Thought you all would like this!
Steve
www.teckstuff.com

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From: George Antunes <<

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/west/chi-0705170998may18,1,7211161.stor\
y?coll=chi-newslocalwest-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

A long way from 'Wayne's World'

By Suzanne McBride
Special to the Chicago Tribune

May 18, 2007



When Ron Stenger wanted to tell the story of his family's 19th Century
brewery, he didn't have to go far to find an experienced production company.

He turned to his hometown public access station -- Naperville Community
Television (Channel 17) -- to produce an hourlong documentary, set to air
in August.

It will be the sixth documentary produced since 2002 at NCTV17, believed to
be the only cable access channel in the nation regularly producing
documentaries.

The newest, "A Role of Her Own," will be unveiled at a private screening
Sunday. The production, which examines the lives of seven influential
Naperville women, airs in June. It comes two months after the documentary
"The Naperville Riverwalk: The First 25 Years."

"Naperville is just loaded with good stories," said station executive
director Elizabeth Braham Spencer. The station has won a number of awards
for the documentaries, including from the Illinois State Historical Society
in recent weeks.

"Liz has done a fantastic job of giving Naperville something the people are
interested in," said Steve Bartlebaugh, executive director of Evanston
Community Media Center, which operates public access stations in the north
suburb. "We're very jealous of them now that they have (Web) streaming.
They're the top of the food chain."

The turning point for NCTV17 came about five or six years ago when funding
issues forced local officials to debate what to do for the station, said
Kelvin Fee, a NCTV17 board member and senior vice president of Wide Open
West Co.

Customers of Wide Open West and Comcast, the two companies that provide
cable service in Naperville, help fund the station by paying fees on their
monthly bills. Most cities keep the entire 5 percent franchise fee to pay
for police cars and other local services, Fee said, but Naperville gives
some to the station.

"It's extremely unusual that they do this," Fee said. And it's one of the
reasons the station stands out among public access channels in Illinois,
Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, the states where Fee's cable company operates.

The station also has sponsorships from area groups and businesses and seeks
grants, such as the $50,000 recently approved by the Naperville City
Council that will help fund a four-part series on still-to-be-determined
topics. In all, NCTV17's annual budget tops about $400,000.

"It does take money to do this. Sometimes people forget that television and
money go hand in hand," Spencer said.

NCTV17 features some of the more traditional public access fare. There's
coverage of the local school board, as well as footage of the Memorial and
Labor Day Parades. But the station's five full-time employees, five
part-time workers and about 20 volunteers spend a good chunk of their time
producing documentaries.

"It's much more than 'Wayne's World,'
" said Joan Drummond Olson, former television producer and colleague of
Spencer, referring to the 1992 comedy film about two teens who host a
cable-access television show in an Aurora basement.

To tell the story of the Stenger brewery, which during most of its 44 years
of operation was the biggest employer in Naperville, station staff traveled
to Oregon to interview relatives who had settled there and collected
brewery artifacts. One interesting twist: A young Adolph Coors worked his
way up to general brewery superintendent before moving to Colorado and
starting his own brewery.

Inspiration for the Stenger saga came from one of the station's first
documentaries, "One-in-a-Million: The Prince Castles & Cock Robin Story,"
which traced the 76-year history of the Naperville ice cream shops started
by Walter Fredenhagen and Earl Prince.

"When I saw the Prince Castle documentary, I said, 'My goodness, we just
have to get this done for the Stenger family also," said Ron Stenger, whose
relatives are funding the documentary.

The brewery's buildings – now all gone – helped anchor Naperville. "They
were just magnificent. They stood towering over the whole west side for 50
years," Stenger said.

"It's important for people to understand the history," said Stenger, who
runs a financial-planning business. "Preserving the detail of Naperville is
so important. These documentaries are just essential to the community at
large."

Peggy Frank, executive director of Naper Settlement/Naperville Heritage
Society, was one of the first residents to work as a volunteer producer for
the station after it was established in 1986. Local shows by volunteer
producers still is a focus, but so are the larger projects, she said.

"None of us envisioned it would be these high-quality documentaries," Frank
said. "It's definitely exceeded our wildest imagination."

The station branched out last month with breaking news coverage of the
April 17 local election. Fee speculates that one day NCTV17 could produce a
local news show, similar to what Channel 1 in New York City does.<<


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