When It Comes To Cable TV Programming,
Residents Are Seldom Seen or Heard

The Beverly Hills City Council usually allocates to residents no more than three minutes to address issues of concern at Council meetings and hearings. Organizations may be given five minutes each. If the mayor sees that a large number of people want to testify, she may, at her discretion, shorten the time allowed. These meetings are cablecast.

Only a few years ago, residents were also able to locally produce and cablecast 28-minute programs to more fully discuss issues of concern. Then, the Council dismantled the local public access studio and appropriated to itself, our public access equipment and our Channel 3.

This was done with the promise that public access would soon be restructured and restored to the community. Public access has not been restored, despite repeated requests that the Council do so.

Now, when a community organization or an individual wants to produce a program, to share with his or her fellow Beverly Hills citizens, they must leave Beverly Hills and drive to Adelphia’s studio in Santa Monica.

That is, unless they happen to be a City councilperson. One of them has her own series regularly produced locally and cablecast at taxpayers and ratepayers expense.

While she calls it “Beverly Hills Forum,” controversial issues of concern to residents are seldom, if ever, discussed. Her series often appears to be largely a means of social-climbing among the arts set.

One month’s schedule has her hour-long shows in re-play 20 times in just this one month. Among her featured guests is a dress designer from London who reappears three times.

While the city's finding enough money to sustain public access was part of the excuse for discontinuing it, our councilmember is said to spend as much as $40,000 a year on her local productions. This may include the costs for fancy mailed invitations and refreshments at receptions held after her tapings. 

This might be seen as the taxpayers’ ongoing, unwitting contributions to her re-election campaign.

Adelphia, with whom she and the Council are negotiating, pleases her by placing her shows not only on our local cable system, but also on their satellite for distribution to viewers nationwide.

Only one other person regularly has at his disposal the production resources of the taxpayers and ratepayers of Beverly Hills, and he does not even live in Southern California. He happens to be a retired employee of the City. His hour-long shows on books were cablecast 18 times in one  month.

We’re not begrudging councilmembers or expatriate former employees the opportunity to express themselves on cable TV. We simply want an equitable allocation of communications resources to the citizens of Beverly Hills.

Some have called Beverly Hills a closed corporation. Others see it more as an imperial form of governance. As Anthony Oettinger of Harvard’s Program on Information Resources put it: “You have to ask about communications the same questions you ask about other resources:

”Who’s got it, who can get it, on what terms, at what price, who controls it, who makes it – all important concerns of any society – who controls the vital resources. Access to the means of communication in a democracy is essential.”

We propose a new democratic era for the City of Beverly Hills. We ask that our City Council negotiate for a local state-of-the-art studio with first class, professional-quality facilities and equipment. This would be shared by the City for its productions, and with the community organizations of Beverly Hills, for their productions.

Surely those of us who live here, and pay our taxes here, deserve the same consideration and the same access to the City’s cable TV audience as the two individuals who now usurp our local screens.

We believe that the residents associations of Beverly Hills, the charitable, religious, and environmental groups, along with the Maple Center, the Sports Center and myriad other non-profit local organizations should be invited to produce cable TV programs on a regular basis, locally.

We can place the responsibility for such community service productions with the City’s Cable TV Dept., its Public Library personnel and/or its Recreation & Parks staff.

A dispute resolution methodology can be agreed to, so that the First Amendment is respected. Controversial questions of community taste and standards can be appealed.

Let’s encourage meaningful citizen participation, including live local call-in shows. The Council now has the opportunity indeed, the obligation, to restore local community access to cable TV. We urge them to do so.

Ellen Stern Harris
Executive Director
Fund for The Environment
Editor of BeverlyHillsCitizen.org
P.O. Box 228
Beverly Hills, CA 90213