Stay Tuned, Carlsbad, It’s Time for the Slow-Growth Show

In Carlsbad these days, it’s a common refrain. Slow-growth advocates, environmentalists and other like-minded folks say they are hard put to find a soap box from which to espouse their views.

Letters dispatched to the local newspapers often are not published. Members of the city’s conservationist camp contend they’re about as welcome at City Hall as week-old garbage.

Now, instead of getting mad, they’ve decided to get even. On television.

The city’s woebegone slow-growth forces plan to air a weekly TV program of interviews and talk to be broadcast over the local community cable access channel operated by Carlsbad Cablevision.

Touching on all of the hot issues affecting Carlsbad, the half-hour program will have as hosts two of the city’s staunchest slow-growth standard bearers--Tom Smith, an attorney and co-chairman of Concerned Citizens, the grass-roots group that pushed an unsuccessful development-control initiative in 1986, and Anthony Skotnicki, a foghorn-voiced former councilman.

The first episode is scheduled to be taped Thursday and aired later this month, but the reviews are already beginning to spill in.

“Which one is going to be Oprah and which one is going to be Phil Donahue?” Councilwoman Ann Kulchin asked. “I wish them well, but I don’t know what they’re really trying to do.”

Smith and Skotnicki realize they’re not about to challenge “Dynasty” or “Dallas” for ratings supremacy, but they are hopeful that the show can attract a significant audience in Carlsbad, a cozy enclave where people actually spend time watching the public access channel.

“This may be like a Huntley-Brinkley amateur show,” Skotnicki conceded. “Still, we hope the program can become something of a forum for the general public, a place where they can get information they don’t normally get on growth and the environment.”

Smith said he hopes the program “will create controversy and get people thinking” about a variety of topics, among them the ongoing battle over growth in Carlsbad and other surrounding communities, the state of the region’s lagoons and beaches, and the proposed trash-to-energy plant planned just east of Carlsbad in San Marcos.

Among names in contention for the show are a rather staid bunch such as “North County Record,” “North County Focus,” and “North Coast Quality of Life Show,” though Skotnicki facetiously said the best of the lot might be “The Tom and Tony Show.”

The first episode will feature an interview with Susan Haasl, who was deposed as president of the Costa Real Municipal Water District by her own board after she began advocating that operation of the district be assumed by Carlsbad officials.

A subsequent program will revolve around the battle over Hosp Grove, a scenic eucalyptus forest threatened by development. Smith and Skotnicki plan to interview Dan Hammer, a leader of the group trying to keep development out of the forest.

Though many of the show’s guests will undoubtedly share opinions similar to those of Smith and Skotnicki, the hosts say they will welcome opposing viewpoints.

“I’d love for it to be like ‘Evans and Novak,’ where they bring on some poor creature and torture them,” Smith mused. “I just don’t know that opponents of ours will have the courage.”

Smith said the cost of producing the program, with studio time at the Carlsbad cable facility running at $55 an hour, will come from sponsors now being solicited. So far, a Vista attorney and an Encinitas clothing store owner, both friends of Smith, have agreed to help fund the program in exchange for the names of their firms being announced at the beginning and end of the show.

To help woo an audience, Smith and Skotnicki want to distribute handbills at grocery stores announcing programs. A time for the show has not yet been determined, but the two men hope it airs immediately before the Wednesday night broadcast of City Council meetings.

“With these type of cable channels, you have to create your own audience, and that’s what we hope to do,” Smith said. “It’s going to be entertaining, I think.”