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There's the neighbor's show on politics or a chance to catch up on polka hits. Anyone can start a show on public-access television.
By EDIE GROSS
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 5, 2000
Ernie Bach is having a classic public-access television moment.
His talk show guests, an 82-year-old man and his 80-year-old wife, circled aimlessly around Pinellas Park without finding the tiny Time Warner studio where Bach films his program.
So they drove back to Tampa, leaving Bach with 30 minutes of air time and no one to talk to except his faithful sidekick, Darwin -- a table-top statue of a chimp holding a human skull in its right hand.
"It's wing-it time. We're going to play, "What Does Ernie Talk About For a Half-Hour?' " Bach tells his two volunteer cameramen.
"It's me and Darwin visiting with you this month," Bach tells his audience.
Such is life on public-access television. Occasionally guests don't show. Sometimes the ones who do are drowned out by a low-flying airplane roaring into St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport or the rain beating on the studio's corrugated metal roof.
The technology in the recording room is a tad outdated. Cameras jiggle on their tripods. The focus control doesn't always work. Neither do the headsets.
"This was a state-of-the-art studio whenever Lucille Ball was doing her show," says Richard Whitaker, supervisor of public-access programming at the studio. "This is considered a Desilu production facility."
But no matter the blunder, the misstep, the malfunction, the show always goes on.
"You just adjust," said Daniel Armentrout, one of Bach's cameramen.
After all, public-access television is what you make of it -- no more, no less. Some programs barely are a step above home video. Others are more elaborate, utilizing graphics and remote video.
There is room for all of it on the public-access channel: From polka music to martial arts, Scientology to psychology, feminism to vegetarianism. Pinellas public-access even featured a mud wrestling program and a beach patrol once, but those shows have slipped off the schedule.
In communities across the country, public access, like the Internet, is seen as the medium of choice for the little guy, the small organization that lacks a big advertising budget but wants to get its message out.
The general rule is anything goes. The cable companies that provide the public-access channels do not control the content.
In Pinellas County, residents such as Bach take a 12-week course to learn how to operate the studio equipment. Once certified, graduates can begin filming in the tiny studio south of Ulmerton Road.
You don't have to be pretty, smart or rich to have your own show.
"It doesn't matter what you look like. You can be thin or fat or bald or hairy. It doesn't matter what your color is, if you have a disability, what your language is," said Bunnie Riedel, executive director of Alliance for Community Media, a trade association-advocacy group in Washington. "Even middle-aged women with crow's feet -- that's me -- are welcome on access. That's what you get with access. You get all of it."
Like most folks, Bach, a former Largo city commissioner, sort of stumbled across public-access TV while flipping channels one evening. The woman on the screen was talking about healthy menus, happy thoughts and flowers.
"She was attractive. She had a pleasant voice. I found myself watching her," Bach said. "I realized that was a forum for me and my politics."
Bach started his Common Cause talk show three years ago. Sometimes he grills politicians, some of whom are brave enough to enter the studio. Other times, he is joined by residents. Tonight, he must come up with a monologue.
Bach spends 10 minutes railing against proposals to privatize Social Security and blasting politicians who seemingly just havediscovered prescription drug prices are a problem for seniors and other Americans.
"Hello," he says. "Where have these people been the last few years?"
Time for a public service announcement break.
"Ernie, is there anything that can be done about your collar?" cameraman John Moeller asks.
Bach fiddles with his collar and takes his jacket off.
"I really have no idea what I'm going to do for the next 20 minutes," he says. "Tonight, I'm totally unprepared. I'm going to be fortunate to get to 10 minutes."
Time in the studio is precious. Most of the volunteers behind the scenes have day jobs, so everyone wants to film at night. To secure time in the studio, you need to sign up about six weeks in advance, Whitaker said.
Some need more time than others. Vera Burianek has a degree in telecommunications and produced a television show in South Africa before coming to America eight years ago with her husband.
She's a perfectionist when it comes to producing her public-access program, Karate Kids. Last month, she interviewed public school officials on the importance of after-school programs for children. This month, she travels to a Saturday boot camp to show what happens to kids gone awry.
"I don't want talking heads. I go on location. Sometimes I film the whole weekend. Then I sit in the editing room," the Seminole resident said. "If you have just people talking, no one's going to watch your program."
Her next project: A documentary on the abbey at St. Leo College for her new public access series called Treasures of Tampa Bay.
Most of John Jacob's work is done outside the studio. A former Marine and retired food warehouse employee, Jacob has a thing for polka music.
The 73-year-old Clearwater resident has traveled the country filming polka bands playing in community halls and at ethnic events. His collection of videos numbers 500.
"You come down here to my place, and that's all you're going to hear -- polka music," Jacob said. "All these tapings you see, I did all by myself. I've got some tapes people sent me. I just felt they weren't good enough."
