Free Air Time Draws Pols Like Moths to a Flame : Question Remains: Anyone Out There?

A county supervisor interviewing the dogcatcher? For this you buy cable television? Or can this be the long-awaited cure for insomnia?

But wait, there’s more.

Succeeding weeks feature the county supervisor, Don R. Roth, interviewing the county’s consultant on jail overcrowding, an official of the county Transportation Commission, and an expert on “trash and general services.”

Now, just when you thought it was safe to turn on the TV if you didn’t live in Roth’s district, there’s the news flash that the “Don Roth Show” is going countywide. No longer will only the folks in the Anaheim area be able to watch this stuff. The show is already seen in five other communities and will be made available to other cable systems in the county too.

But if Geraldo Rivera has his own over-the-air TV show, and boxing promoter Don King has his, and there are all those shop-at-home shows featuring genuine zircons if you call in the next few minutes, does anyone actually watch Don Roth?

“Twenty to 25% of our customers watch shows like city council meetings and the Roth show,” says Richard J. Waterman, vice president and general manager of ML Media Cable TV, which provides the facilities Roth uses to tape the show and which airs it on its system in the Anaheim area.

“That doesn’t mean that somebody sits down and watches a meeting in its entirety,” Waterman admits. But if you televise a city council meeting live, “people will come down to a council meeting because it rang their bell and they want to have a say in it.”

Roth had a cable show while mayor of Anaheim and continued it when he became a supervisor this year. Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder also revived her cable show this year. And Board Chairman Roger Stanton has had a cable show for two years.

Even the board’s newest member, Gaddi H. Vasquez, has gotten into the act. Vasquez appeared in September on a live cable show to answer questions phoned in by viewers, did it again this month and plans to make it a regular show.

Still, there is the question of whether anyone watches.

No cable company said it had actual ratings for these programs; other guesses are lower than Waterman’s high viewership estimate.

Linda Moulton of Rogers Cable TV says her firm estimates that 1% of the subscribers in the Huntington Beach vicinity watch programs on the local-access channel.

In San Francisco, the vice president of the California Cable TV Assn., Jerry Yanowitz, says there is no list of which politicians have shows and no indications that they keep hordes of viewers glued to their TVs.

Then why do stations show this stuff? Because they have to.

“You could go in and film your daughter’s birthday party and put it on the air if you wanted to,” under the requirements imposed on cable system operators by Congress, says Richard Anderson of Dimension Cable Services.

Anderson, whose San Juan Capistrano-based company is a subsidiary of Times Mirror Co., says that under 1984 congressional legislation, cable operators no longer have to originate shows locally, sending crews out into the community to film a Pop Warner league bake sale or a high school car-washing event.

But he says most contracts still require public access, meaning that if someone shows up at the studio, the person must be trained in how to use the equipment and given a chance to air the result.

Free TV Time

The four Orange County supervisors are among California city council members, supervisors and members of Congress who use this politician’s dream: free TV time. The programs are paid for by the cable systems that provide the taping facilities, the supervisors say, and don’t cost taxpayers anything.

“I understand that Phil Donahue is quite frightened (by the competition),” Stanton says, unable say it with a straight face. “As a matter of fact, Donahue and Oprah Winfrey have both sent me letters saying they feel threatened.”

Given the nature of the shows and the somewhat limited talent pool available, there is a certain amount of overlap in the guest list. Both Roth and Stanton have had Chief Asst. Dist. Atty. Michael Capizzi, county Fire Chief Larry Holms and experts on earthquake preparedness on their shows.

Stanton says he gets no formal feedback on the show but hears “a lot of stuff at receptions, people saying, ‘Oh, I saw your stuff on this.’ ” He calls the show “useful” and a “part of the job of getting the information out there.”

“I enjoy it,” Stanton says. “If someone started sending me rotten tomatoes in the mail, I’d stop. On second thought, I’d have to get a bushel basket of them.”

‘Large Audience’

Two of the five men who represent Orange County in Congress are hosts for cable programs, and former San Diego County Supervisor Jim Bates liked the TV show he had while a supervisor so much that he took it to Washington with him when he became a congressman.

“San Diego has the highest percentage of cable TV subscribers anywhere in the country, so we have a large audience,” says Jim Bartell, chief of staff to Bates, a Democrat.

Bartell says most of the shows are taped in Washington and feature interviews with other congressmen. When defense spending is an issue, Bates may interview Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wisc) of the House Armed Services Committee. When tax reform was the big item, Bates had as a guest Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Also available on some San Diego cable systems is a program with host Rep. Charles Pashayan, a Fresno Republican.

Although the congressman’s district is hundreds of miles north of San Diego, Gene Yee of Cox says that Pashayan discusses “statewide topics” that appeal to viewers.

