Through my eyes

Ron Davis

Can you imagine a television production company going to the expense

of producing a television show to be broadcast on television, and not

telling the intended audience about the show or when it was to be

broadcast? Wouldn’t that be a waste of the production costs?

Well, that’s what we just did in Huntington Beach. We wasted your

money.

At some expense to you local taxpayers, Huntington Beach city owned

HBTV-3, our very own government cable channel, just produced and aired a

program called “Hot Topics.”

HBTV-3 made virtually no effort to tell the audience -- who paid for

the program and who was supposed to enjoy it -- about “Hot Topics” so you

could watch it. It’s times like these that the words government and waste

seem to go together like a pizza and cheese.

I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks HBTV-3 is a waste of your

money. Recently, HBTV-3 conducted what it considered to be a viewers’

survey. Remember, HBTV-3 has access to over 60,000 homes. After eight

days and 86 hours of displaying a message across your screen begging you

to participate in the survey, the city received about 266 responses.

Remember, that’s not 266 people watching a single program, that’s 266

people who saw a banner during the course of 86 hours of programming.

And get this -- many of those who responded to the survey thought the

programming stunk.

HBTV-3 costs you and I about $515,000 a year. Just so you know,

$515,000 would slurry-seal about 46 miles of residential streets every

year. Rather than slurry-seal your streets with that money, the city opts

to spend your money on programs such as “Hot Topics,” which it doesn’t

promote.

In addition, it also spends your money on self-serving political

shows, which the survey suggests the citizens don’t want and don’t watch.

I am one of those guys who believes that government has enough trouble

running traditional government functions and lacks the skill, money,

imagination, creativeness and expertise to run a television production

company.

It doesn’t cost us much to broadcast programs on HBTV-3. It is

producing the programs, which is costly. To get the difference squared

away in your head, compare the cost and effort of you putting a tape into

your VCR to play it through your television set, versus the cost of

actually producing the content on the tape. Programs produced by other

cities and sponsors cost us very little to air, since we don’t produce

them, we merely broadcast them.

But, we get into trouble in this city when we try to create, or

produce our own programming using HBTV-3 as the production company.

That’s where we spend the lion’s share of the $500,000 HBTV-3 budget.

And, if our survey is heeded, these programs are rarely received, and if

they are, they’re not well-received.

I have no quarrel with continuing to televise City Council meetings,

since this function could be contracted out at a fraction of HBTV-3’s

existing budget. But, given the city’s financial condition, it is time to

rethink the money we spend on HBTV-3 and whether it can be spent more

wisely.

While it will come as a complete shock to me, some of you might

disagree with me on this issue.

I suspect that I might even find a few pockets of disagreement at

HBTV-3. So, I suggest that if the council insists on moving forward with

HBTV-3 as it has in the past, perhaps the subject of the next “Hot

Topics” show should be HBTV-3. I’d be glad to attend as a guest to debate

the subject. Heck, I might even announce the date and the time of the

program in this column. On the other hand, HBTV-3 would probably want to

keep the date and time secret.

* RON DAVIS is a private attorney who lives in Huntington Beach. He

can be reached by e-mail at o7 RDD@socal.rr.com.f7