Oh, Boy: Now Peep Shows Are Just A Channel Away

Parents, perhaps you were overjoyed at your little Billy's decision to ask some buddies over and stay home on Saturday nights.

Now, you didn't have to wonder what mischief little Billy might get into. He was safe and sound in the rec room, getting popcorn from the microwave, watching those idiotic shows for teens. And if little Billy asked about staying up past midnight, you agreed, it being a weekend.

There might be another reason why your little Billy has decided to stay home.

We always extol the virtues of entrepreneurship; the businessman who sees a need and then delivers the goods to fulfill that need.

Meet Richard Ditlevsen, 38, an entrepreneur from Sacramento. Actually, many of you already know Ditlevsen from his cable-TV show.

As I said, he saw a marketing opportunity on late-night television.

In the Puget Sound area, on Saturdays at midnight on cable TV, way up there on Channel 98, completely unscrambled, Richard Ditlevsen comes on with his show.

Of course, he's jazzed up his name. The one-hour show is "Out Late With Ricky D," and Ditlevsen claims a national viewership in the millions, with viewer mail running 700 to 800 letters a month.

What exactly is Ditlevsen offering that attracts such a loyal following, even though it's never listed in TV Guide? If you've been surfing the cable channels, his show would certainly make you stop. This is not the sometimes raunchy stuff you can see on community

access, it's . . .

Well, Ditlevsen's programming philosophy is best explained as "gyrating naked women." Or, more accurately, "gyrating naked women with sizable silicone deposits."

There's no need anymore to surf the Internet or sneakily buy that dirty magazine at the convenience store. It's right there on basic cable.

In between the videos of gyrating naked women, Ditlevsen interviews female porn stars who appear at adult-entertainment conventions. It turns out, curiously, that nearly all female porn stars eventually want to go into directing.

What pays for the show, however, are commercials for everything from videos with titles such as "Fit for Sex," featuring couples doing rather remarkable gymnastics, to the kind of plastic dolls that you definitely would not find at Toys R Us.

If it were up to the cable companies, they'd never air "Out Late With Ricky D." Already in Southern California, community groups have protested. An Irvine councilwoman was quoted as saying she was "absolutely dumbfounded" such a "grotesque" show was appearing in 195,000 households in her area.

But "Out Late With Ricky D" appears on channels the Federal Communications Commission says are reserved for leased access.

That means if you're first in line for that time slot, and have the money, and aren't showing anything that breaks the law, you've got it.

As much as it might appall some, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't considered gyrating naked women with big breasts to be breaking the law. Ditlevsen is careful not to show any sex acts; his videos harken back more to 1950s peep-show stuff.

In any case, if you don't want "Out Late With Ricky D" in your household, you can tell your local cable company to "block" it, which is why Ditlevsen can't understand why anybody would be upset.

"We're not doing programming for Sunday after church or Saturday for cartoon hour," Ditlevsen said. Then, as he likes to do, Ditlevsen gave a little lecture:

"If you're such a sad parent that you don't know what your kids are doing at midnight, then you've got a problem. Part of the problem is that nobody understands rules. When my dad said, `Don't do something,' and I did it, I got my ass kicked."

Ditlevsen also pointed out that cable companies themselves are hypocritical. They don't want his show, but they'll carry pay-per-view sex movies from Playboy. Every time somebody orders one of those movies, the cable companies get a cut.

What's a parent to do in this technological age? Well, if 14-year-old Billy and his buddies have decided to stay home Saturday nights, block Channel 98 without telling them.

Watch: Next weekend, they'll be back cruising the shopping malls.

Erik Lacitis' column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. His phone number is 464-2237. His e-mail address is: elac-new@seatimes.com