TV & VIDEO - Feb. 16, 1988

According to Columbia Television, its new series “Trial and Error,” a midseason replacement sitcom about a Latino lawyer and his T-shirt-peddling buddy, will be the first prime-time network show produced with both English and Spanish sound tracks. Columbia’s Don DeMesquita said the show, scheduled to debut March 15, will make a Spanish radio simulcast available to the nation’s six top Latino markets. “Hispanic homes would be able to turn down the volume on their TV and turn up the volume on the radio and watch the program in Spanish,” DeMesquita said. Columbia officials are contacting radio stations in target cities and testing sound delivery. If it works, viewers in Los Angeles as well as in New York, Chicago, Miami, Houston and San Antonio, Tex., will be able to listen in English or Spanish.