From Thursday's print edition

By Shannon Fiecke, Staff Writer  

Creators of the late-night cable show “Twisted TV,” which airs
on Shakopee cable Channel 15, consider it humorous adult entertainment no worse than South Park and believe it has the same constitutional right to play on public access TV as the town parade or a high school football game. Others consider the show filth with no right to exist on community television.

After the program began airing on the local cable access station
a little more than a year ago, Shakopee city councilors started receiving complaints about its content. Filmed twice monthly by Shakopee resident Mike Winter and his friends at a Minneapolis studio, the show generally features  political recap, sports highlights, celebrity gossip and bits — like an amateur version of “Saturday Night Live,” except interspersed with profanity and oftentimes crude sexual language. 

The show is said to air in 50-some Minnesota cities, including
Duluth, St. Paul and Minneapolis, and is also uploaded to YouTube with tags like XXX and naked girls — although a sampling of episodes found no nudity. There were plenty of scenes and conversations though that could raise the rancor of some residents.

In one segment, labeled “Dollars and Sense,” a man reading a
newspaper suggests to get the best value for the dollar in today’s economic times, “the next time you’re with a hooker, make sure you masturbate.”

Another bit plays off the character “Nanerpuss” from Denny's
commercials, with a man simulating sex with a banana under a blanket.

After receiving complaints, the city of Shakopee moved the program’s
time slot from 10 or 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. and restricted it to only air once per episode. A couple city councilors, however, and Don McNeil, a local cable producer and telecommunications advisory commissioner, would like the program kicked off the air.  

Since the city was advised by legal staff that it can’t bar “Twisted
TV” from local airwaves, McNeil instead tried to get program producer Mike
Winter suspended for policy violations. The clearest infraction was the
inclusion of program sponsors’ addresses at the end of episodes, which Winter
quickly agreed to discontinue once he was made aware of the situation.

Telecommunications Advisory Board member Bill Anderson said he
considered the violations minor infractions that didn’t rise to the level of suspension.

McNeil, who was often at odds with the commission before being recently
appointed to the panel, once got a 30-day suspension for printing the name of a teacher on a permission slip for the airing of a school production. At the time, McNeil said the teacher gave him verbal permission to air the program, but he’d been unable to connect with the teacher for a physical signature.

McNeil says “Twisted TV” is tantamount to “verbal pornography,” and
he points to a litany of sexual expletives and sexual and racial slurs, as well as the calling of disabled persons “retards” and an episode on bestiality.

In a bit following President Barrack Obama’s comments comparing his
bad bowling skills to the Special Olympics, Twisted TV shows a professional bowler with anger-management issues having to provide free lessons to his “special friends.”

Producers say the other episode, which doesn’t demonstrate the act of bestiality or encourage it, was just a funny spoof on “To Catch a Predator,” with the perpetrator getting arrested after being exposed by a TV investigator.

The program’s creators say the show is adult humor and they include a content warning at the front of the episodes they submit to stations.

It’s like a “poor man’s Howard Stern, who is a personal hero of
mine,” Winter said.

Winter said “Twisted TV” airs at 9 p.m. or later in every community based on his direction, because it’s not kid appropriate. He said he wouldn’t want his 3-year-old to stumble across someone calling Madonna a skank, while looking for Sponge Bob.

Opponents of the show don’t want minors coming across the program if they’re up late.

But Winter thinks it’s the responsibility of parents to keep an eye on their kids after prime-time TV viewing hours. “It’s not my job to parent every child in Shakopee,” he said.

Winter, who used to work in radio and now is a commercial driver, said he produced a similar TV show, called “Minneapolis Uncovered,” for
public access when he lived in Minneapolis. After his friends saw tapes of old episodes, they decided to resurrect the program.

Winter said “Twisted TV”’s format is like a three-part talk show
centered on politics, sports and gossip — and actors don’t just sit around and talk about sex for an entire episode. And he doesn’t consider the swearing to be gratuitous.  

But city Councilors Matt Lehman and Pat Heitzman, who attended a
recent telecommunications meeting on the topic, think the content crosses the line.

