Punch it up and you might see a game show for tax preparers. You might catch the ever-galvanizing video image of Calvin Goode, calmly opining at a Phoenix City Council meeting about some issue that needs further study. You might see a terrific little feature on historic preservation in Phoenix neighborhoods.
Or you might see several San Antonio police officers in uniform playing "Johnny B. Goode" behind an Elvis impersonator at a local high school auditorium.
A casual viewer wandering onto Channel 35 gets the eerie sensation that he's come across an alien world where the government controls the transmission towers and underground cable, a place where the mostly ignored business of running a big city actually might be interesting enough to televise. On Channel 35, Phoenix City Council meetings are broadcast (and later rerun) in full, without commentary, expert analysis or commercial interruption. Slick documentaries dissect the city's zoning philosophies. The mayor has a talk show.
Who watches this stuff?
Ken Lynch, a producer, writer and reporter for Channel 35 since the mid-1980s, has a good idea who his audience is. "In a way, we preach to the converted," he says. "Nobody's gonna watch if they're not interested in the first place. The people who we know are watching are people in government, people who do a lot of business in government and people involved in the seemingly endless stream of citizens' committees. The audience is a committed group of people."
A Channel 35 viewer, Lynch says, is the kind of person who would rather spend a Saturday afternoon at a Phoenix Futures Forum meeting than go to a Suns-Lakers game. "It's almost our function to not have any entertainment value at all," Lynch says, with only a trace of irony. THE ACCIDENTAL Channel 35 viewer--someone not connected to the city in any way (aside from paying taxes, of course)--gets the creepy feeling that he is the only person who might be watching. And he may be right. No one knows for sure how many people, if any, are watching the Phoenix Channel.
Mary Jo West, the former queen of local TV news and Channel 35's station manager since last August, says she's seen surveys that claim for the channel about 30,000 viewers. Mark Hughes, the city's top public-information official and West's direct superior, has an old memo on file that says the viewership might be more in the neighborhood of 50,000. According to the ratings services used by commercial TV stations, Channel 35's viewership is so small and scattershot that it can't be accurately counted. The numbers that appear next to the Phoenix Channel's name in the Nielsen ratings book are zeros.
The Phoenix Channel signed on in 1984 and is now one of the largest government-access channels in the country, employing fourteen full-time staffers plus a couple dozen part-time free-lancers. The station's annual budget is more than $700,000.
Channel 35 is essentially a fancy video press release for the city government. But if nobody is watching, why does it exist?
COMMERCIAL TELEVISION entities, including the networks~ (free and cable), local network affiliates and independents, exist to mak~e money. Public television, provider of Sesame Street, Frontline, and This Old House, exists to solicit money. Government-access stations, such as the Phoenix Channel and similar outfits in other cities, exist to spend money.
Most cable companies are monopolies. City governments grant exclusive, monopolistic franchises to cable companies for a couple of reasons. One, competing cable companies would have to string or bury redundant wires throughout a whole city. That could get messy. Two, cable companies have traditionally been willing to trade valuable services--free space on the dial--to cities for their monopoly rights.
Dimension Cable, a subsidiary of the Times Mirror communications giant, is cable provider to most of the Valley. As part of its franchise agreement with Phoenix, Dimension gives 5 percent of its gross revenue (or at least that part generated within the city limits) to the city government. Some of the money is used to help regulate cable services--an office at City Hall exists solely to take complaints from cable subscribers--and some of the money goes to fund Channel 35. The Phoenix Channel isn't funded by taxpayer money, so taxpayers can't gripe about spending money on it, or at least city officials don't have to listen if they do. The city's approximately 140,000 cable subscribers pay for the Phoenix Channel when they pay their bills every month.
