Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 18, 1990                   TAG: 9004180682
SECTION: EXTRA EDITION} STATE                    PAGE: E-12   EDITION: 
SOURCE: Drusilla Menaker/associated press
DATELINE: WROCLAW, POLAND                                 LENGTH: Medium

EAST BUILDS ITS FIRST PRIVATE CHANNEL

Marek Mlynarczyk smiled and said, "You might say we've made a little mess." He is general manager of ECHO-TV, the first private commercial television station in Eastern Europe.

ECHO has broadcast six hours a night since Feb. 6, mostly music videos and movies pirated, more or less, from satellite transmissions.

"Nobody believed we would do it," said Mlynarczyk, who thinks that's the only reason he and his seven co-workers got permission from the authorities.

In decades of Communist control, Poland's two government-run television channels offered a dull diet of propaganda presented as news, cheap-to-make interview programs, and cheap-to-buy American reruns and Brazilian soap operas. Occasionally, a polish film spiced up the schedule.

Poles are hooked on the tube nonetheless, and Mlynarczyk said the response to ECHO-TV was "something of a shock at first."

Some viewers need a special antenna. Demand was so great that stores sold out and the ECHO-TV office was mobbed when advertising misprint implied the antennas were being sold there.

The station goes on the air at 6 p.m. from two tiny rooms atop a student dormatory where, says one of the 16 staff technicians, "we could use a window."

Virtually all the equipment fits on a table in one corner: three televisions , two video cassette recorders, a personal computer and a special effects mixer.

The eight shareholders invested the equivalent of about $50,000 in what they call "semi-professional" equipment to start the station and an affiliated video company.

So far, they have more orders for one-minute, computer-generated advertising messages than they can accommodate. The rate is $5 per commercial.

There are many plans afoot for origional programming, but for now most of the programs come from MTV, the U.S. music video channel, and other stations carried by satellite.

Mlynarczyk and ECHO's owners want to offer television that is "more fun." Mlynarczyk described Polish television as "too serious...a lot of guys sitting in arm chairs telling something, blah, blah, blah."