Northpinellas: City TV shows make gains

CLEARWATER -- It's five minutes until show time on Thursday night, and a young woman is dabbing Clinique foundation on Mayor Brian Aungst's forehead. The mayor usually wears Cover Girl, which his wife buys him, but tonight he uses the city's stuff.

Ralph Stone, Clearwater's new assistant city manager, is settling into a cushy blue couch next to Aungst, who sits in an armchair. They are about to tape another edition of Take 2, the mayor's call-in television show on C-VIEW-Ch. 15. Stone adjusts his microphone.

"Can I run through the prompter one more time?" Aungst asks.

Now there's a minute to go.

Jackii Molsick, the director of the city's public communications department, dashes into the studio carrying Zephyrhills bottled water.

"Thirty seconds!" shouts Kurt Kraus, a C-VIEW production specialist, as the mayor looks into the camera in front of his armchair.

"Twenty seconds!" Kraus yells. Aungst grins.

And it's show time.

From this small studio on the third floor of the city's Municipal Services Building, the mayor will chat with Stone about beach and downtown redevelopment. Then Aungst will interview other officials about cracking down on slumlords and cleaning up pollution.

Next on C-VIEW: an episode of Blue Line CPD, featuring the initiatives of the Clearwater police, and Works in Progress, a truly riveting show about the projects of the city's Public Works Department.

And more people may be watching than ever before.

About 74 percent of the city's residents with cable television have watched C-VIEW in the past year, up from about 44.5 percent in 1995, according to a new report by Bordner Research Inc., a Clearwater firm hired by the city to track viewership.

Based on the 2000 census figures, that means about 75,000 of the city's 100,000 or so residents who get cable at home have watched the city's programming at least once in the last year.

Behind newspapers and television news, C-VIEW is the next-best source of information about the city for residents -- much more popular than the city brochures mailed in utility bills or the city's new Internet page, according to the Bordner's report, which cost the city $6,800.

For Molsick, it's good news. She came to Clearwater three years ago with a goal "to make C-VIEW more interesting, not your average, boring government TV."

Making it interesting, Molsick said, means dressing up C-VIEW employee Craig Jennings as a tomato and videotaping him as he barges into a resident's home to root through her fridge. In the commercial, Mr. Tomato pulls out a moldy vegetable from the fridge. He ends by making a pitch for the city's downtown farmers market.

No boring public service announcements here, Molsick said.

On a similar theme, a program once called Inside Engineering has become a talk show named Works in Progress, and now the ratings of the show are up slightly, Molsick said.

"I said, "Let's not make this a boring thing, with people looking at plat maps,' " Molsick said. "Let's go down in the sewer system and take a look."

Part of the reason for surveying viewership was to answer concerns raised by Commissioner Ed Hart, who suggested that the city trim C-VIEW's $387,000 in annual funding or find other ways to cut the $910,400 public communications budget next year.

Hart contends C-VIEW shows are used to boost city agendas and as a vehicle for self-promotion. He has objected to the mayor having his own television show.

Another project that Hart said he might have cut was a recent $18,000 "communications audit." The audit included detailed analyses of three years of editorials and letters to the editor in the St. Petersburg Times, describing the topics and frequency of criticism of the city.

"For them to evaluate the Times seems somewhat odd," Hart said.

Molsick said that the recent audit was performed because the city wanted to see if its messages were getting through to the community.

In addition, the audit made made sure that concerned residents who wrote letters to the city received prompt replies and recommended ways to improve the information the city publishes or broadcasts.

"We know we have work to do on some of the perceptions," Molsick said. "They perceive, for lack of a better term, we do some spin-doctoring and advocate positions."

City Manager Bill Horne said he hopes the two recent reports help the city decide how to better spend the limited amount available for public communications.

So which C-VIEW programs are the most watched?

The reality-based drama of City Commission meetings made them tops in the Bordner study's ratings. About three-quarters of C-VIEW watchers have tuned in.

Next in popularity is Blue Line CPD with Chief Sid Klein as the host. About 68 percent of C-VIEWers have seen the show, about 10 times the number who watched it in 1995, by city statistics.

The chief might have an advantage. The Police Department has an auto-dialing machine, which is used to call people in neighborhoods that are featured on the show so they can watch.

As for the worst-rated show? That belongs to Aungst.

Only 14 percent of C-VIEW watchers recalled ever seeing Take 2. In Aungst's defense, Molsick said, the show airs live Thursday night, when competition on the major television networks is especially tough. She also pointed out that a high percentage of its viewers are registered voters.

After concluding his most recent city broadcast Thursday, Aungst said that people probably didn't remember what his show was called when they were queried about it in the recent telephone survey.

But even if only 14 percent of people who watch C-VIEW have seen his show, Aungst said, "I'm still reaching 14 percent I wouldn't have reached before."

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