What’s on TV? In Del Mar, Anything

So there they were, David Eisenberg and his tiny film crew, biting their nails, getting ready for their exclusive half-hour interview last fall with Marilyn Quayle, wife of the vice-presidential candidate, in her San Diego hotel room.

So what if the crew needed a little seasoning, and most had taken a crash course in how to use their equipment only months before?

They all looked and felt professional enough--Eisenberg’s wife, Brooke, as producer, along with two cameramen, a director and an audio man. They were getting ready to stage a minor television coup.

None of the networks, short of the people at “60 Minutes,” Eisenberg recalls, had gotten the candidate’s wife to sit down for anything near half an hour, as his group was about to.

But this little scoop wasn’t for any of the commercial stations, or even for the local public television affiliate.

It was for “Private Lives, Public People,” Eisenberg’s one-on-one interview program that airs weekly on Channel 38, Del Mar’s public access station, as well as on a handful of other tiny cable TV stations between San Diego and Santa Barbara.

Suddenly, however, in the hallway outside Mrs. Quayle’s room, a small problem developed.

“This Secret Service guy comes up and said we had to be in and out of there within three minutes,” Eisenberg said. “When I told them we had a half an hour, they got pretty testy. They said ‘I don’t know who you people are, but this just isn’t done. Nobody gets a half-hour with Mrs. Quayle. She simply doesn’t have time.’ ”

Call to Washington

The Secret Service boys got on the phone to Washington to get to the bottom of the matter.

“They were a little sheepish after that call, when they found out we were booked for the full 30 minutes,” Eisenberg said. “They let us in. But they said, ‘You’ll have to turn off that camera as soon as she wants to leave.’ ”

In two years, Eisenberg has hosted such offbeat guests as Timothy Leary, Ravi Shankar, publisher Larry Flynt, feminist writer Betty Friedan, Michael Reagan and a host of local personalities.

Each Friday at 5:30 p.m., more than 2,400 households throughout Del Mar and Solana Beach are offered an exclusive, chatty selection of sound bites that few other San Diegans get to see.

The show is just one of the success stories to be seen each week on Channel 38--the little station that bills itself as “by Del Mar, for Del Mar and about Del Mar.”

In a time of declining interest in public access television, Channel 38 is thriving, driven by a wellspring of community energy that many say rivals even commercial stations many times its size.

The station’s success is simple, supporters say. In a precedent-setting agreement made with Daniels Cablevision five years ago, the city of 5,000 became the first in the county to co-operate its own TV station, providing live coverage of a number of public events--including the always-lively City Council meetings.

In exchange for a 15-year franchise agreement with the city, the cable company’s owner, Bill Daniels, who lives in Del Mar, used city property to build a small recording studio filled with state-of-the-art equipment.

The doors were then opened to the public, and any resident with even a half-baked idea was welcomed to take a stab at putting his or her thoughts on tape and on the air--after taking a short course on using the equipment.

Totally Local

While most other public access stations have a professional crew for the technical work, Channel 38’s programming is a local product from beginning to end--from the directing, lighting and camera work to the splicing and final editing.

In one of the nation’s most competitive cable TV markets--statistics show that San Diego cable has the best market penetration in the country--the station’s success has impressed cynics throughout local TV-land.

While station managers are conducting a survey to discover just how many of Del Mar’s cable customers tune in to Channel 38, they say community involvement and calls to the station indicate that lots of people are watching--despite competition with stations of more wealth and talent.

“Back in the early days, everyone thought public access channels were going to be the greatest thing television had going,” said Phil Urbina, director of community relations for Daniels Cablevision.

“In the last decade, however, interest has waned throughout the country, and these stations are closing up because of lack of community interest,” he said.

But not in Del Mar, which just may be the smallest city in the nation to co-operate its own station.

Educated and Active

“If people here weren’t interested in producing or watching their own program, it would die--they’d have to just give us the keys back to the studio,” Urbina said. “But most of Del Mar’s citizens are educated and active. And their interest is keeping the station alive.”

Channel 38 has no advertising, just a lot of energetic, if uneven, programming.

For about 20 hours a week, the station, when not posting a calender of community events, broadcasts everything from comedy and news to shows on music and financial investment.

There’s “Upfront,” a segment in which residents speak out on local issues; “The Wave Length,” a show about local surfing conditions and trends, and “Turn It Up,” a local music television format--along with a weekly two-hour radio program and occasional special productions on subjects such as the annual Grand Prix auto race.

Each month, local high school students produce a 15-minute show called “Spotlight on Torrey Pines.”

And then there’s KBCH, a weekly comedy that its producers liken to a local version of “Saturday Night Live” (broadcast at 4:30 p.m. Friday afternoon).

