COLUMN ONE : Outlets for Forgotten Viewers : Low-power television serves those beyond the reach of either cable or conventional broadcasters. But few stations have fulfilled populist goals.

In small Indian communities from the Rockies to the desert Southwest, low-cost television “mini-stations” are broadcasting political debates, giving native language instruction and airing documentaries on Indian art and culture.

Just outside of Disney World in Florida, a similar station beams a steady diet of commercials for local tourist attractions along the main strip of hotels and motels.

And in the Bronx, in neighborhoods so poor cable operators are afraid their copper wires will be stripped by scavengers, at least 300,000 Haitians tune in to a station broadcasting in the patois that most islanders speak.

This is low-power television--”LPTV” for short. Transmitting signals over the air to areas within a radius of 15 to 30 miles, using as little as 10 watts or as much as 1,000 watts--compared to the hundreds of thousands of watts generated by most TV transmitters, these stations serve television’s disfranchised: viewers geographically and linguistically beyond the reach of conventional broadcasting and financially out of reach of cable or satellite dishes. And while Lilliputian in size, LPTVs put out signals that can be received without any special equipment or fee. For broadcasters, the benefit is also the cost. LPTVs can be put on the air for as little as $80,000, although there is ample opportunity to lose that much and more.

The concept emerged out of the counterculture in the early 1970s, when technically oriented young people began to use cheap new technologies in rural areas that, for topographical reasons, couldn’t receive traditional television signals. One place this happened was in Lanesville, N.Y., in a small valley near Woodstock. A group of people who called themselves the Video-freex set up a low-power station, without troubling the Federal Communications Commission for a license.

“We began going around town, kind of making tapes,” recalled Paul McIssac. Coverage included fires and car accidents, lost dogs, bar fights, weddings and baseball games. “They had a wonderful sense of humor and localness.”

These populist pioneers, using the slogan “low power to the people,” managed to convince the FCC that, in addition to serving rural people “off the net” of existing television broadcasting, low-power technology could aim for the fringe, providing programming diversity and encouraging minority ownership.

Nearly two decades later, only a few stations have fulfilled that promise.

At schools like Dull Knife Memorial College in Lame Deer, Mont., and Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Ariz., student interns and volunteers learn how to operate cameras and cut videotape on LPTVs, thanks to grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce. In addition to sharing oral histories of tribal elders, the stations also connect viewers on the reservation with the Global Village, beaming “Sesame Street” from satellites to Mescalero Apaches in remote, mountainous areas of New Mexico and to the Blackfeet in Montana.

Low power “works real well for rural areas,” said Matthew Jones, project coordinator for the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium in Lincoln, Neb. “It gives them an option to do local programming. It’s doing for rural areas what the access channel is doing for cable in the cities. It gives them a voice for promoting cultural awareness.”

Throughout Alaska, 250 public, low-power stations built and operated by the state bring a single channel--combining programming from the one public and three commercial networks, along with “interactive” educational programs--to communities. These settlements are so remote that they have no other access to television, apart from costly satellite dishes.

“For a relatively small number of people, it’s a godsend,” said Andrew Schwartzman of the Washington-based Media Access Project, a public interest watchdog organization.

A Buffalo, N.Y., station owned by Ralph Nader’s Citizens Television System--a funky, shoestring operation--also coincides with low power’s early ideals. Channel 58 is overseen by longtime Nader associate Sam Simon, who notes that nearly half the viewing households in the country are not plugged in to cable.

The station operates from space provided by a local college and is funded partly by grants and partly by revenues from ads taken out by local pizza shops and pet stores. Simon calls his LPTV, which features school board meetings, ballet performances, documentaries, City Council meetings and community festivals, “the functional equivalent of local C-SPAN. . . . The idea is, we’re there, we’ll cover it for you.” Various groups can come in and do their own programming on Channel 58, but the station maintains editorial control.

“By using this vehicle to let the community speak with itself, share ideas with itself, share the experience,” Simon said, “it strengthens the community, as opposed to delivery of somebody else’s ideas of programming.”

There are now approximately 800 LPTVs on the air in the nation, with an average viewership of 14,500. In the past year alone, said Keith Larsen, head of the LPTV section of the FCC, the government has licensed about 200 new stations in the continental 48 states, a 73% increase over the previous year.

Nevertheless, even as the number of stations grows, the idealistic founders of the movement believe that their vision may have fallen victim to commercial forces and religious broadcasters who simply want to extend the shopping and promotional reach of programming that already is mushrooming on cable.

Jury Still Out

There is little original or locally produced programming on most commercial LPTVs. Despite reduced start-up costs, less government regulation and the large number of the estimated 4,500 new licenses available, the industry says minority ownership of privately operated LPTVs is less than 10%--which still dwarfs minority ownership of other TV media.

Growth also has been spotty. Many stations prove unprofitable and go under. Says the FCC’s Larsen: “I think low power right now is beginning to get its fair test in the marketplace, and I think the jury is out.”

The industry’s focus is rapidly shifting to stations like the Tourist Channel in Kissimmee, Fla., which borders on major Orlando-area attractions. The year-old, almost totally computerized station is located in a suite of offices in a bank plaza, broadcasting from its roof to the main strip of hotels and motels near Disney World and Sea World. Programming consists of 24 hours a day of commercials, weather reports, schedules, prices and “infomercial segments.”

“We’re here to do one thing,” said general manager Nick Ashton, “make profit and have fun. . . . We’ve taken little tourist magazines and papers and turned them into an electronic medium.”

Group Ownership

Group owners, like the one that owns Ashton’s station, now control about half of the existing LPTVs in the lower 48 states. Religious broadcasters like Orange County-based Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Home Shopping Network, taking advantage of the absence of FCC ownership limits, are snapping up stations. Full-power television stations are using LPTVs as inexpensive transmission towers or as satellite stations to extend their reach.

