SMALL-TIME SHOWTIME : It’s tiny and as unglamorous as show business gets, but it’s also the only kind of television that Ventura County can truly claim as its own.

Two minutes to air time. On the set of “Street Beat,” Oxnard Detective Rafael Nieves is practicing his talk-show-host grin and waiting for the countdown.

“I work homicide,” Nieves warns. “If my beeper goes on, on the show, I’ve got to push things along.”

In the control room, 23-year-old director Roger Muchmore does a little dance of desperation among the dials and switches. Between steps, he points to the nearby chairs that would be full of staff members if this were network television.

“Chyron,” Muchmore says, referring to the unmanned graphics machine at the east end of the control console. “Associate director. Technical director.” But at one minute to air time, those chairs are still empty.

This is community television, the leanest and loosest of all broadcast operations, and the only kind of television Ventura County can truly claim as its own.

It’s as unglamorous as show business gets. Laboring in the long shadow of the Los Angeles television market, a few dozen volunteers and production assistants gather semi-regularly to produce local programs for audiences so small that no one counts them. In most schedule guides, they are invisible.

On the set of “Street Beat,” the subject is crime and punishment as viewed by the Oxnard Police Department. This is the Spanish-language version of the Jones Intercable show, scheduled to run 30 minutes, live, at 7 p.m. Tuesdays. Today’s guest is traffic Officer Ernie Orozco.

Thirty seconds to air. Two crew members are no-shows, leaving studio assistant Janet Ruffner with three cameras to operate at once. Orozco refuses to be photographed while his stage makeup is being applied. Production assistant Silvia Gallardo dashes from the studio to the control room, asking “What am I. . . . What am I? Oh! Audio!”

Then the countdown comes, the rooms go quiet, and Nieves, who has been doing this for more than two years, leans toward the camera with practiced geniality.

“Buenas noches y gracias,” he says.

On the monitors, all is as it should be. In the control room, Muchmore and Gallardo exchange high-fives. Twenty-nine minutes to go.

This county’s airwaves carry plenty of possibilities.

Most local cable companies broadcast city council meetings and special events, from Conejo Valley Days to highlights of the Oxnard Strawberry Festival.

Several local organizations, such as Ojai’s Church of the Living Christ, have been granted Federal Communications Commission licenses for low-power television transmission.

KEYT Channel 3, based in Santa Barbara, has assigned reporter Larry Good to its Ventura bureau, from which he contributes about four minutes of a typical 22-minute nightly newscast.

And at KADY Channel 63 in Oxnard and the Spanish-language KSTV Channel 57 in Ventura, executives say they are planning local programming expansions.

But once the public meetings are subtracted, the continuing local programming available to most Ventura County viewers now adds up to just a few hours a week. There’s 30 minutes of local rock bands here, 30 minutes of karate lessons there, perhaps a debate or two on current events in between.

Jones Intercable is the most prolific local programmer. The station counts 36,000 subscriber households in Oxnard and Port Hueneme, and if those viewers land on Channel 19, they may see:

* “El Show de Francisco,” a thrice-weekly, Spanish-language variety show in the mode of Arsenio Hall’s. The host is Francisco Montelongo, who also works as a production assistant at the station, and his subjects range from Miss Oxnard to big-name entertainers from Mexico. The hourlong show airs at 8 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

* “Tools of Defense,”a half-hour martial arts show devised by the Flores Brothers Karate Studio. The English-language version is taught by Refugio Flores; the Spanish version by his brother, Jesus. The week’s lesson runs in English on Mondays and Fridays at 6 p.m., in Spanish on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.

* “What’s Going On,” a current-events talk show. The host is John Hatcher, president of the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. The half-hour show runs Mondays at 6:30 p.m.

The station also airs three educational programs produced by the Oxnard Elementary School District on Channel 50, the Oxnard Union High School District on Channel 51 and Oxnard College on Channel 52.

For the 82,000 households subscribing to this area’s largest cable company, Ventura County Cablevision, the chances of seeing a Ventura County neighbor on screen are not as good. But there are opportunities. For most of Cablevision’s subscribers in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Ojai, they come on Channel 8. For viewers in much of Camarillo, they come on channel 6A. Among them:

* “Rock Frequency,” a weekly half-hour show featuring local bands playing in the studio. The show, which is the only regular local program the cable company produces, went on the air in early April. The show, seen only in the company’s Conejo Valley households, runs Wednesdays at 7 p.m. and repeats Sundays at 1 p.m.

