Where cable lives

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2011 (5318 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEEPAWA — The Invisible Man, a.k.a. Don Phillips, wrapped in gauze and wearing dark glasses, is in studio introducing the latest instalments of Horror Theatre.

March was “Slamming Teenagers Month,” with cult classics like Teenage Zombies and Teenagers From Outer Space. The movies air Friday nights “around 8 p.m. or so.”

April is “Celebrating Women Month,” where women are celebrated with circa-1950s B-movies such as Wasp Woman, Queen of the Amazons, and early Roger Corman flick Swamp Women, in which “women try to kill each other while wearing skimpy clothing,” the Invisible Man deadpans into the camera.

You can almost hear Count Floyd howl. But it’s not SCTV. It’s NACTV, or Neepawa Access Community TV, to the uninitiated.

Neepawa is the little town with its own TV station. It airs about 12 hours of programming a day. (“Sometimes it’s 14 hours, sometimes it’s 11 hours, but it averages about 12,” shrugged one staffer.) It’s run by two paid staff and 40 volunteers. And it’s one of the last bastions of community television.

What ever happened to community access TV?

Outside of pockets like Neepawa, it has just about vanished. Whereas community access once meant community members taking over studios and producing shows on a dedicated channel, cable companies eventually took back the channels. Paid staff began producing the shows instead of the community.

“Communities lost control of the media,” said Ivan Traill, general manager of NACTV.

“Winnipeg had some of the most radical, fun, interesting, goofy public access shows I’ve seen (shows like Math With Marty, 2 Sports Guys, and early Guy Maddin). That went on until the late 1990s,” said Cathy Edwards, a national crusader for public access television, based out of the Ottawa-Hull area.

Then, pay TV service providers “managed to find all kinds of ways to evade it.”

There were originally about 300 community TV channels on cable in Canada. Only 119 remain. Fewer than 20 of those channels have community groups producing 50 per cent or more of the programs, like they do in Neepawa.

In 1999, Shaw had public access studios in Winnipeg, Flin Flon, Thompson, Morden, Portage la Prairie, and Selkirk. Only Winnipeg remains. Community access stations tend to be more popular in small rural communities than in cities that have news outlets covering many local happenings.

Alex Park, director of programming for Shaw in Calgary, said Shaw began to produce its own access programs in part because community-produced shows had few viewers. “I think viewers expectations of the local channel began to increase and they wanted to see programs with decent lighting and decent sound and hosts who knew what they were doing,” he said.

Also, with both CBC and private broadcasters producing fewer local programs, Shaw recognized a void it could fill with staff producing local shows and airing them on the community channel.

Shaw abandoned the smaller studios in part because access television became more about shooting programs out in the community like kids’ hockey games, instead of talking heads in a studio.

But stations like NACTV, which has a studio and uses it extensively, think the studios were just a nuisance cable companies wanted to be rid of. (Neepawa is part of the Westman Communications Group cable co-operative, based out of Brandon..)

“It’s a pain in the ass (for TV service providers) to have jerkwater places like us. It’s easier to have a van and go out and film community fairs,” said Traill.

Loose cables hang down from the ceiling like water moccasins, at the NACTV station in downtown Neepawa. Three TV monitors, purchased for $100 each at The Bargain Store, play with the sound off. Spools of silver DVD discs, labeled in black felt marker, are everywhere like sprouted mushrooms. One shelf has a bank of cell phones charging, another is disheveled with video cameras. NACTV has a tight budget and buys almost all its equipment, used, on ebay at one third the full cost.

“The whole idea for community access TV in the first place was cable companies were to make available cameras and equipment and an outlet for anyone in the community who wanted to produce programming, and they would put it on air on a channel. A few of us still operate like that,” Traill said.

Horror Theatre is just one small sample of NACTV’s programming.

Regular shows include Harry’s Classic Movies (computer enhanced movies from Silver Screen days), Lion’s Club bingo (in a scheduling conflict with town council meetings, bingo wins and council meetings are recorded to air later), Heroes and Heroines (Peggy Galloway, 84, interviews war veterans, war brides, and others), hockey games of kids as young as eight years old, curling games, wedding anniversaries, church services, even funerals on request.

At a recent kids’ hockey tournament, NACTV shot all 23 games starting on a Thursday night and live-streamed them on the Internet. “We had people in Mexico and England emailing us to say how happy they were to watch their grandkids playing in Neepawa,” said Traill.

