Picturing Local Views of the Persian Gulf Crisis : Television: Community access stations preempt regular programming to cover such happenings as a prayer meeting, a teach-in and a demonstration.

While the networks and their local affiliates scramble to cover the latest news from Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon, low-budget producers on cable television’s community access stations are reaching out to cities and towns with the view from the grass roots.

On Tuesday, Century Cable in Santa Monica and its affiliates in much of the Los Angeles area preempted regular programming on community access channels to bring viewers fare as varied as an in-studio prayer meeting for peace, coverage of a teach-in at Santa Monica College and live reports from a daylong demonstration at the Los Angeles Federal building.

“We don’t see ourselves competing with the networks or CNN or C-SPAN,” said Bill Rosendahl, vice president of Southern California operations for Century Cable. “But we can reach out to our community. People are staying home today in front of their TV sets, people are in their offices in front of their TV sets. Somebody said to me, ‘This could be World War III’--and they could be right.”

Rosendahl said he planned to bring Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders into the system’s Santa Monica studio to record a prayer meeting, to be broadcast at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Century Channel 10 when the United Nations’ deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait expired.

The prayer meeting will be rebroadcast today and other coverage of local reaction to events in the gulf will be aired, Rosendahl said, if events warrant.

“The role we can play (as local cable systems) is dramatically increasing,” said Rosendahl, who has been with Century for two years and has endeavored to bring public affairs programming to the system. “We have that unique opportunity to fill channels with programming and not get caught in the heavy (pursuit of) ratings and advertising that sometimes stifle discussion.”

Along with cable operators in Pasadena, Long Beach, Pomona, Arcadia and Sierra Madre, Century has also been broadcasting the four-part “Gulf Crisis TV Project,” a combined effort of producers across the nation who, working with cameras borrowed from local cable stations, interviewed scores of Americans about their views on the gulf.

Cencom cable in Pasadena, which begins airing the program today at 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., is preparing local programming of its own to run before and after each episode.

Produced by Paper Tiger Television and distributed by Deep Dish Satellite Network, the series is unabashedly oriented toward the peace movement, and also features interviews with such activists as Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark.

The series, which begins tonight on some cable systems but has already begun on Century, has been so well received that the Public Broadcasting Service is considering picking it up, and some public television stations, including KCET in Los Angeles, have already run parts of it.

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) will be screening all four parts of the program without charge next Wednesday at 8 p.m.

“I’m a great admirer of theirs,” said Melinda Ward, director of cultural programming for PBS, said of Paper Tiger and Deep Dish. “They have their ear to the ground in a way that a lot of people don’t.”

Indeed, working with shoestring budgets and using community access cable channels as their means of gaining air time, the two organizations have managed to elevate community programming far above the level of local talent shows and self-serving interviews, where it had been stuck for several years.

Last year, Deep Dish persuaded cable operators to carry live a speech by former Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega just days after he lost his bid for re-election.

“The Gulf Crisis TV Project” will air on Continental Cablevision in Pomona on Thursday and Jan. 24, and on Feb. 3 and 6. It will air on Beverly Hills TV on Jan. 24 and 28. Simmons Cable in Long Beach and Century have said they will air the program, but have not yet announced when it will run.