Preachers & Porn Producers Side Up

Dayton, Ohio- When pornography accidentally aired on the cable access channel Christmas morning, the city was flooded with complaints.

Full-frontal nudity and explicit sex scenes shown during a time when church choirs were supposed to be singing carols was just the latest straw for officials. For years, they have heard from residents who hated that the channel that showed school programming by day aired a mix of sermons, sexually suggestive music shows and homemade skin flicks by night.

Four months later, stricter rules govern what goes on Channel 15, leading to a fight that has preachers and porn producers on the same side - in defense of free speech.

What started as a local rift has ballooned into a federal court battle that is being watched nationwide.

The stations usually air low-budget community announcements - notices about changes to trash pickup or events for local charities, for example - educational programming and local government meetings. Some show amateur music videos and local political commentary.

Nationwide, rules vary on what can be aired, depending on what the local government required in its contract with the cable company.

At Channel 15, whoever submitted a tape got it aired for free.

Earlier this month, Time Warner Cable toughened the rules, and the city agreed. People who want a show on the station must pay $25, show a driver's license that proves they live in Akron or selected suburbs and promise to produce shows that feature only residents.

"I find the new rules offensive and a denial of our rights to access TV," said Rabbi David A. Lipper. His Temple Israel of Akron can no longer afford to air its weekly services, which Lipper said not only helped shut-ins unable to come to synagogue but allowed people of all faiths to learn about Judaism.

The Rev. Mike Frazier, pastor of Canton Baptist Temple, said his church can afford the fee but he is upset about it.

"I can't imagine anybody who's been getting free publicity, or in our case an opportunity to minister to the community, wouldn't be disappointed," he said.

Al Henderson of Canton produced programs about community events along with "Illmatic TV," a 1 a.m. variety show that aired porn scenes sent from a Los Angeles friend along with music videos and interviews with area artists.

He, too, believes his First Amendment rights are in jeopardy.

"Illmatic TV" cannot air on Channel 15 because Henderson is not from Akron and neither were the people in the sex scenes he showed.

The stricter rules are intended to save money and rein in a cable access channel that had become too busy to properly manage, said Bill Jasso, a spokesman for Time Warner.

Since the rules went into effect April 1, the number of access programs has dropped from 170 a week to about 70, decreasing the burden on Time Warner employees, he said.

The new rules technically target residency, not content, which is protected by the First Amendment. But they have the effect of getting controversial shows off the air because many of those tapes were produced by out-of-towners or include non-local content.

Time Warner surveys show about 10 percent of any given community's cable subscribers say they watch access stations, Jasso said. The company has 11 million customers in 27 states.

Those who produce the programs say the stations give them unrestricted access to a public they believe too often sees filtered programming on commercial stations.

Rose Wilcher, whose company FreedomJournal.TV produced 24 shows that aired on Channel 15, has taken Time Warner and city leaders to federal court, claiming the rule changes amount to censorship. The defendants deny the change has anything to do with controlling content.

Wilcher's shows range from local and national politics to religion. Although she lives in Akron, some of her most popular programs, such as "Democracy Now!," are now off the air because they feature out-of-towners.

"There is a whole world outside of Akron and now they are saying I can't even go into the local suburbs with my camera," Wilcher said.

U.S. District Court Judge David Dowd had not yet ruled on her request for an emergency order blocking the rules and allowing all the politics, preaching and porn to stay on the air.

Other cities have had cable conflicts.

The city council in Kansas City voted to ax its access channel rather than allow Ku Klux Klan programming but reversed itself under threat of a lawsuit. The East Chicago, Ind., council last year voted to eliminate its channel that often featured programs critical of the council and create a municipal channel run by city officials. we need to say voted to do it, sted they did it?

In 1995, the Beverly Hills council, which also was frequently criticized on the access station, shut down its channel in spite of high-profile protests, citing funding concerns.

Time Warner sees the Ohio case as a local dispute. Cable access advocates, however, say they hope it will lead to clear, uniform rules that producers and city councils across the country could follow.

"It's pretty much been left up to the determination of the city councils and the cable companies, which is not enough," said Roger Martin, president of the Public Access Awareness Association in Los Angeles. "We need guidelines. We need to tell people what to expect."

In Akron, what began in 1983 as a way to air school board meetings grew into a forum that hundreds of people used in ways neither the cable company nor city envisioned.

"We've got pornos. We've got things it was not intended to be a vehicle for, but because of the First Amendment, everything is protected," city spokesman Mark Williamson said.

Cities nationwide are increasingly deciding against continuing cable access stations rather than face similar headaches, Jasso said.

"Unfortunately, in many cases it has become a situation where people are playing TV with their little video recorders," he said. "We had one guy who was actually taping pay-per-view movies and showing them in one-hour bites."