Desert Sun 12/27/94
Channel 17 works to expand access
PUBLIC AIRWAVES: Station officials hope to put more of Palm Springs on TV.
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By Jeff Dillon
The Desert Sun
PALM SPRINGS - Call it Rick's World.
From a classroom-turned-studio at Palm Springs High School, Rick Lee controls what residents see on Channel 17 and when
they see it.
"Mostly it's City Council coverage, but we're getting more things on every month," said Lee, airport security officer
by night and chief engineer by day. "The station seems like it's going somewhere."
Despite the location of its headquarters, Palm Springs' public access cable line-up bears little resemblance
to the Saturday Night Live antics of cable access stars Wayne and Garth.
Instead of offering lists of "Top 10 Babes," Time Warner Cable Channel 17 shows City Council sessions, meetings
of the rent review and human rights commissions, and three days a week of documentaries.
A year ago, council coverage was pretty much all viewers got from the channel, which is set aside for
"government access."
In March, the city's overworked library system turned control of the channel over to Palm Springs Television
Voices, one of two groups of volunteers that bid for the operation.
The group has ambitious plans to help residents create their own video material for broadcast, but
spent its first few months improving council meeting broadcasts with better equipment and adding a community bulletin
board and "the new sound of classical music," simulcast from KUSC-FM radio.
"We're trying to do everything we can to make public access more important," said Sid Garris, PSVTV's vice chairman.
"We're getting there. Hopefully everything will turn out all right."
Jim DeSanto, chief executive officer for PSTV, hopes the city's new police chief, Gene Kulander, will agree
next month to spend an hour or so on air taking calls from the public. Kulander replaces Police Chief Bill Valkenburg
on Jan. 23.
That's the sort of thing we should be doing. There's no reason (Mayor) Lloyd Maryanov couldn't...do a state of the
city address," DeSanto said.
A top priority for the new year is opening of the nearly completed studio at the high school. It offers cameras, a modest
stage and editing equipment where residents will be able to create their own programming as soon as January.
Though Time Warner services parts of Cathedral City and unincorporated Riverside County,
the city's contract with the company limits access to Palm Springs residents.
The channel now airs so-called "public access" material beginning at noon on Thursdays, 3 p.m. on Fridays and 6 p.m.
on Saturdays. Channel 17 broadcasts about nine hours a week.
How many people watch or would tune in is anyone's guess.
No one has any estimates on how many of time Warner Cable's 40,000 customers tune in to watch either city
government coverage or other programming.
But Ron Oden said he's still getting comments about Channel 17's coverage of Human Rights Commission seminars
during Human Rights Week in October.
"I'm very please with how they're serving the community." said Oden, a leading member of the commission. "I'm
still getting positive feedback."
And every so often a resident will rush into a City Council meeting to speak out during a comments period or public hearing, prompted by Channel 17's live broadcast.
"I really like it when people come down for public comments during a meeting and say, 'I was watching this at home
and I had to come down and say something about this,'" Lee said. "That really means something to me."
Just don't expect him to drum on the dais a la Wayne and Garth and call it "party time."
