwards and for a moment looks like any other 10-year-old kid lazing through a hot afternoon mid-way through his summer vacation.

As he takes a microphone in his hand and starts crooning ballads of love and regret, however, it becomes clear that Abdul is different. He wails with heartfelt angst against the injustices of love gone wrong, and softly coos of knowing "the real power oflove." And this week, Abdul's singing talents are being released in Vancouver on a full-length CD, titled Abdul, produced and recorded by Dragon Heart Studios inCoquitlam. "It's exciting. It's really exciting," Abdul said in an interview in his family's Surrey apartment, his brown eyes sparkling with energy. "I want to keep doing this for as long as I live." Aaron Ronneburger, the 19-year old songwriter who wrote the CD's 11 songs, said of Abdul: "He's pretty into the singing, but he's still a 10-year-old boy.

He's just like any other kid, but he's got this great voice." Ronneburger, who recorded the CD on his Dragon Heart label, has been writing songs since he was 16. He was A STEVE BOSCHVancouver Sun HE SINGS THE SONGS: 10-year-old Abdul Mansour of Surrey.