Other traditional cable giveaways include educational- and public-access channels. Programming for Dimension's educational-access channel (Channel 34 in Phoenix) is produced by Arizona State University and the Rio Salado community colleges. Public-access programming (Dimension Channel 32) is produced by the public. The cable company will provide studio space and equipment--even training--to anyone who wants to do a TV show, and the company will broadcast it free. Dimension has millions tied up in its public-access obligation, but only about four hours of Phoenix-originated public-access programming is broadcast every month. Across the country, the most enthusiastic users of public-access channels have been skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan. PHOENIX'S CABLE HISTORY is comparatively kind of strange. At one point in the early Eighties, several companies had been granted franchises and were falling all over each other to wire the city for cable. Here was a rare case of competition at work in the cable industry. The result: Phoenix probably got wired a little quicker than it would have if just one company was doing the digging. In the years since that manic era of expansion, Times Mirror's Dimension Cable subsidiary has gradually taken control of most of the Valley's cable business. Dimension now handles the cable services for Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Glendale and other cities. The cable provider for Scottsdale is owned by a different company, which maintains its own separate relationship with that city government. Not surprising, Scottsdale's government-access channel is almost as extravagant as Phoenix's. Tempe doesn't televise its council meetings, and Dimension subscribers in that city see a community bulletin-board scroll on their government-access channel. Mesa televises its council, but cable insiders joke that the only viewers of that scintillating programming are the spouses of councilmembers, who watch so they know when to start dinner. The relationship between cable companies and municipalities seems to be an everybody-wins situation. The cable provider gets protection from competition (the ongoing revolution in satellite technology, plus the inevitable entry into the cable-TV business by telephone companies, will soon skew the cable business but good--another story entirely), and city councils get free services for their citizens. Among the nonwinners, however, are cable subscribers, who typically have no protection from monopoly cable companies, which, thanks to Reagan-era communications deregulation, can misbehave at will. Most cable companies can set their prices any way they like. If they don't want to wire a certain neighborhood or part of town, they don't have to. They don't even have to answer their phones. Subscribers take other hits, too. There are lots of people who don't like the idea of government-programmed television stations. Thomas Hazlett, an economics professor at the University of California-Davis, keeps a keen eye on the cable industry. He's a vocal proponent of competition in the industry, and wary of the kind of broadcasting that results from chummy quid pro quo franchise agreements between politicians and cable companies.
"In Florida, the state cable association has given editorial control of a local-origination channel to the state legislature," he says, before adding the key background that Sunshine State lawmakers passed an anticompetition statute for the Florida cable business in 1987. "It's as if a newspaper was to say, `We're gonna have a page here that is edited by the city council.'
"It's nice to remember that cable is a First Amendment-protected speaker. To have this kind of cozy relationship should, on the face of it, be reprehensible."
AN ARGUMENT COULD be made that Channel 35's broadcasts of city council meetings are actually kind of subversive. The live feeds that leave the council chambers are totally unsweetened. Five cameras capture the nonaction, and viewers are exposed to the unretouched city council and staff: Mary Rose Wilcox whines, Skip Rimsza postures like a student-council candidate, and Howard Adams maintains the countenance of a Star Wars villain.
"It's easy TV for us," says city publicity boss Mark Hughes. "We can go out and point our cameras at whatever happens. When the meeting's over, our work is done. We don't need to edit."
Hughes says the unedited nature of the broadcasts is part of the appeal. "I kind of luxuriate in the idea that I can deliver an entire council meeting to somebody's home, unedited, uncut," he says. "With all the warts, as Ed Murrow used to say."
Equally luxurious, at least for lovers of the perverse, are Channel 35's regular telecasts of district meetings between city officials and concerned citizens. When the mayor, councilmembers and city staffers travel to meet with taxpayers, anything can happen. Typically the audience members at these meetings get to stand up one-by-one, grab a microphone and say whatever weird, angry, goofy or brutally honest thing that comes to mind. As captured on a district-meeting broadcast, one taxpayer rose to gripe to then-Mayor Terry Goddard about a new pedestrian overpass that seemed to be closed to pedestrians.
Sample dialogue:
Citizen: "What kind of stupidity puts up a pedestrian overpass and then blocks it off to pedestrians? Who's in charge of this, and who's going to do something about it?"
Mayor: "Good question."
