For Hillsborough County television viewers bored with their options on a Friday night in April, a scene with a young woman being playfully whipped on the behind might have been an interesting alternative to Blind Date or the 10 p.m. news, but to one cable access watcher, what was on the screen that night was lewd and disgusting. So disturbing, that the viewer wrote to The Tampa Tribune to complain. That letter, County Commissioner Ronda Storms says, is what prompted her (and Commissioner Jim Norman) to contact Speak Up Tampa Bay, the nonprofit group that has run public access in Hillsborough County for the last year and a half, to gain access to a videotape of the show, called Insanity Defense.

Now, this one hour of programming has ended up creating havoc for Speak Up Tampa Bay. The group did not win approval of funding from the county at a Budget Reconciliation Workshop last Thurs-day. Instead, the county voted to temporarily suspend the vote on approving the funds until later this year, and agreed unanimously to send the Insanity Defense episode to State At- torney Mark Ober's office for possible prosecution on obscenity charges.

The show, produced by Jerry Cantor, began that April evening with Cantor — or more accurately, Cantor's crotch — live on camera. Cantor was wearing what appeared to be USF Bulls shorts. His extremely hairy thighs were also shown in the shot.

Graphics around that unusual shot included a phone number to call in live, as well as a short sentence that was sufficient to bring in a large quantity of phone calls: "Needs a Blow Job."

For the first 10 minutes of the video, Cantor answered mostly inane questions from the audience, though some of the queries were far more clever than the host's juvenile and one-dimensional responses.

Then the video, as it did a few times during its 60-minute length, cut to what appeared to be a raucous scene at a bar. A series of different women who — either wearing revealing shorts or thong bikinis — were slapped on their behinds, all by one burly character in black jeans and black baseball cap. The device used to slap them was a pom-pom like whip, with a handle that looked almost like a scepter. At a couple of intervals in the video, the Hells Angels guy slowly worked the scepter-handle underneath the women's crotch, grinding provocatively. There was another shot where his hand appeared to fondle a woman's crotch as well.

Although momentarily interesting, those shots were cut back between Cantor's inane patter with his callers.

Speak Up Tampa Bay receives funding from the city of Tampa, and from the county in the form of franchise fees, from your Time-Warner cable bill. However, those franchise fees are set to be abolished this October and will become part of a communications tax. But it still appears likely that Speak Up will receive their full funding later this year.

But Speak up has been put in a defensive position ever since Storms flagged the line item regarding franchise fees during a budget workshop in June.

That was after county attorneys viewed Insanity Defense. In a memo obtained by Weekly Planet, Assis-tant County Attorney Rebecca Kert wrote to Commissioner Jim Norman, in response to his request to review the issue of "hard-core pornography on Public Access." Kert wrote that Speak Up is prohibited from any type of censorship on programs the channel airs — as long as it is lawful — and not obscene.

Was Insanity Defense obscene? Speak Up didn't think so, and county attorneys agreed.

Norman was satisfied with that ruling at that time. He told Weekly Planet that cable access doesn't do much for him, but acknowledged it's a "forum for people to do their thing."

Members of Speak Up met with some commissioners in between the time that Storms said she was flagging their budget line and last Thursday. But Commissioner Storms opted not to meet with members of Speak Up. She told Board Chairman Louise Thompson that her mind was already made up not to support funding for public access, and that she would do all she could to get others on the commission to vote against it.

Speak Up was highly successful in getting community members, especially those who have programs on public access, to rally in support of continued funding. At the Board of County Commissioners meeting on Aug. 1, more than 15 members of the community came out to speak in support of public access and aired a short video extolling many of their positive shows for the community.

But Commissioner Storms was prepared for battle. At the Budget Reconciliation Workshop, Storms reasoned with her fellow commissioners that, just as they would never allow an honorable group such as the Sierra Club to raise a building in an environmentally unfriendly manner, they shouldn't allow an organization that admittedly does a lot of great work to be funded if it "pollutes" the cultural environment.

"Are you really saying you're going to allow something that pollutes the community and contributes to the objectification of women … are you going to do that, then turn around and fund domestic violence and rape crises programs?" She asked other commissioners, her voice quavering.

And for the piece de resistance, Storms had the Commissioners watch a specially edited one-minute version of the most explicit scenes from Insanity Defense. Or so the viewing public would have to assume because the video was not shown on the Hillsborough Television Access channel. Before she screened it, Storms contradicted county attorneys and said the tape contained "nudity," and added, "there is simulated fisting on that tape, and vulgarity beyond measure."

