The Dual Personalities of Public Access Television

When it comes to public access, Century Southwest Cable Television on the Westside and King Videocable of the Sunland-Tujunga area have one major thing in common. Out of their studios come shows that seem as if they were created on another planet.

Century has “Mr. Morrison,” a weathered philosopher who gives rambling dissertations on the meaning of life while he twists balloons into animals. King has “Daisy Gabfest,” whose host, a former vaudevillian, carries a hand puppet.

Century’s lineup includes “The Thomas Odatey Explosion,” in which Odatey brandishes a bullwhip as he talks about the organization he considers Public Enemy No. 1, the Jehovah’s Witnesses. King keeps pace with “Creating World Peace,” which recently featured a dancer who did an exotic routine with her pet boa constrictor.

But aside from this penchant for turning out some programs that walk on the weird side, Century and King are very different.

Century is a high-tech operation and tends to program shows with an eye toward Hollywood. King is more makeshift and strongly rooted in its communities. Exposure on Century just might lead to a new career--at least one personality on its public-access channel seems on the verge of breaking into broadcast television. A typical King segment, on the other hand, might promote the upcoming Lion’s Club pancake breakfast.

At Century, the public-access supervisor wears hip sports clothes. At King, the president of the public-access entity arrives at the studio in shorts and a T-shirt, his arms decorated with tattoos.

Public access, now almost two decades old, has evolved into an institution with a split personality, and in Los Angeles, Century and King are representative of each side of the schism.

Michael Lewis, public-access supervisor at Century, looks up at a monitor that shows Odatey pacing incessantly and talking about “those people who come knocking at your door with the ‘Watchtower.’ Sure, they seem nice. . . .”

Lewis, 36, smiles. “There goes public access’s last angry man.”

Odatey fits in with the parade of channelers, beauty experts, preachers, amateur talk show hosts, cooks, assorted New Age practitioners and fringe political commentators that are the staple of public access in general, and, in particular, Century’s Channel 3, which goes to much of the Westside and some San Fernando Valley communities.

The shows are produced at Century’s Santa Monica headquarters, which houses a busy and well-equipped studio, by public-access standards. When Century’s building renovation, now under way, is completed, by the end of the year, access production will move into even larger quarters with a separate makeup room and green room where on-camera talent can relax before tapings.

From its beginning, public access was hailed by politicians as the great democratic entity that would open television to all points of view and a variety of creative expressions. Many communities have required that cable operators set aside at least one channel and facilities that would be available to anyone or any organization wanting to produce a program.

But in most areas, access is hardly a point of community pride. Indeed, David Letterman gets big laughs by simply showing clips from local access shows.

“We do a lot of granola television here,” Lewis says. And for just that reason, Century has been taken to task by public-access advocates.

“Too often when we turn on Channel 3, we see time devoted to people cutting hair and doing horoscopes,” says Ellen Stern Harris, one of the best-known and most outspoken figures on the local public-access scene. For years Harris has regularly attended municipal meetings on cable policy, and she serves on the Beverly Hills Community Access Corp., a board appointed by the City Council to look into increasing community awareness of public access.

“It seems like a lot of these people are using public access to look for new clients,” Harris says.

Lewis says there are several shows produced at Century that fit Harris’ ideal of community-service television, including “A Nurse in Conversation,” which is about hospice care.

He admits that much of Century’s access programming is self-serving and less than scintillating, but says: “I don’t judge content.”

He continues, “It’s first come, first served. I happen to believe that’s the way it should be. The whole idea of public access is that everyone gets a chance.”

And many people want to take that chance--so many that there is a nine-month waiting list for one of Century’s regular time slots, even though the longest a weekly show is allowed to run is 12 weeks.

The cable company serves Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and, in the West Valley, the area from Mulholland Drive to Ventura Boulevard. Century’s territory is home to many film and TV executives and talent agents--a fact not lost on public-access performers who pine for a show-business career.

Not that many of those executives or agents are watching public access. No national studies have been made, but it’s generally agreed that the numbers are minuscule.

There’s always that chance, however. Just ask “Mr. Pete.”

“I owe it all to public access,” proclaims Peter Chaconas, as if accepting an Academy Award. Chaconas, like his best-known creation--the campy, outrageous Mr. Pete--is not known for subtlety.

It’s his wild and crazy demeanor, alternately leering and then shrieking, that has made “Take a Break With Mr. Pete” the program on Century’s public access that gets the most audience feedback, Lewis says.