By the time the kids are changed and leaving the dressing rooms, NACTV has DVD copies of the game ready for sale in the arena lobby. That’s one source of revenue.

The kids’ games are shot with just one camera. NACTV uses three cameras to shoot the games of the Neepawa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League and the Neepawa Farmers of the Southwest Hockey League. “When we do a hockey game, it takes about seven people: three cameras, two play-by-play people, someone doing instant replays, and someone doing mixing. And they’re all volunteers,” said Traill.

There’s a bit of finger-crossing that everyone will show up each night. Volunteers might not be willing to give up a party or social or family gathering. But most times people phone in advance so there’s time to find back-ups.

Then there’s Coffee Chat, the longest running TV show in, well, Neepawa, in its 12th season. That is, except for News and Views, a community news show that has been on NACTV for 13 or 14 years.

“Some small places really enjoy getting coverage because they (otherwise) don’t get any,” said Traill.

NACTV will cover breaking news. When a severe downpour caused flash flooding in Neepawa last June, Traill, who turns 80 this year, shot footage of the flooding and road washouts and put the information on air as fast as possible.

He’s shot a truck wreck, a train derailment, and was on site before emergency crews when a vehicle slammed into the side of school bus. He woke up in the middle of the night to shoot the century-old Hamilton Hotel go up in a spectacular conflagration. “When the Hamilton Hotel burned, we showed it for four hours,” said Traill. He put the camera on the ground, propped up the front end with a jackknife so it properly framed the fire, and let it run. CBC, CTV and Global TV have all used footage from NACTV.

NACTV also has its own RV that goes to all the high school football and Neepawa Farmers baseball games. Two cameras are mounted on the roof, and a play-by-play man and colour commentator call the game from lawn chairs in front of the RV.

Cable company Shaw will use six cameras, and use professionals, to shoot a high school football game. But there goes your access channel budget. At that level of production, it can only shoot a limited number of games.

At NACTV, they use two cameras, and all volunteers, and shoot the whole season of football games. Traill asks which is more community-minded.

“If we didn’t have fun with this, and didn’t put on some things that are fun to watch, we wouldn’t do it. But we also think it’s important for local people to have access to the air waves,” said Traill.

Traill is the driving force at NACTV. He retired from teaching 25 years ago and began working nine-to-five, and many evenings and weekends, as NACTV station manager. “I’m a full-time volunteer,” he said. People of Neepawa just call him Mr. TV.

“Ivan goes, goes, goes,” said Deb Stemkoski, NACTV program director, a paid position. Traill once shot 19 hours of baby eagles hatching in a nest and taking their first flights. Stemkoski had the unenviable task of editing it down to 90 minutes. He shoots all kinds of other wildlife, including foxes. They have two hours of filler they run of baby fox pups playing. “People love that stuff,” said Traill.

But not as much as they love seeing themselves, or their kids, or their grandkids, on TV. That never gets old, said Traill.

Its lifeblood is volunteers who come from all walks of life.

Charlie Swanson, former president of what was then the Canada’s largest grainhandling company, Agricore United, does the play-by-play for Men’s Curling League games.

Gary Reidle has been the volunteer play-by-play man of the Neepawa Natives hockey team for 15 years. He calls up to 50 games a year when you include high school games. “We’re dumb,” he said, when asked why he and others do it. He later allowed that he enjoys the work and hopes he contributes to the community.

Then there’s Don Phillips, the bartender at the local Legion, who had no intention to dress up as the Invisible Man and host a new show called Horror Theatre. Traill heard of his interest in schlocky B-movie horror flicks, and coaxed and cajoled until Phillips agreed.

How is NACTV financed?

There are 19 small communities in the Westman Communications Group, a cable co-operative started in 1977. Yes, there is such a thing as a cable TV co-op. It includes towns like Souris, Boissevain, Carberry, Russell, and so on. (Brandon is the 19th and has its own more developed access channel.)

Westman splits close to five per cent of its gross revenues between the 19 community channels, said Neil Thomson, Westman manager of marketing. That’s more than the two per cent that TV providers are required to set aside for community access, under the Radio Television Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). As a rural co-op, Westman has a stronger mandate to support community programming.

Even so, Westman payment to rural community stations works out to just $6,000 to $8,000 per year for a town like Neepawa. No one can run a TV station on that. So NACTV does a lot of fundraising, like its annual telethon. Performances by local talent are beamed live from the 105-year-old Roxy Theatre, while pledge takes stand by the phones waiting for donations. NACTV took in $11,000 in five hours last February, in a town of less than 4,000 people.

