Lost & Found Footage

By Jerry White Jr.

Welcome to a new 30MOM.COM feature: Lost & Found Footage! I’ll be sharing footage from my archives related to public access television, lost or rare footage with a public access aesthetic, or video ephemera that somehow resonates with 30 Minutes of Madness. In addition to the footage, I’ll add a little (or a lot) of context. For this inaugural piece, I present The Berkley Public Access Studio Promo!

The Berkley Public Access Studio Promo captures such a vibe. This is what a lot of public access television of that era felt like, and the glimpses behind the scenes are a potent nostalgia bomb. This is suburban metro Detroit in the very early-90s, with echoes of the 80s still aggressively bouncing around. While weirder and more transgressive shows did exist at the time, this promo was not made for that audience or with that programming in mind. This is public access TV as defined by the crew who worked at the studio and the active community of producers at the time.

In addition to presenting the Berkley studio gear, the promo has various clips of then-current public access programs. From dry talking heads “Between Two Ferns” style PATV mainstays, to quasi-experimental narratives like “Wizzard’s Dance,” and the show I’d most love to see: Jack Kevorkian’s “The Door.” This was shortly before Dr. Kevorkian would become known worldwide in the media as “Dr. Death” for his groundbreaking euthanasia work with terminally ill patients. I never caught The Door on the air and I’ve seen no evidence of it anywhere online. Where is this show!? Just think how much better that biopic about Kevorkian starring Al Pacino would’ve been if it had scenes of him making a trippy educational local TV show! If I somehow ever stumble on episodes or clips from “The Door,” I’ll be sure to feature it on a future Lost & Found Footage. [*UPDATE: THE DOOR has been discovered and OPENED!]

The Berkley Public Access Studio promo feels much longer than its seven-and-a-half minute run-time, but the pace is part of the charm. I’m thankful for this time capsule. The equipment, the shows, the environment——this is what public access was like when I first got involved. Though most PATV shows trended dry and slow, that provided the perfect atmosphere for a bit of teenage rebellion.

My primary public access studio was in downtown Rochester, which is in the same county and run by the same cable company as the one in the promo. Most of the gear was identical, as was the studio layout. During my years involved with PATV in Michigan (1991–1998), I also spent a lot of time at the Troy studio and, on special occasions, the Royal Oak studio which was the HQ of United and then TCI Cable, but I never made it out to the Berkley studio.

I got my public access producer’s license in 1991 after taking classes on and off for several months. It was something that my friend Joe Hornacek and I really worked hard to achieve. Getting that license and making shows is obviously something that impacted my life profoundly. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for public access television and despite the hassle of storage, I still have a lot of big clunky 3/4″ U-Matic tapes, including the masters of all the shows I produced.

All of those studios are gone now. Public access television still exists, though in fewer locations. The colorful vintage equipment mostly ended up in garbage, which breaks my heart. If I were ever extremely wealthy, I wouldn’t build rocket ships or luxury bunkers, I’d recreate one of these studios and open it up to the public (with modern equipment as well as vintage tech). I’m not saying that’s the only thing I’d do with my riches, but it’d be one of my eccentric projects.

I left Michigan for a while in late 1998, moving to Ventura, California. I worked for Kinko’s Corporate Office and as a side job I started working at a local public access station, Avenue Cable Channel 6. As an employee, I helped shoot a few shows, mostly studio talking heads stuff, but my main gig was operating the broadcast of weekly local government meetings at city hall. The meetings were long and dry, but I worked with a woman who was cool and we’d talk throughout the night and use the remote control cameras to zoom in on people or get weird angles out the window onto the street. The meetings were aired live and we’d occasionally cut to our funny avant-garde shots and laugh our ass off. No one ever called us out for it.

As you can imagine, working as an employee of a public access station wasn’t the same as making my own shows for fun. I left Channel 6 in early 2000 and slowly, but surely, most of the public access stations dwindled away as digital cameras and editing software proliferated, while internet video became more viable. In 2013, while shooting 20 Years of Madness, Joe and I visited a public access studio in Michigan, but all that beautiful analog equipment was long gone. Still, some of the spirit lived on. . .

The Rochester Public Access Studio and Edit Suite

Rewinding a bit, in 1994 I switched from Wayne State University to Oakland Community College (the commute to Detroit was killing me). One of the classes I took that first semester was a speech course and I gave a presentation on, what else, public access television. I shot footage of the gear and gave my class an overview of how PATV worked——basically making my own public access studio promo. Unfortunately I didn’t record myself giving that speech, or I’d upload that here as well. Instead, here are some stills from the presentation.

Thanks for reading! See you next time!!