'Independent channel' keeps public access TV on air

 (First in a two-part series).

Linda Smith doesn’t want to make you look bad. She’s not Geraldo Rivera. She’s not even Jon Stewart.

This is a talk show host who comes across more as a partner than an adversary. Of course, part of that is because a lot of her guests are friends and former colleagues.

So she supplies those who venture onto her independent-channel program (filmed on the second floor of the Galleria on Main Street) with a preview list of questions. She also makes sure they have a few minutes to chat and relax before Phil Spinner turns the camera on them.

Even with all that, though, Smith did have one guest — a teenager — who panicked and refused to go on.

“So her father went on instead,” she said. “And that was fine.”

I’ve been one of her interview subjects (she was a guest on a public access show I once had, so it was only fair), and it was much more like getting a massage than going to the dentist.

“When the show is over, people are usually surprised that the time went that fast,” Smith said.

Two years ago, however, it looked like the show was over permanently for local public access. For years, Comcast Cable had been paying public access expenses as part of the deal for receiving the city cable franchise. But then the rules changed, and that obligation was lifted off the backs of cable companies.

Which left Lynchburg City Council with a decision: pick up the financial slack, or pull the plug on public access. As it turned out, they did a little of both.

“They decided they wanted to keep the government part, filming City Council meetings and some of the public information shows,” said Spinner.

As for the preachers and commentators and Wally Roach (a huge local favorite who combines hard rock music with conservative politics), it was curtains. But thanks to Spinner, not for long.

“I really hated to see us lose the public access part of it,” he said, “and some of the producers (his term for those who use the channel) were serious about finding some way to keep it going.”

In the end, they all agreed to pay a relatively modest fee for the privilege of being on-air. And Spinner, in a decision he admits he sometimes wonders about, took on the technical captainship of both the city station and this new entity.

“Calling it ‘public access’ really isn’t accurate any more,” Spinner said. “I call it an ‘independent channel.’”

Yet the public definitely retained access. Wally Roach came aboard, as did some of the religious programming. Meanwhile, Linda Smith saw an opportunity.

“It started with my wanting to do a show on breast cancer,” she said. “I found a woman who had lived 20 years after her diagnosis and she agreed to come on. I’m a breast cancer survivor myself, so we had a lot in common and a good bond.”

That spun off into an hour-long epic on the annual Relay for Life, and Smith was off and running. A long-time operating room nurse for Centra Health and self-confessed ham, she was able to dip into a deep reservoir of doctors, nurses and technicians, all of whom probably owed her favors. Beyond that, she used her position as commander of the local Star Trek club to attract a separate genre of guests (one of the latter, James Lair of the Collector’s Lair, showed up one night last month carrying a life-sized Yoda figure).

“One of my first guests was Dr. (Thomas) Delaney, an anesthesiologist,” Smith said.

You’d think an anesthesiologist would put people to sleep (rim shot), but Smith found what Delaney had to say “really fascinating.” She followed up with a piece on Dr. Billy Andrews, an orthopedist who travels to Central and South America to perform free surgery on poor kids.

Smith puts her shows on YouTube after they air, and says Delaney and Andrews have become rivals.

“They compete to see who gets the most You Tube hits,” she said.

To the extent, she suspects, of supplying some of those hits themselves.

You Tube has also given Smith a national audience.

“I get regular e-mails from a man in South Carolina, a woman in Ohio and another woman in Minnesota,” she said. “I’ve got fans!”

(Sunday: The potential of public access).