Community access television has changed a lot in the three decades-plus that Sanford Inouye has been in the cable TV business. At 63, the new president and chief executive officer of ‘Olelo Community Media remembers with a laugh the early days of raw “public access TV” immortalized in the “Wayne’s World” TV sketches and movies.
It’s all grown up now. ‘Olelo — the public access service delivered with Oahu’s Oceanic Time Warner cable service, along with companion organizations serving the neighbor island cable companies — has become the chronicler of the vast range of community functions and programs.
“That’s very important for us as a state to have that ability, so that we capture these events that are historic sometimes, like the ‘aha, and very timely and relevant, like the PUC.”
Sanford Inouye
President and chief executive officer, ‘Olelo Community Media
These include events that, while consequential, would otherwise not get gavel-to-gavel coverage. Such events include the just-concluded Native Hawaiian constitutional convention and the state Public Utilities Commission hearings on the proposed NextEra Energy merger with Hawaiian Electric Industries.
“The PUC, eight hours a day live coverage, and the ‘aha, eight hours a day live coverage,” Inouye said. “Commercial broadcast stations cannot do that, because they would have to preempt so many different programs, right?”
The Kapahulu-born graduate of the University of Hawaii started out here with the Honolulu Community Action Program. He worked to get the state’s Good Samaritan Law passed, enabling companies to donate excess food to charities, a campaign that inspired him to pursue a law degree at Northeastern University in Boston.
After some years in private practice he became an attorney for the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, working on the regulation of the then-fledgling cable industry of the early 1980s.
What followed were 14 years with the cable giant Comcast, culminating in a top government affairs post for the company. He was based both in Sacramento and in Oregon, where he retired in 2014. He’s married (his wife is still in the process of moving here), with two children and three grandchildren.
The desire to come home to the now-mature public-access world brought him out of retirement, he said. There are no real numbers quantifying how many consume the product ‘Olelo produces, but what he’s heard anecdotally in his three months on the job is satisfying, he added.
“‘Olelo is 26 years in the making,” Inouye said. “Every year there are more than 5,000 hours of programming being produced locally. It’s a testament to them. It’s their hard work that kept ‘Olelo going all these years.”
QUESTION: How did you find out about this job, and why did you want it?
ANSWER: In 2014, I retired from Comcast. So, enjoying retirement and thinking about how it would be good to come back to Hawaii eventually, in retirement. Two years later, after retirement, I got a call asking if I would be interested in applying for the position here at ‘Olelo.
I knew ‘Olelo through my work at DCCA, back in the early days. I thought, wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to come back home? I can be part of the community and share what I’ve learned, and help the organization in whatever way I can.
Q: What do you think your law background brings to this job?
A: The background that I have with the legal side and the regulatory side, and also being with the cable company, I think all of those experiences really give me the ability and opportunity here to give a perspective from three points of view, as far as the operations of the organization and how can we move the organization forward into the future. …
Q: How have things changed? Most of the time I watch ‘Olelo on my computer.
A: And that’s good! People want to have things where they want it, when they want it, right?
Q: Are there other ways community broadcasting has changed?
A: How you get it … it’s portable. Rather than being at home, in front of your TV, you can take your laptop, your tablet or your smartphone.…
As far as community access, the core really remains the same. It’s that voice that’s being provided to everyone in the community, to share their ideas and share their voices and capture those ideas and voices on video.
That’s where ‘Olelo comes in with the training, on basic videography and editing, lighting and sound. …
The beauty of it now is that there are four access organizations in the state: Na Leo on the Big Island, Akaku on Maui and Hoike on Kauai. We’re all the same. We serve different communities within the different counties.
But now we have the capability of sharing our program live, from Honolulu to the neighbor islands and vice versa. …
I’ll give you an example. The most recent event that we’ve captured is the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) NextEra hearings, live. All of those live hearings were being made available to the neighbor islands. …
Q: So there’s some common programming that wasn’t accessible before?