Muffler & Taco Stand

The show centers around a tiny TV station in a mythical coastal community called the Five City Drive (which has only four towns), and spoofs just about everything that could happen in a seaside village of 5,000 residents.

There’s Flounder Downs, the local race track that has had its problems with horses and drug abuse. There are the ads for Gino’s Muffler & Taco Stand that feature the nasal voice of Gino pushing his carne asada burritos, accompanied by slides of various local canines.

The show has its own backup band, and its two-minute segments make ample use of home-produced slides, cut-out animation and childlike graphics. Operating on a shoestring budget of about $100 per half-hour show, “not counting gas and the price of videotapes,” the people at KBCH laugh at themselves as they laugh at life in Del Mar.

“A big part of the show is the creative juices that come from people just starting out in the business,” said co-producer Anders Tomlinson, a graphic artist who, like most other volunteers at Channel 38, has a day job to pay the bills. “The people involved with our show have never been told what can or can’t be done, like people at the commercial stations.”

The end result, the producers say, has been push a studio willing to try things that aren’t happening anywhere else.

“Channel 38 is an opportunity to learn without all the constraints of the commercial world. Here, there are no limitations other than providing decency and taste to what you present.”

‘Like a Bunch of Kids’

After more than 20 shows, people around Del Mar are even starting to recognize Tomlinson, who also plays Brick Steel Jr., a senior producer at the fictional station.

“People who have seen the show say it’s special because it’s so damn innocent, like a bunch of kids working with ideas that would probably be discarded in any other television venue,” he said.

“At KBCH, each person has a standard just to try and do the best they can with their limited technical expertise. And out of that, some very nice things happen.”

Many people come to Channel 38 with no television experience at all. But each month, the $60 technical course on the use of production equipment is filled with people willing to give it a try.

“You’d be amazed how many people in Del Mar are interested in television,” said station manager Valerie Ryan, who teaches the course along with studio supervisor Erik Villesvik. “Hundreds of people have taken the course since we began offering it several years ago.”

But, as with any creative venture, the studio library is filled with the half-finished efforts of people who never realized how much work is involved in producing a TV program.

A Full-Time Job

“A lot of projects that started as the next ‘Gone With the Wind’ end up as 30-second public service announcements,” Ryan said.

Few people realize that it often takes weeks of part-time work to tape and edit one 30-minute segment.

“People get involved and produce a couple of shows and then they run out of steam. They realize it’s a full-time job.”

To many in the public access television world, the rank beginner is known as a Floyd R. Turbos--the character created by comedian Johnny Carson--who, dressed in a World War I pilot’s cap, blunders his way through his impromptu TV spots.

“All people have to do is walk in off the street to try their hand at television,” said producer Eisenberg. “The problem is they’re lousy. There’s a lot of crazies who do bottom-of-the-barrel things for their own egos. They’re not funny, just boring.

“In the big cities, people use public access television as a stepping stone to bigger things. In smaller places, they come in for a few months and produce some show that’s just their own fantasy, not real television.”

“A lot of it is horrible, just horrible,” he said. “Then, once in a while, you get something good.”

His Driving Passion

Eisenberg, 57, lists among his own credentials interviewing experience in New York, where he worked as a schoolteacher. His wife was working on an advanced degree in communications when the couple left for California several years ago.

Brooke Eisenberg later entered politics, becoming mayor of Del Mar. For her husband, the interview show has become his driving passion.

When he began producing “Private Lives, Public People” two years ago, Eisenberg struck a deal to have it syndicated to several other public access cable stations in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, even in some Southern states.

He says Channel 38 provides a low-key setting in which to produce the show, unlike similar stations in Los Angeles, which sometimes have hundreds of community producers vying for television time.

“It’s the remote control that’s made all this possible,” he said. “People sitting in their easy chairs, flipping the channels, looking for some alternative to network television, giving the local guys a shot at their attention.”

Meanwhile, the almost-weekly fireworks at the City Council meetings--which are staged in the Channel 38 studio--remain the station’s biggest draw.

Ironing Out Wrinkles

As they search for new creative talent, the station will continue to iron out the wrinkles that come with any amateur production--the blurry image, the microphone left off so the council meeting looks like some colorized version of a silent movie.

More than anything else, those at the station say, Channel 38 is a classroom where Del Mar residents learn about television and their own community.

“We’re just a community television station,” Ryan said. “To compare us with commercial TV would be like comparing the Padres to a community softball team.

“People don’t get involved with us because they’re interested in becoming pros. They want to do something for their community, and working with Channel 38 is a unique way to do just that.”