Summer 1995
Getting People Talking
By David Blomquist
Can one regional newspaper, three cable television systems, a radio station, and a group of municipal officials come together to get people talking about the challenges facing City Hall?
Well, it wasn’t always easy, but we did it. And when our first broadcast closed in April with the phones still ringing off the hook, we realized just how much people want to connect with local government – and how much it means when their local media help make it happen.
For 90 minutes, mayors, county officials, and citizens engaged in a spirited dialogue about the issues confronting Bergen County’s 70 municipalities – everything from property taxes to political patronage to speeding tickets. The discussion, moderated by Bergen Record columnist Steve Adubato, was broadcast live to cable subscribers throughout New Jersey’s largest county.
Called “Local Live,” the broadcast was a joint venture of The Record, TCI of Northern New Jersey, WJUX-FM and the Bergen County League of Municipalities. Two other cable operators, Time Warner and Comcast, carried the program off a satellite feed set up through a nearby college.
The Record became involved with “Local Live” through our Quality of Life Project, an ongoing effort to stimulate community discussion about social and economic trends affecting the characteristics that make Bergen County an attractive place to live.
On the set of “Local Live.”
A poll taken for the project last year found a pervasive sense of powerlessness among Bergen residents. Almost half the men and women surveyed said people like them don’t have much say about what happens in the county, and more than one person in four said their point of view would mostly be ignored if they disagreed with a decision in their town.
The poll told us that Bergen County needed to find new ways for citizens to connect with local government – ways to enable more people to speak up and feel they’d be heard. What we didn’t expect was that local officials had reached the same conclusion.
Early this year, Faith Walker, the mayor of Midland Park and president of the Bergen County League of Municipalities, approached Record Editor Glenn Ritt. The league wanted to hold meetings around the county at which groups of citizens and five or six mayors could talk about their common concerns. To prevent the sessions from becoming bogged down in politics, Walker thought they should be organized and led by a neutral party. She asked if The Record would take on the job.
Ritt liked Walker’s idea, but wanted to go one step further. With 70 municipalities to cover, he felt it would take months to engage the entire county through traditional town meetings in libraries or school auditoriums. He proposed turning the forums into a countywide call-in on cable television, which would enable the newspaper to promote the venture in all 70 towns.
That’s where things got a little tricky. Like many suburban areas, Bergen is served by more than one cable company, and the different systems aren’t wired together. We had to convince one of the systems to produce the program and come up with a way to get it to the other companies.
Fortunately, David Capo, director of governmental and public affairs at TCI, liked Walker’s idea as much as we did and was excited by the prospect of cable TV and a local newspaper working together. Capo and TCI’s local production team set up a satellite feed to the other cable companies and a special audio feed to WJUX, which agreed to carry the program so that residents who didn’t have cable wouldn’t be shut out.
Each of the media partners promoted the program aggressively in advance. The Record ran a front-page story and several house ads announcing the broadcast, WJUX profiled the eight participating mayors and county officials on its newscasts, and TCI scheduled a promotional spot on CNN and other high-profile channels.
We hoped we’d get enough calls to fill 90 minutes of prime time – but we sent Adubato into the studio armed with extra questions just in case. He never needed them. Moments after the studio telephone number appeared on screen, every light on the phone console was glowing. The studio operator clocked at least 70 calls, but there’s no way to know how many people tried to get through and got a busy signal.
The gratifying response to “Local Live” underscored that community coverage is the cornerstone of our franchise. It reminded us that citizens hunger to become involved – and that providing opportunities for them to do so is good, both for our community and for the vitality of our businesses.
Epilogue
On June 1, The Record and TCI announced that the pilot show of “Local Live” had led to a new partnership. The partners agreed to produce 14 civic journalism and public affairs programs over the next six months. Half of those programs will use the interactive call-in format of “Local Live” and air the second and last Thursdays of each month. The other show, North Jersey ’90s, will have a magazine format . It will debut July 6 and air the first and third Thursdays of the month.