New Santa Rosa TV station hits the airwaves

In a nondescript office park in Windsor, Daniel Sullivan and Evan Attwood are busy working long days in an occupation that could easily be described as the envy of many of their generation: producing their own TV shows.

This isn’t “Wayne’s World.” The structure is outfitted with the elaborate macabre set for “House On The Hill,” which can be best described as the Addams Family meets Ozzy Osbourne.

There is another small studio space for “Fandom Workshop,” a show targeted to the Comic-Con demographic with features on everything from Legos to light sabers. Then there is the massive green-screen space studio - the size of a middle school gym - that allows them the digital flexibility to make their shows more like Skywalker Ranch rather than Aurora public-access cable channel 10.

“It’s kid in the candy store, every time,” Attwood says as he gazes around the green-screen studio. Nearby, there is a replica of the robot from “Lost In Space.”

Besides being one of the coolest workspaces in Sonoma County, the production facility is a means to an end, a key component in local businessman Jeff Bodean’s big gambit to bring local TV back to Sonoma County.

Bodean, through his company Outspring Inc., this fall launched Northbay TV, a broadcast channel on channel 49 from a transmitter at the top of the Bethlehem Tower in Santa Rosa. He purchased the station from a Spanish-speaking church in Redwood City for an undisclosed sum. The Federal Communications Commission has recently approved the sale, he said.

Bodean said that viewers should be able to get the high-definition signal in a 10-mile radius of downtown, and it can reach as far as Guerneville or Healdsburg for those with outdoor antennas. He did concede it would be tough to receive signals for those living by large metal buildings or large hills.

The station has been active even with the limited signal. Northbay TV has entered into an agreement with a provider, the OMI network, to transmit its programming on low-powered stations from Redding to Alameda. And just recently, it began a partnership with CMedia Labs to land a spot on channel 30 for Santa Rosa’s cable system. In return, Northbay TV will show programming such as City Council meetings and other locally produced content.

“Jeff is really onto something,” said Daedalus Howell, chief executive officer of CMedia Labs, a nonprofit that helps develop programming to be shown on local cable television. “I think people forgot that broadcast television existed.”

Against the tide

Bodean’s bet is against the tide in the race to capture an audience in the digital revolution as most are looking at the Internet, especially as millennial and other viewers are increasingly cutting the cable TV cord and view programs through a combination of free video (think “The Daily Show” repeats), Netflix, Hulu and other less costly options. That includes TWiT.tv, which from its Petaluma multimillion-dollar studio produces more than 30 hours of weekly content, mostly tech-related, that can be viewed in live streams and podcasts available on Apple’s iTunes.

But Bodean is convinced there is a market of viewers who crave local programming and would like to get it for free. He believes that the signal quality of high-definition television enhances the experience, in the same way listeners have been turning back to vinyl records for the better audio quality. Live streaming is not a current focus of the station.

“Look at radio,” Bodean said. “Technically, radio should have been wiped out by now. Why isn’t everyone using Pandora or iTunes?”

Bodean said he wants to bring the sense of discovery back to television that he contends has been increasingly homogenized even as the number of channels on some cable and satellite providers has grown into the hundreds and diversified into all sorts of niches.

His programming philosophy? “I am not going to see this anywhere else,” he said.

One challenge for Bodean will be to lure younger viewers back to the TV set as they get most of their programming on their smartphones, tablets and laptops and at least 90 percent of their news from the Internet, said Ed Beebout, a communications professor at Sonoma State University who was the main evening news anchor for KFTY-TV until it dropped its news program in 2007. In 2011, the station began broadcasting in Spanish.

“I just know from teaching millennials .?.?. they are not big on watching live television,” Beebout said. “They want to watch when they want to watch.”

Still, Beebout notes there are people who regularly stop and tell him how much they miss the local news TV program.

There are 1,029 commercial UHF TV stations in the United States like Northbay TV, according to the FCC. Many are religious, foreign-language or educational stations. But there are many hyper-local stations that cover high school football games, government meetings, community festivals and other activities, said Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. They have one key advantage over web-based stations.

Plans to grow

“The opportunity to serve a community with a television station is greater than with streaming,” said Wharton, who noted that about a quarter of Americans don’t have broadband connection. “You automatically limit the reach with streaming.”

Bodean said he would like to expand his programming as his station grows, possibly even considering news or live events. For now, it has more of a science fiction and horror bent complemented by films and programs in the public domain so he doesn’t have to pay for syndication fees. The station also has two other programs, “Galaxy Theater,” which features independent sci-fi films, and “Cinema Nova,” shorts from more obscure genres.

The programming is driven by financial necessity. He found out trying to broadcast re-runs of Bob Villa’s “This Old House” would have cost him $60,000 for two months.

“I know it’s like I am programming for my 16-year-old self,” Bodean joked. He also acts and writes for “House On The Hill.”

But the production aspect also is key to his business plan as he would eventually like to sell his programs to other stations, which could pay off more lucratively than even owning a television station, especially those series that become popular. For example, “Seinfeld” co-creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David have earned hundreds of millions of dollars from syndication deals with the popular situation comedy that ended in 1998.

“We don’t want reruns of ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Hee Haw’ and be competing with other guys,” Bodean said. “For this type of money, we can create our company.”

Self-funded endeavor

Bodean also is fortunate that instead of bankrolling his dream from an investor or a bank, he is relying on his own funds, especially from the success of his other business which he started in 1989 at age 26: Micromat Inc., which produces a utility fix-it software for Apple computers. That financial stability is likely needed in the startup phase as advertising for the station is at rock-bottom prices: $10 per 30-second spot during prime time.

Then again, the viewership presently is unknown. “Absolutely no idea,” Bodean said when asked. He added he receives emails from people all over the region thanking him for the unique programming.

For example, one viewer near Chico, Nicla Sinnott, last month asked on Facebook for information on the program she was viewing. “People were wearing sheepskins and other tribal-type costumes. The movie may have been dubbed,” she wrote.

“That would have been ‘Prisoners of the Lost Universe,’ Nicla,” the station responded. “A truly horrid little gem we stumbled upon yesterday.”

Sinnott replied: “Thanks for the title. I agree - horrid, but a gem.”

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.