Live, It's the Bureaucracy

Live, It's the Bureaucracy!

TV Entrepreneur Bets People Want 24-Hour

Executive Branch Coverage

By Mike Mills

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, November 6, 1997; Page D01

The Washington Post

President Clinton and the entire executive branch are about to

get a television station devoted to covering

their every public move.

Make room, C-SPAN and Court TV, for the

"Information Superstation," a new TV channel with a mission

to keep cameras running at the White House and federal

agencies all over Washington. Starting next month, the

station plans to broadcast over Channel 28 in the Washington

area. Because it's only licensed for low-powered

transmission, its coverage will be limited to the area within and around

the Beltway.

If you're among those who think C-SPAN, which

specializes in Congress, is about as exciting as watching an

unplugged toaster, you might wonder: What kind of

audience could there be for a TV channel devoted to covering,

unfiltered and unedited, the daily parade of White House photo

ops, Agriculture Department briefings and

conversations from NASA's control room?

According to 46-year-old entrepreneur and

station owner Dennis Dunbar, every bureaucrat along the

Washington Mall is a potential viewer. Unlike C-SPAN, Dunbar

points out that "anyone with a rabbit ears antenna" on the TV

set will be able to see what the station broadcasts.

"There are approximately 38,000 top executives

in the federal government that we will be reaching," said

Dunbar's spokeswoman, Susan Lindauer. "And there are

over 2,200 associations and nonprofit groups in town.

These will be a powerful audience for us in the beginning."

C-SPAN Chairman Brian Lamb, Dunbar's hugely

successful competitor and role model, was diplomatic about

his would-be rival: "God bless him. If he can get in the

business, I'm for it. But I think he's got a really tough row to

hoe," Lamb said. "They told me in the early days it'll never

work, that no one's going to watch it, no one cares. And here we

are." Lamb also mentioned that C-SPAN already offers

"hundreds of hours" of executive branch coverage every year.

But C-SPAN isn't devoted to the executive

branch like the new station will be, Dunbar counters. And while

he concedes it will take a lot of creativity to fill each

day's program schedule, Dunbar insists he won't have to

resort to gavel-to gavel coverage of sessions of the Railroad

Retirement Board.

"We'll be moving from Agriculture to Justice to

the State Department to the White House" in a typical

day, he said. "We may feature trade for one hour, then go to a

Justice Department investigation, then to Secretary

Babbitt in the Interior Department. It will be a lot more

movement."

While Lamb's channel is financed by cable TV,

the new service hopes to earn its keep through advertising.

Dunbar hasn't signed up any advertisers yet, but is confident

they'll be drawn to his station as an inexpensive way to reach

policymakers.

"I can imagine Lockheed Martin, EDS or Boeing

sponsoring the Pentagon briefings," Dunbar said. After a

briefing, for example, "we'll sell a full hour for $1,000,"

he said.

So far, the Channel 28 idea has received

support from the White House and a number of federal agencies,

Lindauer said.

"It sounds like a genuine effort to show, in an

unpartisan way, how the government is working," White House

spokeswoman Ginny Terzano said. But, she added, "It's

unfortunate it's primarily only a Washington metropolitan

audience."

"I think it could be very good for agencies as

a way of connecting with each other, . . . as long as

they let the agencies know in advance what's going to be

on," said Thomas Grooms, a specialist in public building

design and the federal work place for the General Services

Administration.

TV industry analysts say Dunbar's challenge

cannot be overstated. He's hoping to create a 24-hour

public affairs show on a station that reaches roughly 2 million

people, far from a huge number in the broadcasting business. He's

purposefully restricting his programming to a single branch

of government. And somehow he hopes to get enough viewers to

draw enough advertisers to keep him in business.

MSNBC, the all-news cable channel bankrolled by

Microsoft Corp. and NBC, faces an uphill struggle to

profitability. Viewership on MSNBC and the new cable Fox News

Channel is in the tens of thousands, tiny by broadcasting standards, and

each is struggling to draw advertisers.

Dunbar's operation, with capital from two

private investors, is minuscule compared with those

heavyweights. But his small scale could be an advantage:

He already has a successful business -- roughly $600,000

in revenue, he says -- providing video links to news

organizations such as Fox and NBC from the White House,

Capitol Hill and the agencies. He said his station will

cost him just $20,000 a month,

doubling his overhead.

Dunbar hopes that despite their affiliation

with C-SPAN, cable systems here and elsewhere

will carry his station. He also said he'll try to

claim that cable systems in this area are required

to carry his station under federal rules. But

an FCC official, speaking on condition of anonymity,

said those rules apply only to low-powered stations in rural areas.

Television has been Dunbar's passion since age

12, when he began repairing TV sets in his hometown of

Binghamton, N.Y.Five years later he got his federal TV station

operator's license and dropped out of high school to help keep his

hometown public television station, WSKG, on the air.

In 1986 he founded his current company,

Wireless Data Systems Inc., and started building a wireless

TV system for military personnel in Panama. He left the

country in 1988 without finishing it, a week before U.S. troops

captured Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.

He ended up in Washington, on a job tip from a

friend, providing television links for news organizations. Dunbar said

the idea of putting executive branch happenings

on a single television station occurred to him almost as

soon as he got into the video news business.

`INFORMATION SUPERSTATION'

Headquarters: Washington.

Coverage: Activities of the White House and

executive agencies, including news briefings, hearings

and ceremonies.

Target start date: By year's end.

Channel: 28 (available without cable).

Hours: 24 hours, seven days a week.

Source of funding: Advertising.

Station owner: Dennis Dunbar.

Company