Full frontal nudity on public access leads to action

08:16 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 12, 2005

By Doug Miller / 11 News

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11 News and many city councilmembers got their first look Monday at a sexually explicit, jaw-dropping video that aired on Houston's public access channel creating a bitter fight between city leaders.

City leaders couldn't believe their eyes -- and you may not either -- after seeing some of the show that aired last week. We intentionally blurred the footage.

Some council members thought the video was so racy that they couldn't even air it in a public meeting. Instead, they went into a back room and took a closer look in semi-privacy.

But anyone could have seen the full frontal nudity when the tape turned up on Houston Mediasource, Houston's public access TV channel. An independent producer submitted the tape to Mediasource which aired it without reviewing. In fact, it aired just hours after council members debated its budget.

KHOU-TV

A sexually explicit video that aired on Houston's public access channel has created a bitter fight among city leaders.

The show has only intensified the criticism of the public access channel.

At a committee meeting Monday, a number of city councilmembers indicated they just might vote against renewing Mediasource's budget.

"You were already in the mode of looking out for this stuff and it still slipped through," said Councilmember Michael Berry. "So what this says -- and you can't possibly say it doesn't -- is that you have no accountability of what appears on the air until after the fact."

"It's easy for Councilman Berry to make the comment that he did without considering the legal implications of this," argued Garth Jowett, Houston Mediasource board member. "And we are seriously examining the legal implications before we will commit ourselves to something that will get us into a lot of constitutional trouble."

Mediasource officials say they're talking to attorneys about whether they even have the legal right to review citizens' video tapes before they air on access TV.

In the meantime, they say the channel is freezing all new programming until all of its producers take a new training course.

The options of city councilmembers are limited since the city doesn't give taxpayer money to Mediasource. The money actually comes from cable TV subscribers.

Their options include replacing the board members or turning the access channel over to someone else.