D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May 2008
Tube of Plenty
From government meetings to local talk and educational programming, Silver City's CATS community television proves TV doesn't have to be an "idiot box."
By Peggy Platonos
Silver City's community-access television system, which now brings educational, governmental and community-generated programs to the area 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via three cable channels and one commercial broadcasting station, began with a whimsical wish for one local resident and the technical know-how and tenacity of a handful of determined people.
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CATS general manager John Waters
and editor/technician Joe Kellerman at CATS headquarters, 213 N. Bullard
St. (Photo by Peggy Platonos) |
The ball started rolling a little over 11 years ago for what today is known as CATS — an acronym for Community Access Television of Silver — and its progress was serendipity at its finest. Fresh from Austin, Texas, where an active community access television station flourished, Silver City attorney Quinn Martin began making inquiries about the possibility of creating the same type of thing here. "I kind of wanted a place where I could shoot a video of my band and get it on TV," he recalls. The band had the unlikely name "Chicken Lunch," and Ed Conley, its drummer, is currently vice president of the board of CATS.
Martin discovered a valuable resource in Pat Kingsley, who at the time was "involved in cable stuff" at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. Through her, he connected with others in the community who were eager to bring community access television to the area — namely Herbie Marsden, David Berry and Joe Hutto. And serendipity promptly kicked into high gear.
"It all just came together," Berry says. "When we examined the federal guidelines for cable companies and franchise agreements, we became aware there was, in fact, a mandate for the cable company to make available a specific block of channels for educational, community access and governmental use on the local band."
The group also discovered that, through a miracle of perfect timing, a franchise agreement between city and cable company was, at that very moment, in the process of being renegotiated.
"Since I was a lawyer, they said, 'Why don't you go over and represent us in the negotiations?' So I did," Martin recalls. Working with city attorney Celia Foy Castillo, he succeeded in getting a commitment by the cable company written into the new agreement, whereby the company would make three channels available for local programming in the Silver City area. Funding for that local programming would also be provided by the cable company through allocation of a percentage of its local revenues — another requirement mandated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
"Of course, writing it in didn't put anything on the air," Martin reflects. Before that could happen, an agent needed to be officially designated to handle the local community access programming. So the group volunteered, digging into their own pockets for the funds necessary to set up a non-profit corporation. "I incorporated CATS," Martin says. "And we all put up a hundred or two hundred dollars to pay the fees."
The officers of the fledgling corporation were Marsden as president, Berry as vice president, and Hutto as secretary/treasurer. Martin was the corporation's registered agent and legal counsel.
It took two tries for the corporation to be accepted by the town of Silver City as its official agent, but it eventually was. The group, meeting around Martin's dining table, then focused on the next hurdle: acquiring and installing the necessary equipment for television production and transmission.
Berry says, "Herbie Marsden is an electronics and computer whiz. He insisted that we needed to go digital from the ground up."
Martin recalls the discussion: "'What's digital?' we asked. 'Trust me,' Herbie said."
They did. "The board took a vote and took that bold move," Berry says. As a result, when the dust settled and computers, servers, cameras and other equipment had been purchased and installed, CATS became "the first all-digital community access television company, I think, in the United States," Berry says with obvious pride. "We acquired computer software that allowed us to produce content. We built computer servers."
And it was all accomplished on a very tight budget. "We developed our own digital server with hardware designed to serve motels. It probably cost us $25,000, which seems like a lot, but to buy something off the shelf at the time would have cost $50,000 to $100,000," explains John Waters, the current general manager. He joined CATS early on as a board member, then worked several years as part-time technician and volunteer cameraman before being tapped to replace the first general manager, Kyle Johnson, after Johnson left to take a job in Seattle.
"I remember the excitement of getting the first signal on," Martin says. "We were breaking ground all the time the first few years. We started first with Channel 17, and put everything on that channel. The first video was an election forum. Mike Lewis, Kyle Johnson and I got it taped and got it on the air."
Now, all three cable channels are up and running, full tilt, along with channel 8, a commercial broadcasting station that more or less fell into the lap of the CATS organization about three years ago, Waters reports. "I got a phone call out of the blue from a man who said he had a television station and was I interested in providing content for the station?" CATS agreed to provide governmental and community access programming, and later bought the station, Waters says. "It was my feeling that by having a broadcast television station, we could better serve the community because not everybody had access to cable."
And so it came to pass that KOOT-TV, channel 8, joined the CATS family of stations. All four channels continue to thrive, each with its own unique character.
Channel 18 is primarily devoted to education, with educational programming throughout most of the day received by satellite from the Annenberg Center for Public Broadcasting. The hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. are dedicated to higher-level educational instruction from the University of Washington.
Channel 19 carries predominantly governmental content, including the airing of government meetings, which are repeated throughout the day. "In the government programming, what you see first is the oldest meeting, so you'll have the background for issues being dealt with in later meetings and can follow events sequentially," Waters explains. "Of course, new meetings do take precedence and pre-empt the schedule."
"Half of our mission is to accurately and uneditedly record governmental meetings," says Paula Geisler, a longtime CATS board member who is currently serving as acting president following Marsden's recent resignation from the post. "People have the right to see their government in action, and we take that half of our mission very seriously."