In California, says the Community Broadcasters Assn., the low-power trade association, there are 37 LPTVs on the air. Although numerous licenses have been granted, there are no low-power television stations now operating in Southern California, for a variety of reasons including market saturation, topography and legal wrangles. However, Cal State Northridge has been granted a license and is now advertising for “a potential business partner” to operate an LPTV station “that will serve the affluent, 300,000 L.A. suburb of the western San Fernando Valley.”

Also active in buying stations and lining up affiliates are programming services that feature dog racing, game shows, old movies and inexpensive reruns. These organizations, now serving more than 80% of the nation’s LPTVs, have been able to negotiate their way onto cable systems owned by multiple system operators. Channel America, for example also makes use of an “interactive” relationship with game show viewers, either with telephones or remote control switches. In Florida, if you watch Video Jukebox Network you can call a 976 number and, for $2, order up a music video. Other companies hope to utilize similar technology to sell cars and real estate and link up to off-track betting.

The financial outlook for the industry remains uncertain, analysts say.

Bruce Bishop Cheen, a senior analyst for Paul Kagan Associates, a Carmel-based media-consulting firm, calls low power the “slowest growing land rush the media has ever seen,” citing early delays and bureaucratic bottlenecks at the FCC. The industry’s future is still problematic, he said, with results “all over the map.”

The real key, Cheen said, is getting on a cable system. “Cable is a great equalizer. Mass delivery is what counts. . . . If innovative LPTV works with cable, then the sky’s the limit. If it doesn’t, the survival rate is not going to be impressive. “

In Worland, Wyo., an LPTV folded after the local cable system operated by Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest owner of cable systems, refused to carry the signal. John C. Malone, TCI’s chairman, calls LPTV “a very special case,” although TCI has carried LPTVs on systems in New York and Pennsylvania. There is no companywide policy against carrying low-power stations, Malone said, adding that the Nader affiliate in Buffalo is “a pretty good thing, and we’ve agreed to carry it.”

Industry officials acknowledge that there may be no more than two dozen such LPTVs operating in the black. And frequently these are in so-called “white areas,” rural or urban areas that for one reason or another are not adequately served by full power stations or by cable. However, these same areas may be reached in the future--perhaps as early as 1992--by “direct broadcast satellites” and received with inexpensive, window pane-sized receivers, a system unveiled in February by four major telecommunications companies.

Cross-ownership and capitalization are other factors: Single-owner LPTVs seem to have a greater chance of survival when they also own a local newspaper, radio station, video store, electronic equipment company or are married to someone in a deep pockets profession.

Community Identity

Perhaps the best known independent LPTV outlet is Channel 43 in Hopkinsville, Ky., which has been broadcasting near the Tennessee and Indiana borders for the past five years. Before that time, said D.J. Everett, the station manager, “the only significant television that the people in our area have been able to get has been either Tennessee television or Indiana television. Well, you know there’s just a normal thing that people do, they identify with their own town and their own state.”

Everett’s LPTV, which is owned by the prosperous local newspaper, tried various formats and types of programming before finding a formula that worked. While old movies and sitcoms fill much of the daytime schedule, it is the evening and weekend fare that gives the station its identity and pays the bills.

“We’re strictly in the news and sports business,” said Everett. “That’s what the people in our community want. That’s what we offer that nobody else offers, so they have a very strong reason to watch us. . . . You’ve got a station there in Los Angeles that’s (doing) prime time news, which we did over two years ago.” The emphasis on local news and sports is what got Channel 43 on area cable systems, Everett said, and what keeps him there.

“Of the 15 cable systems that I’m on, the only true local voice on those cable systems would be gone if they took me off,” he said.

Richard Bogner, an electronic equipment manufacturer, has had less success with the low-power stations he operates in the New York metropolitan area.

Bogner said he has been “doing reasonably well” with his inner-city stations, selling time to various ethnic groups, adding: “I could be happier. . . . I haven’t gotten a handle on how secure my business is.”

He estimates that at least 300,000 Haitians watch one of his stations, “because we’re the only station that broadcasts in the patois” that most islanders speak. “With an ethnic audience, they sometimes are willing to watch a marginal color picture in their language, rather than a great picture on CBS if they don’t understand it.”

Other models for small-time entrepreneurs are for “boutique” stations, catering to upscale clientele in resort areas. In Park City, Utah, and Killington, Vt., LPTVs broadcast ski reports, ski championships and ski movies. And in Twin Falls, Ida., a low-power station regularly broadcasts baseball games of the Seattle Mariners, who own the local minor league franchise.

Michael Couzens, a former FCC attorney who was one of the architects of low power, says that while the industry hasn’t fulfilled all of the goals he and others had for the medium, he is not disappointed. There are now 500 more television stations on the air than there were before.

“This was a step toward a more competitive television environment,” said Couzens, now an industry consultant and journalist. “It’s not complete, but I’m glad it was done. It did its little part.”

Back in Kissimmee, that little part consists of Nick Ashton directing the action in the Tourist Channel’s tiny studio, where the marketing director for nearby Gatorland is on her hands and knees, piecing graphics together on the carpet for a camera for another 30-second spot.

But even on an LPTV as single-mindedly devoted to profits as this one, the pull of community service is strong. In the past month, Ashton has added brief newscasts from Reuters, an 800-telephone number for tourist problems and three minutes per hour of Spanish language information and commercials.

“I am doing these things as a marketing ploy--to get people to watch our station,” Ashton explains. “What low power is designed for is to serve the community, and what we have here is a tourism community. . . . We can help them and keep them informed.”