Heitzman believes the public-access station is meant for — and
should be limited to — the airing of community functions, like the Derby Days parade. If “Twisted TV” is allowed to continue, he worries people will come in with programs that push the envelope even further.

“It has no business being on a community channel,” Heitzman
said.

Although the city’s legal representation says the show constitutes
protected speech, Lehman thinks the program falls in the gray area. At the very least, he thinks the program ought to play in the dead of night, not at 11 p.m.

The city’s telecommunications board heard a somewhat confusing
explanation of case law a couple meetings ago, where McNeil tried to get Winter suspended on technicalities. Last month, the committee cleaned up some language in its user policies, but did not put any policy in place requiring adult content to be shown in the dead of night, something Lehman may push the City Council to direct its telecommunications coordinator, John Peterson, to do.

Mayor John Schmitt hasn’t personally watched “Twisted TV,” but said
he’s had feedback from several residents about the program and was involved in a decision to move the airtime to 11 p.m.

“I think that’s the right process,” Schmitt said. “It doesn’t
take it off completely because we don’t have a choice because of the Supreme
Court.” 

In a memo, Assistant City Administrator Kris Wilson explained that
the city could incur legal problems if it restricted programs based on their content.

“There is no legal liability for the city if our public-access
channel has a wide-open policy in regards to program content and, as a result, airs programs that are offensive to some,” she wrote in a summary of legal advice the city was provided.  

Shakopee can only use the “community standard” rationale to
restrict programming in extreme cases and that argument probably isn’t very
useful for a program that uses “swear words and sophomoric humor,” she said.

“We can set policy for broad categories of programming, but not
based on content,” Wilson said. “For example, it would be okay to say we only accept programming from Shakopee residents because that in no way restricts the content of the programming.”

Although the city requires programs with adult content, such as
swearing or nudity, to carry a disclaimer and runs them outside of daytime or primetime hours, staff doesn’t review programs for content, only to make sure they will play correctly.

Attorney Bob Voss gave a fairly complicated explanation of the
law surrounding public-access communication to the Telecommunications Advisory Commission in May, leaving some at the meeting even more confused about what is or isn’t allowed.

Voss said a city can restrict the time a show with indecent content
is aired. He said programs are to be viewed as a whole, and it would be a “high standard” for speech to constitute pornography.

Telecommunications coordinator John Peterson said there is a very high bar to meet to deem a program unairable. He has difficulty defining what would push a program over the edge to be considered obscene as a whole. (The reverse question is, would five minutes of plot make 30 minutes of pornography have literary value?) “I’m not even sure there is a line,” Peterson said, and it’s likely something to be determined on a case-by-case value.

“It’s a very, very high standard to try to block something from the air,” said longtime telecommunications commission member Anderson, who has watched short clips of “Twisted TV,” but didn’t care to watch any more.

McNeil worries tourists will get a bad picture of the community if they stumble across “Twisted TV” while flipping through the channels in their hotel room.

“People get an impression of Shakopee based on what they see,”
he said.

While Anderson agrees that “Twisted TV” may not cast the community in a good light, he will defend its right to play — and at the 11 pm.
hour. 

At 11 p.m., people who want to watch the show still can, he said, and at that time of night kids aren’t watching TV and if they are, it’s parents’ responsibility to keep tabs on what they’re viewing.

“Everybody has the right to turn it off,” he said. “11 p.m. is reasonable.”

Winter said Shakopee is the first community station he’s aware of that has received complaints about his show.

In Duluth, the program airs on local cable at 11:30 p.m. Thursday and 1:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. Fridays. A woman at the station there said she wasn’t aware of any complaints about the show.  

If Shakopee moves the program to the middle of the night, Winter said he’ll pull the program because it won’t be worth his while to submit it. He thinks this would send an unfortunate message to anyone who might be interested in producing programs for Shakopee, noting that the city already struggles to get locally produced content.   

Shannon Fiecke can be reached at (952) 345-6679 or sfiecke@swpub.com.