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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, June 2, 2003

LEADERSHIP CORNER
CEO sees 'Olelo as 'community convener'

Interviewed by David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer

Lurline Wailana McGregor

Company: 'Olelo Community Television
Title: President and CEO
Age: 51
High school: Punahou
College: Scripps College, bachelor's; George Washington University, master's
Breakthrough job: Hired by U.S. Rep. Cec Heftel as legislative director

• • •

Q: Do you support the Federal Communications Commission's moves to ease rules and allow a single company to own several media outlets in one market?

A. No. I think it is bad policy. What happens then is very few people control the news, control the information. It ultimately becomes very dangerous. I see it as almost anti-first amendment, anti-free speech.

Q. Why not just leave it to the free market?

A. A legitimate government function is to assure that there is an equal playing field where such important services are involved. Where the public ends up being the loser on this deal, I think it is totally appropriate for the government to step in.

Q. What is your opinion of the direction of mainstream media?

A. I think it is kind of frightening, all these reality shows that have become the norm. What is the point of these shows? Is television being used as a communications tool to benefit us, to share information?

Q. What's the alternative?

A. I always hold out hope for PBS as being a cut above.

As the medium becomes more accessible to people, I think it opens up other outlets. That becomes the alternate. As people get saturated with that corporate stuff and the reality shows, that insulting stuff they put on, I think that does open the market to people doing their own thing and viewers wanting to see something that's different.

Q. What is the role of 'Olelo in this community?

A. My vision is that we would be a community convener. This is a place that people will use to bring issues to the community, so the community is informed about them.

Q. What is the annual budget for 'Olelo (money comes mostly from a surcharge on Oceanic Cable bills)?

A. It is capped at $3.7 million.

Q. Do you expect money to grow?

A. No. If anything we will be lucky if it doesn't diminish. There is always the potential of satellite taking a greater hold of the market in which case cable users would go down. I don't anticipate a growth in resources.

We have an adequate amount of funding. It's relatively generous. We're pretty well-funded. As a nonprofit, I think most people would love to be in our place — that we don't have to go out and find funding. That's because the state negotiated the revenue fee with Time Warner and they negotiated a pretty good fee for us and because I think about 75 percent of O'ahu residents have cable, that bodes well for us.

Q. Do you measure your ratings?

A. We take surveys. We would never compete with prime time. We've never done a Nielson, but we do take surveys. We measure in terms of: "Have you heard of us?" "How many times a month, do you tune to our channels?"

The percentages have been going up every year.

Q. The image of 'Olelo and access television in general is it is a bunch of kooks spouting off opinions. What do you think of that?

A. We are very lucky in Hawai'i that we don't have some of the problems that they have on the Mainland, which has earned that reputation. As community media, we don't control anything. If people bring us a junk show, there's nothing we can do. We can encourage them to use a tripod next time or mic the guy up next time.

The people who founded public access intended two things: freedom of speech and to provide for a marketplace of ideas. In a lot of places that second prong has never been fully realized. It is mostly the free speech that has dominated. We've made a concerted effort to make sure we are balanced.

Q. How does someone get air time?

A. Just bring your tape in and ask. We're not so overwhelmed with programs that we can't air it. We've got five channels, 24 hours a day, so we pretty much can schedule whenever you want.

Q. There must be some type of reviewing or editing process?

A. Not at all. If it's kind of X-rated, we'll just play it at midnight. That's what I mean, we been very fortunate. Generally people have not abused it. But we don't review the tapes beforehand. We can't.

Q. What programming at 'Olelo are you most proud of?

A. The second channel, Channel 53, which is called NATV, native TV, we created to encourage Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian programs. We do have an increasing amount of Native Hawaiian programs. Out on the Wai'anae Coast people say this is the channel they watch because it's got all the things they want to see, everything from political discussions to hula.

Q. How do you balance demands from the community for air time?

A. We don't have to balance. There is room for everybody. We are not fully utilized.

I would hope programming will grow. The direction I see us heading in the future is that our primary thing will be training. If we can teach people media literacy and how to put together a visual story, I see that as becoming our main purpose.

We have classes regularly on everything from writing to producing to (operating) cameras to editing, studio shooting, live events, satellite hookups; we can pretty much do live from most places on the island.

Q. You are basically happy with your financing, you've got lots of air time, you've got plenty of equipment here, you've got a growing audience. What are the pressures of the job?

A. There are definitely pressures. Funding is always a pressure. We are on a franchise agreement. It does expire in 2009 and we have to refranchise before that. Given a choice, Time Warner would not be giving us money if they did not have to. Even though we have a very good relationship with them, we realize they'd rather have the channels back.

We have to demonstrate to the community that we are a valuable resource, so that when it comes time for refranchisement, there will be broad, strong and deep community support.

Because we are well-funded, our money becomes a target for other under-funded things. Our ongoing concern is that if somebody like a legislator decides that our money would be better spent elsewhere, then there is nothing to prevent them from coming in and saying take the money and we will re-allocate it.

If somebody decides that what we do has no value, it's a bunch of kooks, that makes us totally vulnerable.