CATS personnel, contractors and volunteers record county commission meetings and work sessions, town council meetings and, by request, the open meetings of virtually any other governmental agency or committee. In addition to making the meetings available for viewing on channel 19, CATS personnel make sure "a board copy of every meeting is produced, and that becomes the official record of that meeting, and, in most cases, the minutes of the meeting," Waters explains. "We also produce a back-up tape which is immediately available in case of emergency. Copies of that tape sometimes go to news media unable to attend that particular meeting. We've gone way beyond the minimum requirements for providing coverage of government meetings to the community."
Waters has been taping government meetings from the earliest days of CATS. "I think the substance and nature of public meetings has changed substantially in the last 10 years," he says. "They are more congenial, more business-like, more formal. It's not that people necessarily do watch the meetings [on channel 19]; it's just that they could watch them. It tends to make the business of government very public, which is exactly what most of us think it should be. And there's more public input. People seem to understand that when they address the board, they are addressing the whole community."
Despite his other responsibilities as general manager, Waters is still involved in the filming of most government meetings. "John Waters is amazing," says Geisler. "He does so many things I think he must have secretly cloned himself."
The other half of the mission of CATS is to both air and facilitate the production of local programming. To this end, cameras, tripods, microphones and other types of equipment have been purchased and are available to the public at CATS, and CATS editor and technician Joe Kellerman is available to teach people how to use them. Several different editing programs are installed in CATS computers, and Kellerman is ready, willing and able to train people in their use, as well.
CATS actually provided Kellerman with his first introduction to television work. He arrived in Silver City about three years ago with a degree in visual communication and 10 years experience as a commercial artist for a large corporation. Much of that experience involved computers, and his skills fit the needs of CATS perfectly. The opportunity to work in television suited Kellerman perfectly. "It became my new favorite thing to do," he says.
Since joining CATS, Kellerman has formed his own independent company called "JFK Productions" (his own initials) and currently produces the "Late Night Fright" program, which airs at midnight on channel 17 and at 10:30 p.m. on KOOT channel 8. He'll soon be bringing "High Noon Western Theatre" to those stations, as well. In doing so, Kellerman follows the path blazed by a wide variety of local residents through the years of CATS' existence.
It took a while after the station was established, but "we finally convinced people they could produce programs and we'd put them on," Martin recalls. The programs produced by local folks air on CATS channel 17, with some now also being picked up by KOOT-TV channel 8.
The early programs ranged from "The Risque Cafe," a talk show Paula Geisler produced in her living room, to "Gene Booth home-made low-budget singing cowboy type movies, complete with aliens and kidnappings as well as cowboys, and best come upon at 2 in the morning after you come home from the bar," Martin laughingly remembers.
Martin says one mother, Angie Seal, started borrowing CATS equipment and taping the high-school sports events her son was involved in. "That was the year the Silver City football team went all the way to the state finals. She got the guys from a local radio station to do the color, just by sitting next to them and filming the action on the field from there. The camera microphone picked up their commentary quite well."
"About the same time, the high school was having its first video production classes. We had the most amazing creativity pouring out of the area teenagers. And we had some really interesting programming coming in," Berry reminisces, adding, "I'm no longer amazed at the quality of talent in this area. A lot of strange and amazing talent is tucked away down here."
"The Morning Show" arrived on CATS channel 17 about a year and a half ago through its own kind of serendipity. Co-hosts Lori Ford and Gwyn Jones had been comfortably ensconced in a morning show on KNFT radio, carrying on a 30-year tradition started by Dianne Hamilton, now a state representative, when their world was shaken by the sale of the station. Their program became a casualty of a format change, and the two found themselves out of work.
"We kind of had our own following, and people wanted us to somehow revive 'The Morning Show,'" Jones explains. They decided to produce their own television show with the assistance of CATS. That decision not only led to the creation of their own production company (Broad Mind Media Inc.) and the development of a popular television version of their "Morning Show," but also catapulted them into the world of the Internet. Their program appears on their own "channel" at YouTube.com/themorningshowlive and at myspace.com/themorningshowlive as well as on their own Web site, www.themorningshowlive.com, where all their shows are archived.
"We're getting out there worldwide," Ford says. "California is our biggest state viewership."
"Then New Mexico," Jones chimes in.
Ford continues, "Lots of Washington, DC, viewership. We don't know whether that's good or bad."
"Oh it's all good," Jones responds. "We get fan mail from Buenos Aires, from Iran, Pakistan, Sweden, Dubai. And it all grew out of CATS."
That's something that gives great satisfaction to Gwyn Jones' husband, Quinn Martin, one of the people whose vision and determination brought CATS into being.
Waters, too, is delighted with the success of "The Morning Show." It reminds him of a program at the local cable station he was involved in during the 1980s, in the same area of Oregon where cable television first started back in 1949. The content of the Oregon program, he says, was similar to that of "The Morning Show," which Jones describes as "alternative media" and Ford calls "upstream media, where things are clearer" — as opposed to mainstream media where, she says, "things are murkier."
CATS takes neither credit nor responsibility for the content of "The Morning Show" or any other program produced by community members. "We don't try to control the content," Waters says. "We don't try to micro-manage. Our job is facilitation — whatever we can do to make it possible for you to produce your program."
Anyone living in the Silver City area who is interested in exploring the possibility of producing a television show for CATS can contact John Waters at 534-0130 for more information.
Peggy Platonos is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor who lives in the Mimbres Valley and is currently developing a cooking program for CATS, "Food Lore & Favorite Recipes." A new show will start each week on Friday and will be repeated every afternoon at 3:30 on CATS channel 17 and every morning at 10:30 on KOOT channel 8.