Don’t Touch That Channel

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. A few weeks ago, Mayor James Hahn proposed eliminating funding for LA36, the local cable access channel for which I serve as general manager. Times are tough, and many city departments will feel the pain of budget cuts. But before the mayor and the City Council go any further with this proposal, it’s worth considering that this channel is the only attempt at consistent, quality local cable programming in Los Angeles. If the channel disappears, cable subscribers and the community will have lost.

With a staff of four and a $527,000 budget (that’s less than a typical television station expense account), LA36 has been demonstrating what’s possible on the local programming front. From community forums to local election coverage, cultural events and high school sports, we’ve produced programming that puts local commercial and cable television to shame.

This week on LA36, you could have caught a panel discussion from Loyola Marymount on our city’s housing crisis, or the passionate address by the widow of the former shah of Iran on the politics of the Middle East, or City Councilman Bernard Parks being interviewed by Earl Ofari Hutchison at the Lucy Florence Coffee House in South L.A.

Then again, maybe you took a college course through LA36 and picked up a few college credits from the Community College District or Cal State Dominguez Hills, or brushed up on your citizenship skills courtesy of Cal State Long Beach, or explored Los Angeles while watching “LA via the MTA.” For the sports-minded, we even had our own version of March Madness: the City Section championship games in boys and girls soccer and basketball.

The mayor’s proposal to eliminate funding for LA36 comes at a time when cable television negotiations are front and center at City Hall. The timing couldn’t be better for a discussion of bold, innovative approaches to local programming via cable TV.

In fact, the city intends to negotiate with the cable companies for the creation of even more community channels. Of course, it makes little sense to ask for more channels when you’re threatening to close down one that’s working. And consider this: Cable subscription rates in the city of Los Angeles hover at 45%. The national average for large cities is 65%. If we don’t have clear, local programming channels, viewers have one less reason to choose cable over satellite.

Fifteen years ago, when the last contracts were signed, subscription numbers weren’t as big an issue because cable had no real competition. But now, television consumers have lots of choices.

Today’s environment demands that the city and its cable operators adopt innovative, cooperative approaches to building the subscriber base, not watch as it continues to tune out.

Why? Cable is a revenue source for City Hall. The more subscribers, the more revenue. If our 45% subscriber base could be raised to 65%, the increase in franchise fees to the city would add up to an additional $10 million a year. What better tool to help build the subscription base than local programming? It’s an arena satellite can’t compete in, and one in which local broadcast stations have made their lack of interest crystal clear.

With hundreds of available channels on digital cable, the city should be looking for ways to stimulate quality local programming outlets in news, community affairs, the arts, education, local sports and diverse public opinion. It need look no further than the model we’ve created at LA36.

The city of Los Angeles is diverse, elusive and vibrant. Yet this city -- in need of analysis and explanation, exploration and discovery -- has suffered from neglect by local television, which typically ignores even our city’s most substantive issues: the policy debates at L.A. City Hall and at a community level that affect every Angeleno.

Los Angeles must be better defined on television than by car chases, murder and mayhem. Community channels like LA36 can help point the way. Here’s hoping the mayor and the City Council can see the wisdom of improving upon what they already have, not eliminating it.

Stay tuned.

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Stephen Grace is president of the Los Angeles Cable Television Access Corp. and general manager of LA36.