Also this issue: Steve Coates, "Coatesy's Corner" -Interview by Patrick Rapa Larry Kaspar, PCN Tours -Interview by Debra Auspitz Squeal Like a Wombat On La Salle University's TV game show Q&A, making animal noises is just part of the fun. -Debra Auspitz Bridget Small and Steven Horn, Scene 8 -Interview by Lori Hill The Hours Steven Horn, The Review -Interview by Lori Hill

March 13-19, 2003

cover story

Cable Excess

A channel-flipping journey through Philadelphia':s vast TV wonderland.

by Debra Auspitz, Lori Hill and Patrick Rapa

Although an ordinance was passed some 20 years ago to start up public access television in Philadelphia, it still hasn't come to pass. When will the community get its voice? When will we truly understand all those SNL sketches?

Probably not for a while. In the meantime, let's look on the bright side. Philly does have its fair share of locally produced programs and bizarre national imports on our local cable networks. You've probably only seen these shows in bits and pieces, flipping past Lynn Doyle on CN8 or stopping momentarily to ponder an odd little game show on La Salle 56. We got up early and stayed home one Friday to endure the guilty pleasures and endless talking heads of local cable. Fourteen hours of television, one pot of basmati rice with leeks, umpteen cups of coffee and tea and 420 trips to the bathroom later, this is our story.

7:00 a.m. It's never too early for exercise, generally speaking. But we are not up to the challenge put forth by The Body Electric on WYBE. Somewhere out there, people are jogging through the morning fog and StairMastering their bodies to perfection. We barely have the stamina to unroll our yoga mats.

The show's host, a spritely middle-aged woman in a headband, is on her hands and knees, thrusting a leg backward into the air. "You think you're going to kick yourself but then you don't," she says. "You know what I mean?" We do.

7:06 a.m. The Government Access channel, really just a multicolored bulletin board, is flashing common knowledge. "Inexpensive pooper scooper devices can be purchased "

7:30 a.m. A spooky voiceover on WYBE asks, "What is yoga?" then answers its own question, "It is a body at rest " But the body on the screen, which bends itself over backwards to arch over the sun, is very much not at rest. The show is a distinctly non-Philly product called Wai Lana Yoga, on which Wai, a limber woman in a purple jumpsuit, does everything the disembodied voiceover tells her to on some dreamy Hawaiian beach.

7:52 a.m. For a fascinating mix of slick professionalism and awkward moments, there's no better place to turn to on local TV than CN8's flagship show, It's Your Call with Lynn Doyle (at least not since Wally Kennedy's Philly After Midnight was canceled). Doyle is the wife of CN8 head Michael Doyle. (More family ties: Comcast president Brian Roberts' mom is the host of Seeking Solutions with Suzanne.) Which is not to say Lynn doesn't deserve her own call-in talk show; the gentle-voiced host creates an atmosphere that is friendly and well-paced, and her questions seem to stem from crazed curiosity.

This morning we meet Michele Livingston, a "communicator" in a purple-blue flowing blouse who talks with her hands. Positioned just a foot away from her are two women who came on the show hoping Michele could help them interact with the deceased son of one of the women. Michele's less slimy than John Edwards, but also a little less credible. Over her shoulder is today's topic: Michele Livingston: Speaks To The Dead. "Dead" is written in a scrawled, Halloween font.

The dead son apparently gives Michele this message from beyond: "Keep on keeping on." Lynn Doyle interrupts with an observation: "That sounds very California to me!"

7:58 a.m. On weekday mornings, UPN becomes the televised counterpart to KYW Newsradio 1060. Once-unseen news-readers revealed! Think they're mad that they have to get dressed and put on makeup instead of rolling into work in sweatpants like they used to? Isn't that why they got into radio in the first place?

8:00 a.m. Where's the local content? Drexel's DUTV is showing an interesting little documentary feature that's either called The Lost Island of Bikeman or Rising Waters: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands. Bikeman (bik-ay-man) used to be a fine place to picnic, now it's about 2 feet under water.

8:08 a.m. On the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN), a Dr. Edward Scanlon is discussing his book, Animal Patients, on a show called PA Books. Host Brian Lockman is fishing for intrigue: "When you were going through veterinary school, did you have any doubts?"

8:52 a.m. WYBE airs the first of its Culture Shots, which are short, unnarrated montages of various peoples eating, dancing and eating. This one is called Our Irish Community, so the music is a wacky jig. Our Polish Community gets a lively polka. You get the idea.

9:00 a.m. PCN is airing PA Affairs, which is like C-SPAN only more comatose. The day's agenda is a confirmation hearing for someone named Gregory Fajt who wants to become something called Secretary of Revenue. Democrats and Republicans take turns somberly endorsing the guy. Somebody quotes Churchill, if you can believe it.

