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Newspaper Clipping - Newspaper Clipping Scan - New Eagan TV Show features city officials Tom Hedges - 10/23/1985Wednesday, Oct. 23, 1985 St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch !b' New Fagan TV show features city officials, guests on cable By Thomas B. Koettini Staff Writer There is a new qualii ication for city officials in Eagan - look com- fortable in front of the c tmera. A new cable television program began this week in Eagz n that pro- ducer Bob Cooper hope: will serve a high level of community news and information without a side dish of boredom. "Eagan Report" was taped last week and aired Mon day, with Eagan City Manager Thomas Hedges as host. The proi;ram's for- mat starts with a quicl overview of the latest Eagan -rel ited news, followed by a reader question mailbox, a guest secti in, a City Council review and a s chedule of upcoming city events. The show will be tape d monthly, but will be broadcast a t different times throughout the month on cable Channel 3, Hedge said. City officials, including the lirector of public works, the parks director and the city planner, will be fea- tured as guests on the show. "I'm figuring we can go 18 months before we have to start repeating guests from the city gov- ernment," Cooper said. "At that point, we'll sit back and see where we want to go." Hedges will host the show each week, and will be joined on camera by Pam Wold, who Cooper de- scribed as "acting like Ed McMahon to Hedges' Johnny Car- son." Wold will read questions for Hedges, help introduce guests and be free to join in the conversation throughout the half -hour show. For Cooper, the production was a chance to put his film expertise to work on a volunteer basis for the city he has lived in for 20 years. A free -lance filmmaker, Cooper has had 17 years of experience as a sports cameraman and 15 years of experience producing sales and marketing films. He is a full -time Univeristy of Minnesota police- man. "I think it's going to provide in- formation that Eagan residents couldn't get any other way," Coo- per said. "I told the crew after the first show was finished, `You know, it's not perfect, but if it was, where the hell would we go from here ?' " Group W, the city's cable televi- son company, provides the studio and the equipment, as well as tech- nical advice for the program. The show has a crew of more than a dozen volunteers, Cooper said. Cooper said that some other sub- urbs had tried informational shows — and Burnsville is planning to start one on the same Group W cable system — but that he had found them dull and uninspiring. To avoid that, Cooper plans to use multiple camera angles and on- sight reporting of events. "The difference, hopefully, will be the smoothness of the produc- tion," he said.