Azusa Battles Plan for Adult Channels

“Everything from A to Z in the USA” is one of Azusa’s mottoes.

But that apparently doesn’t include X, as in X-rated cable television.

The City Council in this conservative San Gabriel Valley town is pressuring its cable franchise holder, Charter Communications, to kill plans to include such sexually explicit pay-per-view channels as Spice and Adam & Eve in its local offerings.

With dozens of residents cheering them on, council members recently approved a resolution demanding that the offerings be scrapped.

“Azusa stands for ‘A to Z in the USA’ but without P for pornography,” Councilman Dick Stanford said.

In this community, which is home to a well-known Christian university, Azusa Pacific, Stanford’s view is getting widespread support.

Many of its 45,000 residents are concerned about what they say is a threat to children and moral values.

“We’d like them to reconsider the decision to make these harmful channels available,” said Hank Bode, Azusa Pacific vice president of legal affairs. “I am concerned about the youth of our community. Garbage in results in garbage out.”

The five-member council, after hearing such sentiments, was unanimous in its opposition to Charter’s plan, saying in its resolution that the programming would “detract from Azusa’s place as one of families and churches, and from its vision as the gem of the San Gabriel Valley.”

The council resolution amounts to advice because it has no legal authority to control the cable company’s program content. Any such veto over content would violate Charter’s 1st Amendment rights, both cable and city officials agree; nonetheless, the civic objections are leading Charter officials to reconsider their plans.

Officials at Charter headquarters in St. Louis said that none of their other 550 client cities in 19 states has challenged them on their adult-themed channels. Elsewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, the channels are available from Charter franchises in Pasadena, Glendora and West Covina.

“We offer these channels virtually everywhere,” said Jim Bogart, national vice president of government relations for the cable company. “Frankly, we were surprised when this happened.”

The council resolution prompted Charter, which had planned to start offering the channels in Azusa last week, to put them on hold indefinitely.

“It was a suggestion, and any time a council suggests something, we take it very seriously,” Bogart said.

While local governments have no direct control over cable offerings, they do have the power to award franchises and decide such matters as rate-increase requests. And, as any smart business operator knows, it makes no sense to offend your customers.

So cable officials say they are considering whether to survey Azusa customers.

Charter critics say the company needs to pay more attention to community values and less to its bottom line.

“We have set standards high . . . because the stakes are high,” resident Daniel Simpson told council members earlier this month.

Stanford said he is mystified by Charter’s apparent belief that the adult channels would be welcome in Azusa.

“No one came before the council to say they wanted these channels,” Stanford said.

While that may be true, home subscribers to adult channels across the nation paid more than $100 million last year, according to industry publications.

Playboy TV, Spice and Adam & Eve reach about 36 million U.S. households, according to Playboy Enterprises Inc.

“There is a demand for the product. All of our competitors offer this kind of programming. Satellite dish companies offer it, and so it’s available in Azusa now,” Bogart said, adding, “We don’t tout the product as socially redeeming. It isn’t C-Span or CNN.”

Charter is one of the nation’s fastest-growing cable television companies, and with its recent merger with investor Paul G. Allen’s Marcus Cable, it will serve more than 1,000 communities and become the nation’s seventh-biggest cable provider.

The company provides a number of safeguards to keep children from tuning into sexually oriented channels. The signal is scrambled to all subscribers who do not order and pay for the adult channels. Additionally, parents can block any channel they desire.

But some residents are concerned about preview listings that scroll continuously on certain empty channels that feature racy sales pitches and raunchy movie titles and descriptions. In blue-collar Azusa, the so-called sin industries are out. Two years ago, voters rejected plans to build a casino. Many of the present council members were active in that effort and were swept into office in the aftermath of the campaign.

These council members say they are trying to get the message out that Azusa is a family town.

Stanford hopes Azusa will become a trendsetter as well.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” he mused, “if every city said, ‘We don’t need these channels either’?”