Three signs your show is boring:

1) Nobody in the control room notices when the sound cuts off for whole minutes.

2) Your audience is taking bets on how far to one side the dozing reporter in the background will fall before he catches himself, wakes up and looks around to see if anyone noticed. Buddy, you're on TV.

3) It's being filmed in Harrisburg.

9:30 a.m. A woman with a motionless panda hand puppet is speaking Chinese on the Board of Education channel. The point is to get young viewers to recite simple sentences along with her. Polite kids call in to say, "That is a dragon/goat/rat" in Chinese. None makes a mistake. Maybe they're ringers.

10:00 a.m. Community College of Philadelphia Channel 53 has been broadcasting the same message all morning, that the scheduled program will be on shortly. It's supposed to be Philosophy 251 class at CCP. Do TV-based classes get snow days?

A phone call to Comcast's customer service puts us in contact with Tracy, who wants to help but ultimately can't. She asks, "Do you know any of your neighbors, perhaps?"

10:27 a.m. We try shifting to a network affiliate. On 10 at 10, Steve Levy is talking to an enormous bird.

10:30 a.m. WYBE again. This time the show is Sit and Be Fit (SABF), which stars two women from Spokane in tucked-in T-shirts, short-shorts and nude pantyhose who demonstrate all kinds of lazy exercises one can do without getting off one's ass. What are the odds that their viewers will have TheraBands, stretchy pieces of elastic that the hosts use for resistance? Thanks to Debra Auspitz's handy bum ankle, we have two of 'em. Lori Hill and Debra volunteer to sit and be fit. A Muzak version of Battle Hymn of the Republic inspires Maryann, the elder SABF lady, to do some moves while standing up. Isn't that cheating? She then leads us in a "salute" exercise that is suspiciously Nazi-esque.

11:15 a.m. The Board of Education channel has kids competing in some kind of oration contest for African-American History Month. Says one fourth grader: "African-American history books and math books have a lot in common. I mean think about it both have a lot of problems." From the mouths of babes

11:33 a.m. Drexel is showing GreenWorks, which is highlighting a North Philly company that proudly hires ex-cons and turns old tires into cushy playground gravel. Apparently you can drop a child from 10 feet without injury. Onto the gravel, that is.

11:50 a.m. Board of Education's got a woman reading a PowerPoint presentation on "vocational rehabilitation" and "compensation eligibility." Her audience, about five women in turtlenecks, looks appropriately depressed.

12:47 p.m. On Workplace Essential Skills, NJN is interspersing obvious tips on how to communicate at work with some hilariously confusing skits about landscapers trying to get organized. Every time somebody wants to make a sign like "fertilizer" or "seeds," somebody else asks, "Signs? But what if someone can't read?" Everyone onscreen appears to be literate, but there must be at least one employee at this landscaping company who can't tell a bag of fertilizer from a hole in the ground.

Next up is the ghostly N.J. afternoon lottery. Now fully automated, the little bouncing balls travel up the little tubes all by themselves. There isn't an old person or a hostess with bad hair in sight. The Pick Three is 2, 4 and 3. The Four is 8, 5, 0 and 4.

1:00 p.m. On CN8's Lou Tilley's Sports Connection, the titular host is missing. If scab Bruce Casella knows where Lou is, he's not saying. The "March Laffness" segment pits local amateur comedians against each other. First up, Dee Styles makes awkward cracks about high-school basketballer LeBron James being in a "slave situation." The audience does not know who Styles is talking about. Contestant No. 2, Mike Vee, jokes about how Italian people are all gangsters. When the call-in votes are tallied, Vee wins and they play a highlight: "When black kids are mad, they shoot you. When Puerto Rican kids are mad, they cut you. When Italian kids are mad, they plan to get the black kids and the Puerto Rican kids to shoot and cut you." Hardy har.

Next, guest Rich Little does his impressions of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all in a row to promote his latest play, The Presidents, which recently had a run in Delaware.

2:00 p.m. WYBE gets into a craft-making rut in the middle of the afternoon.

First, watercolor maniac Terry Madden shows audiences how to make lavender and yellow beach-house art -- that is, paintings of, and appropriate for hanging in, beach houses. Whenever Terry is done demonstrating a particular technique he takes the canvas and tosses it onto the floor. What a lunatic.

2:29 p.m. The credits roll for Terry Madden's show and look, the producer is named Judy Madden. Nepotism is rampant throughout the crappy cable world, apparently.

