Live, From Rolling Hills Estates, It’s City Council Night

It was “show time” for the first time Tuesday in the Rolling Hills Estates City Council Chambers as the council made its debut on Dimension Cable Service, Channel 3. With two cameras set up and technicians checking monitors at the back of the chambers, Mayor Nell Mirels told the audience: “We’re live on TV--for the first time.”

Before the cameras were turned on, council members got a few pointers from Dorothy Ciffone, Dimension’s public access studio coordinator, on how to look, act and sound before the electronic eye.

Out are white clothing and busy patterns that reflect too much light or jump around on the TV screen. In are solid colors, ranging from the darker hues to light peach. Jewelry, too, is fine.

Sound, Ciffone cautioned, is a major concern. “Talk a proper distance from the microphone, not too far forward or too far back,” she said. And don’t “shuffle papers or drag maps over the microphones.” That makes a terrific racket.

And, she said, beware the open microphone: “You’re on live and whatever you say will be picked up.” This prompted Mirels to say that the council had better watch its “editorial comments.”

Council chambers have been brightened up for the cameras. There is new light-blue carpeting, and a darker blue wall-covering behind the council dais comes complete with a new wooden logo with the city’s name and its pepper tree symbol.

Rolling Hills Estates council meetings--held the second and fourth Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.--will be telecast live, with repeat showings the following Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Dimension already telecasts meetings of the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council, Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District board and the board of the Palos Verdes Library District.

The debut telecast had a potential audience of 22,360 homes--the total number of Dimension subscribers on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in a portion of San Pedro. But only a handful--878--are in Rolling Hills Estates, where installation of the cable system has yet to be completed. Some 1,800 homes are able to receive service and new hookups are being made on a daily basis, according to the company.

Mirels said she hopes the televised meetings will bring the council closer to residents--and blunt some criticism that the city is a poor communicator.

“We hope people in town will have a better chance of seeing what’s going on,” Mirels said.