Before the minute was up, Comm- issioners Chris Hart and Tom Scott were not watching their video screens. As a whole, the commission looked positively stricken.

"I think we've seen enough," said Commissioner Tom Scott.

Stacey Easterling gulped. "I like public access, but I don't know what to do with this."

"That's not obscenity, that's not pornography? We must fund that?" Storms said bitterly.

That's when the commission opted to suspend the vote for approval of funding and let producer Jerry Cantor possibly be prosecuted for a crime.

Speak Up Executive Director Greg Koss said cable access in Hillsborough would still survive if funding from the county ended, but admitted "that cut would severely cripple us."

For Koss, who left Michigan after working for 10 years running cable access in the greater Detroit area, the issues involved in Insanity Defense are part of what can happen with cable access — where the idea is to allow everyone, regardless of means or message, to have the opportunity to be on television.

Koss' ultimate plans are to transcend the image traditionally associated with this type of programming.

Koss' take on the April Insanity Defense program: "A lot of people watching it would consider it grown-up content, but there's no full nudity, I don't think it would be pornographic by anyone's standards."

Koss said he's not unsympathetic to Storms' concerns, but that he was upset at the lack of proportion she has shown in condemning cable access in Hillsborough because of the Cantor program. He cited as an example of beneficial programming "Access Awareness Day," an all-day production marathon producing half-hour programs for 13 different nonprofit groups.

"We've done so much for the community … and we've reported all of this to the commissioners, and what I'm most disturbed about is … this is one hour of programming she's talking about that somebody called her about, and she's holding that up as an example of what we do at public access, and I find that offensive — a slap in the face."

Leafing through a copy of Tampa Bay Community Network's Third Quarter Report, along with reviewing balance sheets and statistics on equipment use, a reader can look at a variety of laudatory letters from several nonprofit groups, hailing the work that TBCN has done in working with the community.

A typical endorsement letter comes from Pastor James Hobby from Footsoldier Ministries in Valrico. Hobby wrote to Speak Up Tampa Bay, "The freedom we have through public access television is one that has helped to make America great."

But alongside the testimonials from Habitat for Humanity and Toys for Tots, there is a letter missing.

That would be from Metropolitan Ministries.

That nonprofit's admiring missive, written by Metropolitan Ministries Communications Director Maria Rutkind, was rescinded after the organization's Executive Director, Morris Hintzman, spoke to the BOCC on an unrelated matter.

Storms says she sent Hintzman a copy of the Insanity Defense episode. Shortly afterward, he sent a letter to the board, refuting the sentiments of the initial letter of praise.

When asked to explain the reversal, Metropolitan Ministries Rutkind fell on her sword, saying, "They've done fabulous work, but I never should have written that letter."

When pressed about why Metropolitan Ministries — who Rutkind readily admits has had a great relationship with Speak Up, felt it necessary to disavow its support, she could only reply "We're a religious organization. We can't support that type of programming." Metropolitan Ministries also receives funding from the county.

Members from Speak Up argue that their programming contains only 1 percent "adult content" while it contains an overwhelming 38 percent devoted to religious programming, and thus Storms' argument was irrational and exaggerated. Or, as Commissioner Jan Platt said at the budget hearing, "I'm not going to silence everybody else's voice because one voice is out of tune."

To Thompson, any discussion of shutting down public access is a cause for alarm. Espousing the stark reality about media consolidation in the 21st century in the United States, Thompson says, "Time Warner owns 25 magazines, they own CNN, they merged with AOL. In the future, will I only hear one view? Do people understand how terrifically important it is to have more than one voice? … We have to hear from regular people: What do they think about events, about their government? … They need to be their own watchdog … Public Access gives them a way to do that."

But Ronda Storms turned a deaf ear to those arguments. Appeals to permitting free speech on cable access in Hillsborough were "appreciated," she said, but not really applicable in this case.

Unfortunately for First Amendment supporters, neither was proportionality in the discussion over public access in the county.

Mitch Perry is assistant news director of WMNF-88.5 FM.

Ben Eason, president of the Weekly Planet's parent company, was the founding chairman of Speak Up Tampa Bay. He currently is a board member, as is Editor John Sugg. Perry was retained to do this article due to conflict of interest.

This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2001.