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Access TV Revolution
Santa Barbara on Location Debuts
by D.J. Palladino
If the revolution won’t be televised, then maybe in small increments, we can revolutionize television. At least that’s the hope of three very media-savvy city denizens who last week launched an arts magazine TV show on public access Channel 21. Entitled Santa Barbara on Location, it’s a revolution born partly out of frustration, according to its director and producer Russ Spencer. “I wanted to do the show to address what the media is missing, all the exciting things happening here in the arts,” said Spencer, a highly respected journalist and filmmaker. “There are people here doing amazing things,” he said, noting the explosion of media programs with kids making movies and serious musicians working on scores in relative obscurity. “Did you know that the Mac Mechanic is the fastest growing Apple dealer in all of North America?” Spencer asked. “It’s because so much is happening here, and very little of it gets reported.”
But Spencer’s vision for the show is not limited to newer media: the debut one-hour program featured pieces on the Chicana playwright Monica Palacios, the new ticket kiosk at Paseo Nuevo, and avant-garde musician Jim Connolly, among news of new music and movies. “I very much want to honor the art that takes place in museums as well as art happening on the streets,” said Spencer, chatting spiritedly in his modest office-with-a-view in the Lobero Building.
Santa Barbara on Location originated when Cox Communications decided to delegate its control of the public access channels 18 and 21 to a nonprofit organization called Santa Barbara Channels two years ago. Though absolutely dedicated to giving the whole community a chance to make television, Hap Freund — the director of Santa Barbara Channels — hoped to improve TV programming. He planned to accomplish this with funds provided from Cox when the change in management occurred, and also from both the city and county. Channel 18 could hold down the access mandate, thought Freund. “And Channel 21 was an education channel. I wanted to make it the education and culture channel,” he said.
Freund met Spencer while planning to air Spencer’s documentary film Being Here, which played to sold-out crowds during the S.B. International Film Festival. “I told him about my plans to make a cultural magazine show,” said Freund, who planned to use some of the channel’s dollars to make two installments, and, if it worked, search for sponsorship somewhere in the community to keep it going. “The first one was great,” said Freund of the new production, and has publicly declared it exceeded his expectations. “The great thing about Hap was that he let me go ahead and make the show I wanted with no comments except support,” said Spencer, who is exhausted from the effort but pleased with the outcome as well.
One of Spencer’s wisest independent decisions was to bring Shannon Brooks into the project as host. Besides her impressive charisma, Brooks is the communications manager of the Santa Barbara Visitors Bureau, and has a special interest in the bureau’s film commission. “I’m very excited to be doing this,” said Brooks, who Spencer calls the “consultant of cool” and who helped brainstorm much of the coverage. “Partly because it dovetails with what I do, yet isn’t altogether about tourism.”
In fact that issue is one of the few in which Spencer and Freund have found matter on which to disagree. Spencer wants to include a monthly segment on out-of-town activities. “I want the show to be more regional than provincial,” he says. But Freund doesn’t: “I like it being provincial,” he emailed Spencer. A second show is well underway in development, featuring a new spot with film festival director Roger Durling and a segment on the roots of Santa Barbara’s Solstice celebration.
In the meantime the show is a kind of oasis among the idiosyncrasies of access programming. “I hope people will like it,” said Freund, then addressed the glories of channel surfers. “I know we get a lot of our viewers accidentally, God bless them.” Brooks is excited, now that she’s gotten feedback from unexpected numbers of friends. “It was weird at first to see myself on the channel,” she said. “But I’m sure this is an idea whose time has come.” |