"When video cameras came out, I had to have one," he said. "I couldn't believe you could tape a dance and come home and watch it on TV. I've made a lot of copies for people.
"I don't charge."
Jacob wanted to share his extensive video collection with the community, but network television was not ready for his offer. So he went to public access and launched Let's Polka six years ago. In January, he plans a special episode on America's "polka king" Frank Yankovic, a former New Port Richey resident who died two years ago at age 83. For the uninitiated, Yankovic was the first inductee into the polka hall of fame and the first musician to win a Grammy for polka.
"That'll be one to watch," Jacob says of the upcoming special.
Jacob watches some of the other programs on public access. He had a buddy who used to film a program on the beach each month.
"He used to go down to the beach and tape the girls. He'd tape them in their bathing suits," Jacob said. "I went with him one time. Oh it was something. I was wishing I had his show."
Bach kills another 10 minutes questioning the influence of special interests in elections, musing about the effect Ralph Nader will have on Tuesday's presidential race and briefly discussing the possibility of a John McCain-Jesse Ventura ticket in 2004.
During the break, he toys with his collar again. Stop worrying about it, Moeller tells him.
"Do you think anybody even watches this?" Moeller says.
Nobody's really sure. Those with their own television programs say they hear from viewers. Occasionally.
Dr. Shoukry Soliman, a Christian, did a show not long ago about the differences between Christianity and Islam. The episode earned him angry calls from some Muslims who felt he had misrepresented their beliefs, Soliman said.
But mostly the response is positive, he said.
"The man that cuts my lawn just last week said, "I watched you on TV. Great program,' " said Soliman, the host of Food For Your Soul.
Trevor Chin knows that hunters watch his Florida Voices for Animals program. Plenty of them called after the show, dedicated to animal rights and vegetarian issues, characterized them as Bambi killers not long ago.
"Who wants to shoot at Bambi? Bambi doesn't have a rifle to respond," Chin said. "We can only hope that we kind of shed the light in people's minds that animals have a right to life as nature has intended. We can only hope it'll sink in somewhere."
Public access fans complain that Time Warner is not helping them get their message out.
Time Warner officials did not return repeated phone calls last week. But several people with shows on public access say the competition for studio time has grown since the cable company shut its North Pinellas studio several years ago.
Some accuse the cable giant of trying to push public access out of business in Pinellas County. Time Warner moved the programming from a channel in the low 20s up to channel 96 a few years back, making it harder for TV watchers to find the shows, they say.
Time Warner has made no secret of its desire to get out of public-access programming, a day that is soon comming.
In March, the entire operation will move into a new $8-million suite the county is building on Chestnut Street. The new building will hold public-access television, the county's Channel 18 government station and the county Public Affairs Department.
Public access will have one studio and one multipurpose room that can be turned into a small studio if needed. The county will provide a cable production coordinator and a video production specialist to help public access along, said county Public Affairs director Ronnie Goodstein.
The county also will contract with a nonprofit organization or an individual to act as a liaison between the county and the public access folks. That liaison will help schedule studio time, create the program lineup and handle other managerial tasks. The position is unpaid.
Programs will continue to appear on channel 96 on Time Warner and channel 21 on Verizon/Americast.
Both cable companies will pay the county 28 cents per subscriber per month to support public access. That amounts to almost $290,000 a year.
Riedel said most public-access programs across the country are operated by nonprofit corporations. Pinellas County's set-up can work as long as the county remembers that its role is not to censor the programs, she said.
Some public-access fans have expressed concern about that. What if the county tries to exert too much control over the programming or its content?
"They keep raising that question. They're afraid we're going to censor them and edit them. All I can say is under public access, it is what it is. We cannot and we will not (edit). It's a First Amendment-rights issue," Goodstein said. "It's frequently referenced as the electronic soap box of the community."
The phenomenon started in the late '50s and early to mid '60s when small cable companies began popping up, said Riedel. To physically hook up their systems to homes, they had to get permits from cities and counties to use right of way and easements.
Those governments then demanded something in return: money and often a channel to be used by the community. In 1984, Congress decreed that if government asked for a public-access channel, the local cable franchise had to provide it.
Now, there are about 2,000 public-access stations across the country, Riedel said.
"Everything from three rooms in the bottom of a community college to a full-service studio that looks like a scaled-down version of an NBC studio," she said. "Every day we're adding numbers."
Bach has about five minutes left. He is spending it preaching to his audience about the importance of public access.
"A big cable provider wanted to dump out of public access. I don't blame them. It's a business decision," he says, nearly shouting. "But you and I own at least one channel. We have a right to at least one channel to put our programs on."
That's a wrap. Despite the two no-shows, the taping has gone well.
Bach snaps up Darwin and tidies up the set. He allows that not all shows are as mainstream as his or as professionally done. But they all deserve to air, he said.
"There's some weird stuff on there. There's nothing wrong with that," he said. "As long as it's available to everyone."