NACTV receives donations from the town and Beautiful Plains Community Foundation, and the Lions Club pays NACTV to air its bingo. It will shoot events like wedding anniversaries and people will buy 20 copies or more. NACTV also obtained a broadcast license 15 years ago–meaning people in the area can pick it up with rabbit ears–which also allows NACTV to run commercials like national Home Hardware ads, or locally produced commercials for retailers like Neepawa’s Chicken Corral. NACTV runs six to eight commercials per day, said Traill.

It adds up to a $120,000 operating budget.

With that, NACTV produces 40 per cent of all programming that comes out of the 18 community access channels in Western Manitoba (excluding Brandon, which has twice as much funding as the 18 other community access channels combined).

But is community access still relevant in an age of the Internet, Youtube and Facebook?

Canada was the first country to stipulate that cable TV companies fund community programming. Almost 30 countries in the world have followed suit. But Canada now lags behind most of those nations in terms of content and commitment, said Edwards.

Content, when community volunteers produced shows at the Shaw studio, was uneven. Winnipeg once had programs like the Pollock & Pollock Gossip Show with “Rockin’ Ronnie” Pollock spinning records while sister Natalie danced, sort of. It carried The Cosmopolitans where two middle aged women played song requests on an electric organ and drums. Legend has it they once performed Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven.

Guy Maddin made a show called Survivor that lampooned cold war paranoia. People still remember shows like Math With Marty (Marty Green), and 2 Sports Guys (1993-94) with Rick and James Loewen (some of their antics have turned up on Youtube).

Public access TV proved a training ground for Maddin but also for the two Loewen cousins, who took their hoser sports talk out of Kelsey’s Bar and into a Shaw studio. They parlayed that into commercial TV and radio jobs and are still involved in the media. “We did stuff that a program director would never let on the air now,” said Rick Loewen.

(Likewise, NACTV has had former volunteers go on to make careers in media like Ted Deller of CBC Radio in Regina, and Christine Crowther, a CBC radio and TV journalist for 15 years.)

But Park, with Shaw, said the community has more ways to express itself heard today, than when community access TV began four decades ago. “People can set up their own web site, go on Facebook, create their own videos and post those videos. It’s happening all around us,” he said.

Rick Loewen agrees. “I can’t see any function of it anymore,” he said. “Wayne’s World, the kind of thing we did (with 2 Sports Guys), I think everyone is doing on Youtube.”

Edwards says there’s still a need for access TV, especially outside the major cities. Youtube content is limited by time constraints and Youtube and the social media don’t have the aggregated audience that a TV channel has. You also give up copyright on Youtube.

Also, amateur videos posted on the internet tend to be snippets shot with a single camera , not a production with several cameras and proper sound and a script.

As for MTS TV, it’s a different duck. It is required to run community programming, under CRTC rules, but it doesn’t run a community access channel. Instead, it has something called Winnipeg on Demand. You click on it with your remote control and choose from an array of local documentaries made for MTS.

The documentaries tend to be made by professionals but not solely. MTS runs it and takes bids on what programs will be made. It tends to fund factual programs that will have a long shelf life, like history shows. One new program is Willy’s Garage, with Free Press car columnist Paul Williamson.

One criticism is it’s not easily accessed. Without a dedicated channel, people can’t stumble onto its programming while channel surfing. Neither does MTS shoot community events, or broadcast current affairs.

“Community media is supposed to be platform where people meet in the community on air, whether its a decision to build a park or a townhouse, and it’s to stimulate debate about things,” said Edwards.

In towns like Neepawa, community access becomes more than just another TV station. When a long-time resident dies, the grown up children will often show up at NACTV to ask about an interview or event the station shot with Mom or Dad back in 1998, and say how much it would mean to them to have a copy. And someone at the station will root around in the basement archive, make a copy, and charge a nominal fee.

Not surprisingly, Neepawa’s Access Channel 12 appeals more to an older demographic. Some seniors have their TV sets tuned to Access 12 and don’t take it off.

One show directed at seniors seems like the most mundane program in the world, yet is touching in its thoughtfulness. Twice a week, an announcer reads the local news from the Neepawa Banner and Neepawa Press. It’s for people who are visually impaired.

It’s a show that could only exist on community access and the appreciation level surprises NACTV staff. “If it’s not on at the appropriate time, we get phone calls right away,” said Stemkoski.

“It’s important to keep operating these channels,” said Traill. “We’re get more professional all the time and farther away from the people.”

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca