Chicago’s first new radio soap in 40 years went on the air last March, taped in a South Side brownstone by a group of local black actors. The characters–a surgeon, a criminal attorney, a media mogul–live the same upper-middle-class, melodramatic lives as their white counterparts on, say, “All My Children,” but their tribulations are rationed in five-minutes-a-day episodes for people on the go. Producer Tony Green, 40, believes it’s important to present blacks who are successful in fields other than entertainment and sports. " Black people are either victims of society or superstars," he says, “nothing in between. ‘Grand Boulevard’ is all about people in the middle.” The show doesn’t ignore the problems of the inner city, however. In one episode, Jamie, a thug with a heart of gold, has a shoot-out on the street with another criminal.
Green, who used to work for Operation PUSH, the Chicago civil-rights group founded by Jesse Jackson, spends 80 hours a week writing, taping and editing the show. Though listeners have called in with their approval, the show still has no sponsor. “Our greatest strength is the uniqueness of the product,” says Green. “It’s a clear highway with nobody on it.” Now if they could just find somebody to pay the toll.