AS LONG AS THE weekly council show is presented without any obvious editorial tweaking--as long as the emperors stay so obviously undressed--city staffers can dodge criticism about the outrageous-at-face-value concept of piping 126 hours of City of Phoenix propaganda into citizens' homes every week. And not all of that propaganda is bad. Channel 35's weekly interview show, Phoenix This Week, stays pretty current. Ken Lynch (formerly of KTAR) and Kathy Kerchner (fired former morning anchor at Channel 12) alternate as host, and recent shows have been produced on child-support problems and downtown redevelopment. The show's theme usually takes off from some service offered by the city, and the list of potential topics is long. "The city's involved in almost everything," Lynch says. The Phoenix Channel's documentaries, which sometimes tackle dense tales from deep within the city bureaucracy, are remarkably well-done. Compared with the public-affairs coverage of local commercial stations, Channel 35's work is encyclopedic. The information supplied in these programs is available elsewhere, but in most cases the packaging provided by the Phoenix Channel's documentarians can be considered a genuine public service. Lynch has produced, written and narrated segments on topics ranging from (Phoenix sister city) Himeji, Japan, South Mountain Park, historic preservation--even planning and zoning. One of Lynch's more memorable productions was a slick program that attempted to explain the city's dense General Plan to control development and growth. "It's hard to make television out of that," says Lynch, who also worked as a newsman at Channel 5 before starting his career in civil service. "It really taxes the imagination. But it's very important to the people upstairs that the General Plan be understood."
However competently produced the Phoenix Channel's shows may be, the question of independence won't fade away. Mary Jo West's supervisor is the city's top flack, Mark Hughes. He is an image engineer, and the station's broadcast signal has to be considered part of his department's output. It is highly unlikely that Channel 35 viewers will ever see a documentary titled, "The Grand Prix: Is That a Stupid Idea or What?" Ultimately, it is The People Upstairs who control Channel 35. Or is it? "I'm surprised that there's been so little intrusion, politically," says Hughes. "We have never, ever come to blows with an elected official over programming." Well, not quite never. West says she's been visited by a city councilmember (whom she wouldn't identify--but it was Mary Rose Wilcox) concerned with the "balance" of a particular Channel 35 production. "We sat down with this councilperson . . . and she was right," West says. "We did not take out the negative in the story, we just balanced it out." Wilcox says the show, a profile of her west-central district, had overemphasized the poorer neighborhoods at the expense of areas like Encanto.
THOUGH SHE RARELY appears on-screen, Mary Jo West is Channel 35's biggest star. When she was picked station manager last year, the station for the first time gained a public profile.
West was working at Channel 8 in the mid-Seventies when she was tapped by Channel 10 to become the first woman to anchor a network-affiliate newscast in Arizona. She quickly became a local celebrity, and in the 1980s moved to a short network stint with CBS' overnight news show. Her return to Phoenix, as managing editor and anchor at Channel 3, was not a ratings success, and she left TV news in 1986. "Two hundred people wanted to sit in this chair," West says of the city's nationwide search to fill her slot. "It wasn't just a piece of cake for me to get this job. I had to aggressively compete, and I did. . . . I lucked out and got the job. "I was in a wonderful time in my career for an opportunity to make the transition from being a producer-reporter and anchor to management. It gave me an opportunity to work in a place that's small, to do the kind of television I believe in from my soul--that comes from the public-television background--and a chance to teach a very energetic group of people whatever knowledge I have . . . and to have an opportunity to work for the City of Phoenix, the city I love, and talk about the good stuff that's going on."
A born organizer, motivator and performer (she once very enthusiastically played Maria in a Phoenix Little Theatre production of The Sound of Music), West appears to be less ambition-driven than she was in past public lives. (New Times has chronicled this woman's life more thoroughly than any other single figure in Phoenix history. For the record, this interview was conducted in her small-but-tidy corner office on a lower floor at City Hall. She looks fine, although maybe a little tired. There will be no further references to Mary Jo West's appearance or personal life in this story.)
"I've learned the hard way," she says. "I'm taking it one day at a time. I am loving today, and I'm not going to say I'll be here forever, but I owe it to these people to give them the best of me. I have a really wonderful life. Down the road, several years from now, if an opportunity came maybe at another station, I'd certainly look at it. I have no interest in going anywhere right now.
