A.G. Gancarski
It’s the end of an era in Jacksonville, according to the Daily Record.
“Comcast has notified producers of 60 local programs that effective June 20, the public access portion of the Public, Education and Government” channel will be no more.
This is a shame, yet not surprising.
There was, to be sure, a certain amount of self-indulgence on the channel. I would often inflict the top-volume sermons of various storefront preachers on my wife when there was nothing on television.
After June 20, that exquisite torture will not be available anymore.
Of course, public access cable was more than just the rants of storefront preachers and their creative interpretations of the Good Book.
There were musical programs too. From Jacksonville Downbeat and the Willie Idle video show, which were really the only ways for alternative music to get heard on the airwaves in the 1980s and 1990s to Here and Now, a surreal two person show where two oldsters named Bob and Rochelle sang karaoke versions of lounge standards, there were different choices from the constant diet of Def Leppard and Guns and Roses on local radio back in the day.
And there were more than musical shows. Politics had its run also.
The Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, those local gadflies who have done as much as any single party to try to shape the terms of pension negotiations locally, had a show on there for a decade. They’ll be moving to radio now.
Other prominent locals, like former City Council President Eric Smith and former councilman Dick Kravitz, also have had long running shows on local public access over the years.
Smith’s program, People and Politics had a 32 year run. As Smith remembers it, he and the Watch Hound started within a week of each other. And Smith was around when the original deal was negotiated also.
“I was there on Council when we negotiated several cable contracts in the early days,” related Smith during a Monday phone call.
An instrumental “prime mover” in those negotiations: Claude Yates, one of the architects of Consolidation (which was still a novelty back then). The original configuration of public access cable was that it was “all about the people” and that public access was central to the model.
Around 1979, Smith asked his aide to find out what it would take to have a public access program on local cable about the City Council.
An hour later came the reply: “they want to know when you can start.”
In the early days, Smith said, they were able to film “almost every day,” before falling into a weekly rotation.
“For most of the time, that’s the way it was.”
Until four years ago, when the public access channel went to a monthly rotation.
The parties to blame: the state and federal legislatures and Comcast itself, along with other cable companies, which lobbied strenuously to remove this access.
Smith has had his 32 year run, and his legacy is secure with or without television. “The concern isn’t me,” he said. “It’s a shame because of preachers, [who use this] to build congregations” and for the impact on “taxpayer watchdog organizations.”
Over the years, Smith had an all-star assortment of guests. From Edwin Meese, Bob Graham, and Lawton Chiles to virtually every mayor of Jacksonville from Jake Godbold forward, people would come on his show and say things they might not have said anywhere else.
“They would say things on my program that they wouldn’t say otherwise.”
Part of it was the relaxed atmosphere. Smith told me about interviewing veteran actor Forrest Tucker, who told him that “I can do this better with a beer and a cigarette.”
They worked out a compromise; halfway through the taping, they took a smoke break and went to a convenience store, where they were able to accommodate that request.
Another anecdote, about interviewing councilman Terry Wood when John Delaney was mayor, was likewise interesting. Smith asked Wood about the “dust ups” he had with Delaney; assuring him that “no one was watching,” Smith asked Wood why they were fighting. Wood answered.
A few days later, Smith ran across the mayor in City Hall, who told him that was a “great show on Friday night.”
Ultimately, life will go on in Jacksonville without public access cable. However, the civic discourse will be muted. The panoply of perspectives and the variety of voices will be a thing of the past.
That’s Comcastic.