The talk-show parody, with Chaconas, 38, dressed in a red plaid coat and green sparkly bow tie and sitting behind a post-modern desk he built himself, is so irresistibly irreverent that even Harris is a fan. (It will be several months before it will be Chaconas’ turn for a regular time slot again on Century public access, but reruns of his shows occasionally pop up on the schedule.)

Before he became Mr. Pete, Chaconas, a former member of the Mike Curb Congregation singing group, was just another Hollywood hopeful supporting himself as a waiter.

“Then I saw a public-access show, and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ ”

He did his first show at Century in January, 1987, all alone. Now he has guests, a sidekick, and a waiting list of people who want to be a part of the show’s studio audience. A talent manager saw the show and signed Chaconas, who then got an agent at William Morris, and that led to a series of discussions with Dick Clark productions about a syndicated version of Mr. Pete.

Chaconas is also holding discussions with two other production companies about playing host on TV shows.

Nothing has been signed, but Chaconas is sure he is finally on his way.

But if he makes it in the big time, will he continue to do a public-access show?

“Are you kidding?” he said with a Mr. Pete inflection. “I’ll be gone. “

The headquarters for King Videocable is a well-appointed, relatively new, white building of cinder block and glass in Tujunga. King’s public-access facility, known as VHTV, is just across the street, but it looks as if it were across the proverbial tracks.

VHTV is in a converted storefront with painted-out windows. There is a studio smaller than most frozen-yogurt shops, a tiny control room and various storage areas and editing bays down narrow corridors.

A woman in 16th-Century garb sits at a computerized character generator, making titles for a show that she just finished taping, on the use of a spinning wheel. Other people are viewing tapes of a kung fu demonstration, a couple singing hymns almost on key, and a woman who stares into the camera and tells how her life has been transformed by 20 years of rhythmic chanting.

It’s typical kaleidoscopic public access.

But VHTV, a nonprofit corporation that programs the public-access channel in the Sunland-Tujunga and Sylmar areas, is also one of the most ambitious of its kind.

Four nights a week, VHTV puts on a live, half-hour local newscast. It also programs live call-in shows every week, with local politicians. There are weekly shows with current news about local organizations and churches, and, during the school year, a show originates at Verdugo Hills High School.

VHTV, which sends out programming on Channel 8 on the King system, also tapes at least one local sports match, usually a school event, per week. “The sports show is one of our most popular,” says general manager Monte Hart.

VHTV began in a local high school in 1971 where Hart, then a teacher, began to use television in his creative writing class. Students and volunteers eventually began producing programs to be shown on cable.

A marketing survey sponsored by King in 1985 indicated that some VHTV shows garnered more local viewers than programs on the TV stations now affiliated with the major networks.

Last year, King officially turned over its access channel, which shows about five hours of programming a night, to VHTV. Its operating budget, according to Hart, is about $125,000 per year. Almost all its monetary support comes from a Los Angeles city trust fund that collects franchise fees from area cable operators.

Hart certainly shares Lewis’ philosophy that access should be for everyone, although they differ when it comes to specifics.

The difference comes to light when they speak about the hottest issue in public access today, the battle over “Race and Reason,” a talk show promoting Ku Klux Klan views.

Last month, the Kansas City, Mo., City Council ordered the local public-access channel shut down rather than show the program. The American Civil Liberties Union is taking the council to court over the matter. None of the public-access services on the Westside and in the Valley have yet had “Race and Reason” submitted to them.

When asked what he would do if the Klan wanted the program shown on his access service, Lewis immediately replies: “I’d have to let them in. The only content I ban is profanity, vulgarity and commercialism.”

Asked the same question, Hart waved his hands, as if he wanted to shoo the problem away.

“I would tell them I don’t have to accept shows from outside the area,” Hart says, thinking about what he would say to the Klan.

He admits, however, that if the Klan persisted, he would probably have to program the show.

The live news show, “Foothill News,” is the heart of the VHTV operation, and by public-access standards, it’s lively and, like much of the programming on the channel, homey.

There are usually guests with news from towns or clubs in the area and a couple of taped segments on local happenings.

Its spirited host, Anne Armstrong--who tapes her segments with the video camera that she carries everywhere, and also writes and edits them, seems completely at ease on the air. It’s no surprise that she is often asked when she is going to try to move into the broadcast world.

“I really don’t think about it much,” says Armstrong.

“Here, I’m my own news director. I find my stories, I do the research, I cover them the way I think they should be covered. I couldn’t do that at a network station. I think that because of restrictions on time, the reporters at broadcast stations often end up reporting only on the sensationalist side of an issue.

“I’m not comfortable with that. I do have a slant, but it’s more toward supporting the community. That’s the kind of story I like to do.”