1 The envelope arrives in the mail.
2 Open it and two soulful eyes on a boy's brown face peer out from the page, pleadingly.
3 Does the tyke have a good mind about to be wasted?
4 Is he a victim of Gramm-Rudman cuts?
5 No, but he's endangered all the same: His new sitcom on ABC needs a following to stay on the air.
6 ABC hasn't had much luck with shows featuring blacks in recent years, and the producers of one new arrival are a bit desperate. 'Homeroom,' a show about a black ad executive who gives up the boardroom for a fourth-grade classroom, is flunking the ratings test.
7 So producers Alyce and Topper Carew spun their Rolodexes and gathered names of black opinion makers to mount a direct-mail campaign.
8 By wooing a core black audience they figure they might keep the show alive at least until the spring semester.
9 Using direct mail for a TV show is like fishing for whale with a breaded hook.
10 It just isn't done.
11 But employing this kind of gut-wrenching plea to black consciousness makes it even more unusual.
12 Still, Mr. Carew thinks he can reach a good chunk of the three million-plus black homes he needs by mailing to the almost 10,000 blacks who form what he calls 'the grapevine.'
13 'The grapevine isn't organized, but you and I know it exists,' says Mr. Carew, referring to the often uncannily small world of black professionals and community leaders.
14 'This is a very personal, ethnic style,' Mr. Carew says. 'I want people in the barber shops and the beauty shops and standing in line at the rib joints to be talking about the show.
15 I want white America to talk about it, too, but I'm convinced that the grapevine is what's happening.'
16 ABC says it is aware of the producers' action, but the mailing was sent without the network's blessing.
17 The letter, in fact, takes a jab at ABC for being a laggard in black programming.
18 Meanwhile, as the Sunday evening show struggles to stay afloat against the tough competition of 'Murder, She Wrote,' the grapevine idea is threatening to turn into a weed: The tactic apparently has inspired sample viewings, but accolades are slow in coming.
19 Doug Alligood, a black advertising executive who tracks black viewing patterns, gives the Carews an 'A' for marketing moxie, but isn't alone in his lukewarm reaction.
20 Some shows just don't impress, he says, and this is one of them.

Does the tyke have a good mind about to be wasted ?
mind about to be wasted ?
How could the mind be wasted?