2:32 p.m. WYBE again. The host of One Stroke Painting is a liar. It takes her about a hundred strokes to paint ugly flora popping out of a trite and unrealistic basket. A brilliant multi-dipping technique allows her to create smooth gradients of color for flower petals. But a mental block forbids her from leaving well enough alone. Everything she retouches she destroys.

3:00 p.m. Ugh. WYBE. Something about making a quilt.

3:10 p.m. DUTV. The Lost Island of Bikeman again.

3:15 p.m. PhoneBetTV has live feeds from Philadelphia Park and other race tracks. The announcer, who sounds suspiciously like departed Flyers announcer Gene Hart, reads the names of the day's contestants: Miss Tacky Trump, Princess Di's Folly. Millennium Millions wins even though he was balking at the starting gate. Saxophone music is played while the odds for the next race are listed.

3:30 p.m. La Salle 56 is showing student films. Seduced by Silence sounds like a Lifetime Original Movie, but it's really the bizarre but captivating tale of an abused mime who finally just can't take it anymore. Next up is The Produce Court, where the judge is a bottle of Mott's apple juice and the puns are easy: "Mister Chiquita made me feel ripe again."

4:00 p.m. After nine straight hours of watching talking heads, DUTV's The Avenue feels like cheating. It's just a string of current dancy hip-hop videos. There's Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's team-up with Phil Collins. (Is he digitally inserted into that video or what?) The highlight is Philly rapper Kenneth Masters' video for "Independent as F*ck," which features Silk City Diner quite prominently. We feel bad for K-Mass because he's always cutting vegetables over a trash can and "being dissed at the club by wack women."

4:15 p.m. Debra accidentally switches to TRL for a minute. Oops.

4:30 p.m. Movies don't have a backstage, right? That's what makes the title of La Salle 56's already awkward movie show, Backstage Pass, that much more befuddling. Unblinking hosts John Linden and Maura Kelly Koehler show immensely long movie clips while sitting very, very still in front of a colorful backdrop (which appears to have been swiped from some kind of TBS promotional display -- the "Guys Who Like Movies" slogan is evident over John's shoulder).

5:31 p.m. Let's Cook with Paul Dillon on CN8. No really, let's. Although it's impossible to actually make the stuff this friendly chef is cooking right along with him, we manage to recreate his side dish, basmati rice with leeks, more or less within an hour of him showing us how. Paul's enthusiasm for the project -- today's theme is heart-healthy dishes -- is evident. "Surely a higher power created this leek," he says.

5:47 p.m. We've seen a lot of unslick commercials today, but the one for the N.J. Home Show has a rather on-the-nose jingle that sticks in our brains like basmati rice: "Come to the Home Show! There's so much to see!"

6:00 p.m. That Show with Those Black Guys on DUTV is not nearly as casual as its title suggests. A Maryland Republican talks shop.

6:30 p.m. NJN has Reporters Roundtable, a bunch of North Jersey wankers mixing football metaphors. See, the Republican Party fumbled, but instead of picking up the ball, the Democrats keep accidentally kicking it. Or maybe they're like two teams who keep missing field goals in OT. The one thing everybody agrees on is that Jim McGreevey is most afraid of himself.

7:02 p.m. We thought Channel 48's 48 Update would be some sort of news show, but it's more of an uncomfortable exchange of information. Host Katherine Pugh is filling a half-hour by rewording a couple of questions and lobbing them at James Lindsey, the creator of Rap Snacks. Katherine picks up a bag of Rap Snacks. "OK, now it opens very easily," she opines.

7:30 p.m. 48 Update again. Katherine Pugh chats with a couple of self-involved activist puppeteers, then steps aside so they can stage an interminably long, wordless little bit of suitcase theater. In just 20 endless minutes, the duo disparages the good names of cell phones, SUVs, George W. Bush, McDonald's, oil, Disney, exploited Colombian coffee-bean pickers, long showers, racism, gentrification and, really, performance art in general.

8:00 p.m. We wrestle ourselves away from the decidedly off-topic Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding TV movie on Fox to check out No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed on DUTV. Sadly, as host Ken Knisely (a Stephen King-esque bear of a man) points out in the show's early minutes, one should only call in if the date is Nov. 21, 1992. Still, we try the number on the screen and get a small TV station in Virginia. The guy there has a vague recollection of this show.

No Dogs works like this: Ken -- who says he's been a philosopher for 12 years -- posits deep religious/social/logical problems for his guests (mostly older people who believe in God) who are called "symposers." Callers are labeled "tele-symposers." A quick Googling determines that the show is, in fact, still on the air. Ken's been a philosopher for 23 years now. Wonder if he's found God yet.

9:30 p.m. We succumb to Baywatch Hawaiian Wedding.