"This place is like a little baby, and I feel like a parent, and we're helping it grow."
WILL MARY JO'S little baby grow up to be Sam Donaldson, or Ron Ziegler? Will it behave like a real journalist--tough, independent, skeptical--or will it have the slippery, truth-bending personality of a spin doctor?
From the top down, the Phoenix Channel's staffers are particularly sensitive about the topic of editorial independence. Producer Kathi Kovach came to the Phoenix Channel from Channel 3, where she worked as a producer and reporter. "I would not want to undermine what I've done as a journalist," she says. "I don't consider this a public relations job. I'm a journalist."
Lynch's job description reads somewhat differently. "I'm not a journalist anymore," he says. "I was at KTAR. I was at 5. I'm a video producer."
Toiling within the confines of what essentially is a house organ, Lynch has been able to produce meaningful work. He says that city fathers haven't taken the cynical approach to their TV outlet. "The possibilities are endless for what we're doing--if the political leadership is smart enough to keep its hand off," he says, adding that so far they have. "This place is run by smart people. "They didn't hire PR people for these jobs. They hired broadcasters and journalists. None of us are from ad agencies. People can spot a PR scam very easily."
Says West, gesturing gently at the wall hangings behind her desk: "I'm real proud. I've got some [Arizona] Press Club awards--first place--up there, not for anchoring but for writing and producing, being a journalist. Was I going to be here as a public relations arm of the city council and the mayor? I did look into that, and we did address that in the job interview.
"I can honestly say that there's never been a time since I've come down here where I've had someone storm down and demand we send a crew out to cover a groundbreaking to make a particular councilperson look good. And I was afraid that was going to happen. In all honesty, it hasn't happened yet."
SO MARY JO WEST and her staff of go-getters are poised to spread the good word about the city by the Salt. But that viewership question nags. Cable- industry watcher Thomas Hazlett japes that when city councils get in bed with cable companies for purposes of establishing government-access stations, they grant themselves the ability to be seen but not watched. West is taking steps to increase the Phoenix Channel's appeal. She's negotiated with her former employer to borrow many hours of Copper State Cavalcade, an award-winning series of cheerful local profiles produced years ago at Channel 10. Taped broadcasts of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meetings were added to Channel 35's program schedule last week. One of the main reasons West got the job was her obvious ability to increase, via sheer power of personality, the station's visibility among potential viewers. Within hours of getting the job, she and Lynch were talking about the Phoenix Channel on KTAR. She recently had a personal meeting with the Arizona Republic's managing editor, in hopes of getting Channel 35's schedule added to the paper's TV listings. West will go almost anywhere and talk to almost anyone about her new baby. "I see us as a combination of C-Span and Channel 8," she says. "That's how I explain us to people who don't know who we are yet. "I like the idea of bringing how our system works to the people through television, bringing government to the people. As you know, there is lots of apathy out there, and this is our way of explaining our system. A lot of people are too busy to come down here and watch and listen.
"Right now we don't exist in the eyes of television viewers. We're not in the paper, we're not in TV Guide. The good news is, in commercial television, you live and die by the book. There are pressures in this job, but I don't have to produce numbers. . . . I can just concentrate on doing quality television."
end part 2 of 2
A Channel 35 viewer is the kind of person who would rather spend a Saturday at a Phoenix Futures Forum meeting than at a Suns-Lakers game.
Across the country, the most enthusiastic users of public-access channels have been skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.
"It's as if a newspaper was to say, `We're gonna have a page here that is edited by the city council.'"
"I kind of luxuriate in the idea that I can deliver an entire council meeting to somebody's home, unedited, uncut."
It is highly unlikely that Channel 35 viewers will ever see a documentary titled, "The Grand Prix: Is That a Stupid Idea or What?"
Mary Jo West: "This place is like a little baby, and I feel like a parent, and we're helping it grow."
"I see us as a combination of C-Span and Channel 8. That's how I explain us to people who don't know who we are yet.
