It’s not C-Span, but you never know what’s beyond the horizon.

Now in its third year, the Senate Broadcast Center, a studio located in the basement of the Senate, provides live coverage of all floor proceedings and most committee hearings on the Internet and on closed-circuit channels to legislative offices and Capitol news bureaus. (The House televises its floor and committee proceedings through an unmanned security camera system.)

It began at the urging of former state Senate President Brenda Burns and later expanded under her successor Randall Gnant. The television system has acquired $300,000 in equipment, including new DVD equipment, and it operates with $130,000, which is part of the Senate administration budget. Government access channels in 18 communities throughout the state air the center’s half-hour “Legislative Weekly.”

The broadcast center has two full-time staff members and relies heavily on university interns, who earn nine credits for camera work, reporting, editing, producing and narrating.

David Majure, who produced “Horizon” for 12 years at Arizona State University’s PBS affiliate, KAET-TV Channel 8, heads of the Senate television operation. The staff shares in interviewing legislators and narrating “Legislative Weekly.”

Mr. Majure says the Senate is not after ratings with its weekly show that covers legislative action and issues, but rather to educate viewers about state government.

“I really like the concept of educating people about policy issues,” he told Arizona Capitol Times in a Jan 19 interview.

Arizona Capitol Times: Who decides what you’re going to include in Legislative Weekly≠

David Majure: I ultimately decide. When I was brought in, that is how we were set up —so that we’re a non-partisan office of the Senate. We’re left to be pretty autonomous to make those decisions and do so without the political interference that could really make things hairy.

In other words, you don’t have any marching orders as to what’s going to go in that show.

No. I’ve never been told “Put this in the show, take this out of the show.” When Gnant brought me in, he said, “Hey, this will be a true non-partisan office. We expect you to use your editorial skills to decide what we should include, what we shouldn’t include, and we’re not going to bother you.” And that’s been the case, so far.

Do you have a formula to balance partisan views≠

Definitely. We try to be as balanced as we possibly can. It’s not always possible to be balanced in a given show but we hope that over the course of a series of shows or the run of the [legislative] session, that we will be balanced, and I believe we have been. We look at it and say, “What are the issues people need to know about, want to know about—the issues that most affect their lives and their pocketbooks≠”

Have you had any complaints that you’ve been unbalanced≠

No. I don’t want those kinds of complaints, but I do want to hear from people, and I think where we’ve failed is there aren’t enough people who know about this program to complain. We, unfortunately, are not on enough people’s radar screen to have any really good feedback.

Have you had any legislators who are unwilling to be interviewed≠

Most of them, when we ask them to do it, are willing. We have a handful of legislators who are not as willing to do it, and it takes a little more work to get them on camera.

Is it another kind of balance you try to strike to get legislators from all parts of the state≠

We definitely try to get a cross-section of the state, especially in those areas where the show goes.

Will you air one legislator who might be critical of another≠

I’m very cautious about that. I don’t want to show folks beating up on each other for no reason. If there’s some value by whatever we’re presenting it helps you understand the issue better, but if it’s simply a matter of mean spiritedness, no. We’ll probably keep that out and keep it more informational.

Any special guidelines for an election year≠

Ballots are not certified by the time our show ends [for the legislative session]. In an election year, I’m a little more cautious in what kind of segments we do. I don’t want to make it a commercial for any legislator out there.

You mentioned you’re not after ratings, but do you have a handle on viewership numbers at all≠

Not viewership. Because we’re on the city government channels throughout the state, it’s hard for them to really have a very good handle on who watches their program and when. Potentially, we reach somewhere between 800,000 to a million households. There are not nearly as many people as I’d like to watch it. It’s not a very large number, but hopefully by getting a little publicity, we get more. It’s really the type of program that’s going to vary from issue to issue.

Some would say that watching the Legislature would be foreign to their interests, or even boring. Do you do anything special with production or otherwise to make it more informative or entertaining≠

With “Legislative Weekly,” we try to present a series of issues we think most people will be interested in and those that will have a huge impact, like budget issues. It is edited, which is a danger in itself because you can be accused of bias. By looking for the meat of what the discussion was, trying to give a balanced view . . .it makes it move along faster. Some of these meetings can take four hours, and it tends to get a little dull.

What do you do in the off-season≠

All the interim meetings. Session before last, we did an ethics training video for the Senate. This year, we did a documentary on the state Capitol and some history there that we’re going to release around Statehood Day that we plan to get out to schools. A lot of it is getting the people who carry us to do it again.

Plans≠ Would you like to be like a C-SPAN≠

The danger of us being an office of state government and producing a show like that is that you’re editing it. The only way you can completely get around that is do what a C-Span does in providing unedited, gavel-to-gavel coverage of state government — letting people see the entire story. That’s where I’d like to see this move. To both Senator Gnant’s credit and to Senator Ken Bennett’s credit, they both believe this is a proper function of state government — to educate its citizens, to make the information available to them. I think we’re looking at how we can lift the economic burden off the Senate budget directly and still provide the service. There are about 20 states that provide some amount of [live] television coverage of their state legislatures . . . The two ways that are most common are either a nonprofit organization outside state government that contracts with the state to cover all the meetings and then gets all these other channels to air it — it’s not its own channel. The other one happening in California, Pennsylvania and in Michigan is a cable-run [operation] much like C-SPAN. It is run by the cable industry.

Would [live coverage to state viewers] change [legislators’ actions] on the floor≠

I’m not really sure. I’ve read that with some of the states that have talked about this issue, there’s a feeling out there that it might make things even more civil . . . when they know the camera is watching them. There will always be those who grandstand, but it hasn’t changed things that much.

FYI

For a TV schedule
and weekly program summary: www.arizonasenate.org. To view legislative meetings on the Internet, you will need Windows Media Player for Senate proceedings and Microsoft Real Player for the House (www.azhousetv.org). —