PORT ANGELES — Peninsula Area Public Access, a fledgling nonprofit group, hopes to operate a new public access TV channel in January under a professional services contract with the city.

City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to direct city staff to develop a draft agreement with the group, which uses the acronym PAPA, for council consideration.

PEG programming

Dr. Ralph Smith, a nonpracticing psychologist who is CEO of the group and board chairman, said Thursday that the channel would air community, or public, events and educational and government programming, known as PEG.

The programs would be aired first on Wave Broadband’s Channel 21, which has a franchise agreement with the city for cable television.

The programming would be expanded to two other channels by the spring, Smith said.

Dale Wilson, publisher of the free monthly newspaper Port O Call, is the group’s executive director and vice chairman.

The shows could be developed at the outset with a one-time infusion of $60,000 from Wave Broadband — through the city franchise agreement — for equipment that the company makes available for public access television, the council was told.

The effort would get an additional $2,400 annually through subscribers paying for PEG access as part of a 5-cent monthly fee on their cable bills.

Smith, who moved to Port Angeles a year ago, estimated that it will cost $200,000 annually to operate the channels.

Revenue sources

He said revenue sources would include membership and producer fees, and fees that producers will pay to attend required classes.

“We can’t run an organization like this for $2,400,” he acknowledged Tuesday.

“We will make this work, but we need you [the council]” to approve a professional services agreement.

Smith said the production apparatus would be housed at a media center, possibly at the North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center in Port Angeles.

Donated equipment

Darwin Gearey of Port Angeles donated equipment worth an estimated $100,000 from his Port Angeles Television Productions company — which he began in 1988 and closed when he retired in 2011 — to the television broadcast program at the skills center in October 2013.

Gearey’s donation includes two full-size Sony broadcast cameras, a large Winstead broadcast production console that could be used as an anchor desk, a 3,000-watt light kit, numerous studio-grade microphones, monitors, large Canon zoom lenses, broadcast recorders and digital editing units.

Those items — and all the cords and accessories — are everything needed to set up a live broadcast studio and do high-quality field shooting for cable access TV and live video streaming on the Internet, Gearey told the Peninsula Daily News when he made the donation.

Smith said Thursday he had visited the skills center and said what it had to offer was “very impressive.”

Council members Cherie Kidd and Brad Collins said at Tuesday’s meeting that public access TV has not realized its full potential in Clallam County.

No city funding

“The city will not be in a position to fund this because there are resources that are part of the franchise agreement,” Collins added.

Smith said that’s fine with PAPA.

The goal is not to request local tax dollars from the city and county, he said Thursday.

“We are going to do it ourselves and get the funds through the city from the Wave Broadband agreement,” he said.

Councilman Lee Whetham said Tuesday he was unsettled by two issues.

“My first concern is financial; my second concern is content,” he said.

Concerns about content

Whetham is worried about racy content — “a bunch of naked creatures,” as he put it, being on the air.

Smith said programs that are “really controversial” would be aired late at night or early in the morning.

Like Collins, Whetham said the PAPA board needs to be more inclusive, suggesting a council member be on the panel.

“If we are going to give life to this thing, there has to be a way for us as elected officials to back up our decision-making,” Whetham said.

Smith said Thursday that the board, now composed of 12 members, will grow to about 20 participants and will include tribal representatives.

Smith said he operated and was a founding member of a public access channel in Boise, Idaho.

Kidd praised the Port Angeles effort.

“What I am seeing here is a grass-roots movement of interested citizens that are taking something that has promise but we weren’t utilizing it,” she said.

“I just think we have an opportunity here for our community.”

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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.