In Washington, a Pashayan aide, Tommy Holmes, said he was happy to hear that, since he was starting to wonder whether anyone was out there watching.

‘They Were Interested’

Holmes said the Pashayan show is aired on a Los Angeles cable station and in the congressman’s home district, as well.

Why Los Angeles and San Diego? “My predecessor just called around and asked who would be interested. And they were interested.”

Political consultant Harvey Englander said he thinks all politicians should be interested in such shows because they educate the hosts about the issues and the viewers about the hosts.

Englander ran Roth’s successful campaign for supervisor last year. Englander’s wife, Sandy, an elected director of the Orange Unified School Board, will be a guest on the Roth show in December.

More politicians might have shows if they had enough staff members to help line up the guests and brief the host, Englander said. Also, “there are a lot of elected officials who don’t have a lot of cable TV stations in their area,” he said.

Roth has both the staff members to help put the show together and the cable stations willing to show it.

Once every few weeks he goes to the studio in a nondescript building in a drab area of northern Anaheim and prepares to tape the show. Using the ladies’ room because it’s the only one with a mirror, the supervisor takes powder to nose and forehead, whisking away the shiny spots.

Huge Cue Card

Then it’s into the studio, where Roth reads from a huge cue card the introduction to the show, nods to his guest and begins the questioning.

The supervisor said he doesn’t think the show is at all boring, and in fact helps to “bring government into the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the family room, wherever people watch TV.”

“It seems wherever I go people are saying to me that ‘I caught your show last night,’ ” Roth added. “I walked into my church on Sunday and was startled by a man I don’t really know that well who said, ‘I learned more about the transportation problems in Orange County on one half-hour of your show than I ever knew.”’

Wieder, a former Huntington Beach mayor, revived a cable show last February after the manager of the city’s local-access channel approached her.

The show “is not sexy in that there’s no music, no dancing, no comedians,” Wieder said, but shows like hers are watched because of the public’s appetite for news, especially local news.

The board of supervisors’ senior member, Thomas F. Riley, remains a holdout, however. He has appeared as a guest on news programs, but does not plan to be host for one of his own.

“I have never assumed that I could fill up a weekly program. . . . That would be interesting,” Riley said.

WHO’S ON WHEN The rule for people interested in learning when their supervisor will be on cable television is almost always: Consult the schedule. Here’s a list of when the four supervisors with shows can be seen.

Harriett M. Wieder: Her November show was aired Nov. 1, a Tuesday, at 3 p.m.; Nov. 2 at 2 p.m.; Nov. 3 at 5:30 p.m.; Nov. 6, 7 and 8 at 3 p.m. and will air Nov. 30 at 6:30 p.m., according to Huntington Beach city information officer Bill Reed. Reed said the December schedule will “probably” be the same as November’s, but “not necessarily.” The program airs over Rogers Cable TV in Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Westminster and Stanton.

Gaddi H. Vasquez: His show, with him as the guest for a live phone-in format, has aired on Sept. 2 and Sept. 30 and will be on again on Dec. 9, said Vasquez aide Grace Taylor. It is shown in the southern part of the county on Dimension Cable Services.

Don R. Roth: The only supervisor with a weekly show, Roth appears at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays on ML Cable Anaheim and on the Comcast cable channel, covering Buena Park and Fullerton. He is on American Cablevision of Orange, covering Orange, Orange Park Acres and Villa Park, at 7 p.m. Thursday. Roth aide Dan Wooldridge says the supervisor has asked other systems in the county that plan to carry the show soon to try to schedule it Thursday evenings.

Roger R. Stanton: His show appears on cable systems covering Tustin, Santa Ana, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Stanton and Westminster at random times, depending on when the systems have an opening, according to Eric Freed, an aide to the supervisor.

Congressmen Tape Own Shows

Two of Orange County’s five congressmen have their own cable TV shows, taped at congressional expense in a Washington studio.

Seen regularly here are Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) and Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach). Aides to Reps. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Ronald C. Packard (R-Carlsbad) said those representatives do not have shows.

Dornan frequently appears on Cable News Network, a national network specializing in news programs, offering a conservative counterweight to liberal Tom Braden, Dornan press secretary Brian Bennett noted.

Badham, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has been host to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Army Secretary John Marsh and various cabinet officials, according to his press secretary, Paul Wilkinson.

“We get some mail once in a while (about the show, but) not an extreme amount” of comment, Wilkinson said.

Although the program is scheduled for 4 p.m. Mondays in part of Newport Beach and Irvine, 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Costa Mesa and other times elsewhere, “a lot of the (cable systems) have very informal schedules, so you really have to watch the systems for the latest updates,” Wilkinson said.

Lungren’s show is aired on five cable systems in Orange and Los Angeles counties, according to Tom Turner, a legislative aide. Lungren’s district includes parts of both counties.