* “Financial Fitness Update,” a half-hour interview show produced by Dan Roundtree, an Agoura Hills financial consultant. The show airs in Conejo Valley households on Fridays at 7:30 p.m., repeating on Sundays at 8:30 a.m. As with all such programming, the schedule is subject to change.

In the city of Ventura, local cable programming amounts mostly to politics, and it has been expanding lately. On Century and Avenue cable systems, which share the city’s 24,000 subscriber households, the usual fare of City Council meetings this month was joined by “Council Critique,” a half-hour airing of alternative political views. Local activist Ray Russum--who produces the show, pays for the air time and serves as the host--broadcast his first installment June 4.

In Simi Valley, Comcast Cablevision broadcasts City Council meetings, a scroll of community information and advertisements, and public-access tapes from various organizations. But production coordinator Karen Gross said Comcast produces no other continuing programs for its 26,000 subscriber households.

Neither Falcon Cable TV, a Malibu-based company that serves a sliver of Thousand Oaks, nor Entertainment Express, with 1,500 subscriber households in Moorpark, offers continuing inside-the-county programming.

In entertainment centers such as Los Angeles and New York, where thy neighbor’s time in front of a camera may be more coveted than thy neighbor’s spouse, public-access broadcasts have a substantial and diverse stable of performers.

But when it comes time to pick up a camera and microphone and step into their neighbors’ living rooms, local cable officials say, the people of Ventura County are usually too shy or too busy doing other things.

“There hasn’t been much interest” in public-access broadcasting opportunities, said Camarillo Assistant City Manager Larry Davis, who oversees local programming through Cablevision in that city.

“There is actually a lot of work involved in doing a television program,” says Robert Cowie, station manager of Jones Intercable. “A lot of people have some really good ideas, but when it comes to doing it, and finding the time and getting the people together, that’s when it typically falls apart.”

Cable company officials say they give most of their public-access time to largely prepackaged promotional and instructional tapes from national organizations with sponsoring members in their cable territory.

At Ventura County Cablevision, for instance, the list of public-access users includes such national groups as the John Birch Society, which offers an hour of interviews and features on Monday nights, and the U.S. Navy, which contributes the 30-minute “Navy News This Week” on Thursdays at 6 p.m.

With public-access time going to such groups, officials acknowledge, local programming is largely up to the discretion of this area’s cable companies.

“It does require a lot of resources with no return,” said Stephen George, general manager of Avenue TV Cable in Ventura.

“There’s no way to really recover the cost,” said John Giles, director of government affairs and special projects for Ventura County Cablevision. “So what you’re trying to do is project a community image and create an editorial voice.”

On a Saturday afternoon, the Ventura County Cablevision studio in Westlake Village is busy indeed with images and voices.

The images dance on a bank of monitors over director Michael Kamm’s head: a vocalist-bass player in a Technicolor dream-coat, a grimacing guitarist in cascading curls, the flashing sticks of a drummer. Behind the players are two words painted in mock graffiti on the false wall: “Rock Frequency,” the name of the show.

The musicians make up the group Hollander, an aspiring Ventura rock band that’s here to claim eight minutes and 42 seconds of cable fame. The musicians’ ambitions reach far beyond this--they have composed a 50-minute electric symphony for rock trio titled “The Hour of Love”--but today’s agenda is to record two songs of conventional length.

The voices come from all sides: vocalist Jeff Souza, straining to be heard over a din of drums and wailing electronics; director Kamm, barking orders over the headsets to his volunteer camera operators, and Kat Shannon, host of the show and morning man for radio station Z-96 (KZTR-FM), loosening up the backstage hangers-on.

One of the volunteers is making a documentary on the making of this music video. He steps into the sound truck, corners Kamm beneath the video monitors, and rolls the tape.

“We take a crew of about 12 people, and combine all their concentrated energies,” says Kamm, 24, a paid staffer of one year and a veteran of five years of unpaid intern work before that.

“There really are no boundaries,” he adds, describing how “Rock Frequency” is put together. “We take chances and do things that aren’t status quo in the television industry.”

Then it’s time to face the music.

Kamm reminds the cameramen to keep the unpainted part of the set out of the picture, and issues the command to “cue talent and fade up.” He cuts to camera 4, to camera 3, to camera 1, then back to camera 3.

On the monitors, guitarist Dennis Russell dominates the screen, playing a solo passage. Then the rest of the band joins in to close the song.

The camera operator, caught off guard, pulls back in desperation. On the screen, it looks as if he’s chasing a phantom across the studio floor. The three musicians don’t quite fit in the picture.

Another take will be required. Mike Kamm slumps before the console.

“Ah, well,” he says. “We tried.”