“Modern Family” Star Reminds Me of Station’s Past

I watched some of the national Emmy awards Sunday night- I think Jimmy Kimmel did fine as host, but I think the whole show wasn’t exactly exciting. The VERY noticeable attempt to speed up the proceedings so they could end close to on time actually made the whole thing seem a little less fair to the winners and stars during that last twenty minutes or so. It was nice to see Michael J. Fox there, though… Something came to my mind when I saw the lovely Sofia Vergara (ahem- get your mind out of the gutter…)- that made me think about the past of the broadcast stations at which I work. You see, I actually saw Sofia many years ago- in a TV show she did , as herself, that I’m pretty sure ran on our WCIU back when it carried Hispanic programming from Univision! She must have been in her late teens or early twenties- and was very blonde (which, according to her, is her actual hair color- she mentions that nobody believed she was Hispanic back then, because everybody thought “all Hispanic girls look like Salma Hayek!”) She was a co-host on a magazine show where she, as herself, not a character, and a guy named Fernando (who still hosts shows, like a sports show, on Univision) would travel around to various places and do unusual things (back out of the gutter, people…) Anyway, watching that show may seem unusual to you, since I really don’t speak much Spanish. In actuality, my brothers and I often have watched Hispanic television, just because we’d often see some fascinating shows- yes, fascinating even if we didn’t know what they were saying. You could still catch some of the humor, and get what was going on- especially in the game shows, like one called, I think, “LLevatelo”- which featured a perky little blonde lady named Gaby, and a guy named Paco- who, I believe, was killed gangland style a few years ago, due to some unsavory connections he had. We would watch WCIU going way back- to when Saturday nights meant tapes of bullfights from Mexico, and Friday nights meant a rhythm and blues dance party hosted by noted local deejay Big Bill Hill, called “Red Hot and Blues”! It was kind of incongruous to see young kids dancing on the show, followed by Bill introducing a guy from “Don’s Cedar Club” (”Milwaukee- Milwaukee at Division Street”) who’d invite people to his establishment as long as you were” a lady- or a gentleman- and over 21 years old”. He would then bring on a somewhat shady looking young woman to “dance” for us- as the kids kind of stared, confused. During the daytime, for a while, the station ran “Little Rascals” shorts- and, of course, the original version of “Soul Train”, which I’ve written about before-and at night it was also where we watched the local brands of wrestling, some shot mostly in Indiana, with Bob Luce and Chuck Marlow (I remember laughing years later when a friend was listening to a broadcast of the Indy 500, and one of the announcers was- Chuck Marlowe!)- where we first saw the great Bobby Heenan- and also a syndicated wrestling show from Minneapolis from Verne Gagne’s company, the AWA. Saturday late afternoons, we’d catch a polka party with Eddie Corosa (my dad loved to hear the polka music) who would sing some of the songs he wrote (uh- yeah, those were… interesting), along with his polka band from the “Baby Doll” polka nightclub. Little did I realize that, years later, I’d be doing my first Svengoolie shows for this company from the very same studio! (If only I’d had Sofia Vergara as a co-host…)