Washington Times

Washington Business Times

April 6, 1998

For-profit challenger targets C-SPAN niche

By Samuel Glodreich

Dennis Dunbar is building a television news network for people who hate television network news. "The last thing I want on my staff is another journalist." said the 25-year veteran of public and commercial television.

Shamelessly copying non commercial C-SPAN, Mr. Dunbar is hawking his new Information Super Station as a source of unedited federal government news events without interruption from reporters, anchors, pundits or any other members of the chattering class.

The challenge for ISS is to position itself as a commercial alternative to C-SPAN, offering advertisers air time to pitch ideas and products to an audience of policy junkies. Mr. Dunbar said the other major difference between his network and C-SPAN is that ISS will focus on the White House and the executive branch, which he said often are overlooked because of C-SPAN's mission to cover Congress.

With a staff of five, ISS began broadcasting in February on broadcast channel 28, a low power station that reaches communities within the Beltway. The station is not available on cable, but those who can tune in by antenna constitute Mr. Dunbar's test market: the city's army of bureaucrats, along with lobbyists, lawyers and interest-group advocates.

ISS carries four hours of original programming each day, running repeats to fill the rest of its 24-hour schedule.

Unlike C-SPAN, ISS wants to sell blocks of air time to issue "infomercials" in the evening hours.

"We'll be looking for sponsors like Lockheed and Boeing to buy commercial time and pay to air their own programming." said Mr. Dunbar, 46. "And if the AFL-CIO want to buy time to talk about the merits of workforce training or job seniority, all they have to do is bring a check."

ISS will look for advertising sponsors among the more than 2,200 trade associations and non-profit interest groups based here, as well as thousands more around the nation.

"The money we make in Washington will subsidize our expansion nationwide," Mr. Dunbar said.

So far, Mr. Dunbar has poured $2 million into ISS and he plans to raise $2.5 million more this year from private investors. He has lined up the U.S. Information Agency to broadcast the station overseas on weekends, and a Japanese cable company plans to feed ISS into the Diet in Tokyo, the Japanese equivalent of Congress.

Officials at C-SPAN, which is financed by the cable industry, profess not to be concerned about Mr. Dunbar's upstart public-affairs station.

"It will be interesting to see what kind of a response he gets for public-affairs programming," said John Maynard, a C-SPAN spokesman. "But we don't consider it competition because we don't go for ratings or advertising dollars."

C-SPAN this month signed a deal with District-based CD Radio Inc., a company that is pioneering satellite service, to set up a nationwide simulcast on radio.

C-SPAN officials point out that the network is not bound strictly to Congress. For example, the stations provided roving reaction coverage last week when the Paula Jones case was dismissed and sent a crew to cover the funeral of Bella Abzug, the former New York representative.

Mr. Dunbar got the idea for ISS during the aftermath of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. The White House hired his firm to set up a private satellite broadcast so the administration could keep up with separate press conferences scheduled to release a Federal Aviation Administration report and to air reaction by relatives of the bombing victims.

"It occurred to me to wonder why nobody covers the executive branch on a regular basis," Mr. Dunbar said "The White House couldn't watch what the agencies were doing and anytime the president wanted to take his message directly to the American people, he had to beg the networks for air time."

He decided that what the District and the nation needed is a channel where one group of bureaucrats can watch what other bureaucrats are doing.

Mr. Dunbar acquired his satellite broadcast studio for $10 from Federal Express in 1989, allowing him to expand his teleconferencing firm, Wireless Data Systems. The package delivery giant was unloading the last of a network of 20 document faxing centers around the nation, part of a failed "zap" mail venture.

Federal express had invested $835,000 in its Metro Center site and essentially gave it away to Mr. Dunbar, based on his assurance that he could assume the company's $4,000 monthly lease.

"I put a $100 bill in front of a mirror and it looked like I had the money to do it," he said. "So I moved in and was in business that month."

Staples of the ISS live feed include media briefings by Attorney General Janet Reno, the State Department and the Pentagon. That might seem to be pretty thin gruel for most television-whetted appetites, but it can be nourishing for the information-starved.

"This is another source of real information that I can watch instead of Jerry Springer while I'm working at my computer at home," said project development consultant and ISS viewer Carington Davis, a former executive director of Anacostia Economic Development Corp. "In the 500-channel world, there's room for a C-SPAN 1 and a C-SPAN 2 and a CNN and an ESPN and ESPN 2, and there's room for ISS as well."

For ISS, success will depend on making sure viewers like Mr. Davis see media events that the media might never cover.

"I can't imagine being a career public-affairs person planning for months on the big press conference where you do the big hoop-de-doo- and nobody shows up," he said. "We guarantee that they will be seen."