Saturday, November 25, 2017
Associated Press
WADSWORTH, Ohio
Each Tuesday morning, Gene Kovack walks into the Wadsworth Community Television office carrying a well-worn shoebox filled with 14 videotapes.
The box has been repaired so many times with duct tape that it’s nearly unrecognizable. The white-haired, 83-year-old Kovack can’t even recall what type of shoes it once held.
He hands the box to director Johanna Perrino and makes his way into the small television studio, where he unpacks an accordion and meets 93-year-old Joe Gabrosek, who has already placed his accordion on a table.
Neatly dressed in jackets and ties, they sit behind the table, stare into the main camera and . . .
“Welcome to Polka Time Again from the studios of WCTV in Wadsworth, Ohio, with Gene and Joe,” Kovach says as he introduces the program.
For the past 23 years, Kovack and Gabrosek, friends since their days dancing with their wives in the early 1970s, have been visiting the studio to share polka videos with an enthusiastic, polka-starved audience.
The senior citizen VJs and polka celebrities recently recorded their 1,200th program, and WCTV touts Polka Time Again: Memories of a Sunday Afternoon as the longest-running public access show in the country, perhaps the world.
The one-hour weekly program is seen in an estimated 1 million households on public-access channels in Ohio and North Dakota – not to mention their worldwide fan base thanks to the show being available online at https://my.viebit.com.
“There are very few polka personalities who have been able to maintain a presence on TV as long as they have,” said Joe Valencic, president of the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame and Museum in Euclid. “They are important in perpetuating the music and giving it a showcase on television that few have done.”
One day while Kovack was taking accordion lessons with mentor Frank Spetich in the early 1990s, they began talking about the old television show “Polka Varieties.”
They both missed the program, which showcased local and national polka bands performing in a studio with people dancing.
The show had been broadcast on WEWS in Cleveland for decades before going off the air in 1983.
Kovack decided they should revive the program – or at least something similar. Wadsworth residents are permitted to produce their own television show for free on the city’s community access channel.
So he and Spetich hosted the first Polka Time Again on April 12, 1994. That initial show was 17 minutes long and, unlike “Polka Varieties,” featured videos as opposed to live performances.
On the second episode, Gabrosek, who also studied the accordion with Spetich, took over as Kovack’s co-host.
They host the show for free.