A: Yes. And that’s really new for us.
Q: And what enabled that? How recent is that, for one thing?
A: I would say within the past year or so. … Things like that are changing the face of how people can really get engaged in the community. …
We even did the ‘aha (Native Hawaiian constitutional convention), and that was available to the neighbor islands, too. …
Q: How do you see your mission, in terms of covering stuff, as opposed to the other part, the individual voice?
A: That’s a great question, because one of the things for us at ‘Olelo — and I go back to our brothers and sisters on the neighbor islands — we have the unique capability to provide coverage of these types of events … and we can share that with everyone. And even the broadcast stations will be able to share what we provide to their viewers as well.
That’s very important for us as a state to have that ability, so that we capture these events that are historic sometimes, like the ‘aha, and very timely and relevant, like the PUC. …
The other side of the coin is basically what we do as a core mission, which is the individuals and organizations that we want to train for them to get the ability to put their programs on our channels.
And so we try to strike that balance, because we also do executive productions. We cover events that are important within the community, too. Let’s see. Prince Lot Festival, things like that. Honolulu City Lights, we work with the City and County to put that on. We also did the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame. …
Q: How are you funded? Is it a grant? Does Oceanic kick in?
A: On your cable bill, you would see a line item, “franchise fee.” And you would see an amount, or percentage. It’s 5 percent of your cable bill…. 5 percent goes to DCCA. But DCCA, through the franchise, allocates 3 percent for paid access (on Oahu, it’s ‘Olelo). One percent goes to PBS; 1 percent goes to DCCA to fund their administration of the franchises and the office. …
Q: That’s your sole source of funding?
A: Sole source for operating. And there’s another fund that’s being provided through the cable franchise, and paid by customers as well, called the capital fund, which is funding to purchase equipment. …
We don’t receive any general funding, not from the city, and not from the state government.
Q: So your decisions on what to cover aren’t governed by grants. What is your staffing like?
A: Total organization, we have about 60 FTEs (full-time equivalent positions), and about half of them are on the production side. Meaning that they are working with community groups, individuals, in training and mentoring. And also they are out there doing the production, like the PUC hearings and ‘aha. …
We have a mini studio at the state Capitol for legislators. So if they want to have a panel or just a session where they would talk about issues that they want to have on ‘Olelo, they can actually film it there at the state Capitol. …
Did you hear about the on-demand channel for the state Capitol? It’s something that we just launched late January. It’s Channel 50 on Oceanic. …
It’s not live, but at the state Capitol there are 16 hearing rooms, including the auditorium. They are wired with equipment, with Sony robotic cameras, HD (high definition) cameras. All 16 rooms have multiple cameras.
And the House and the Senate, they’ll determine the hearing that goes on in each body, right?
They can have potentially every hearing captured on video with audio, with the hearing going on, and have the capability of having those hearings on our Channel 50. …
Q: Do you have any metrics on how many eyeballs are watching your programs?
A: A lot of people ask that same question. And we don’t.
But we’re not a commercial broadcast station, where it’s judged by number of eyeballs, because they have commercials and advertisers wanting to pay for that number of eyeballs.
For us, as community access, it’s more of accessibility, of people within the community to have different programming on cable TV. And it’ll be a diverse slew of programs.
It can be a 30-minute, it can be a 60-minute. It could be inspirational, it can be language, it can be a festival, it can be somebody’s wedding, it can be somebody’s party.
It will be so diverse that people will like it, some people won’t. Same like regular TV: People will like it, people won’t.
But for us, it’s not about people will like it or won’t like it, or how many people view it. It’s what’s made available to the community.
And of course, we want to be relevant to the community.
So we always have to be cognizant of the fact that we are responsible for programming that would make it informative and interesting to the general public. …
Our community volunteers and supporters, they do a great job in providing the content from their communities. That’s what we want; that’s what we need.
And we also need (to know) what would draw people more to ‘Olelo’s channels? So we’ve got to ask that, too.
