Porn program on local cable gets reprieve from review committee
The live weekly program on Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN) typically features women stripping for the camera and taped clips of hard-core pornographic movies. It's a smorgasbord of smut, courtesy of Aivaz, who relishes taking the open-forum concept of public-access TV to the shock-value extreme.
It's no coincidence that a tattoo artist Aivaz once dated in Maui suggested he ink the word "Instigator" on his upper arm. Whether he is just trying to make trouble or whether he truly believes, as he says, that pornography is artistic and educational, he is testing serious First Amendment principles: freedom of expression and the definition of obscenity.
Aivaz has been fighting for five years to keep his show on the air. To his surprise, the cable-TV content cops ruled this week that his dirty mind wasn't dirty enough to cost him his show.
SCAN airs across the Puget Sound region on channel 77 or 29, depending on the city. Anyone — of any age — with access to standard cable and a bout of insomnia can watch Aivaz's show, which has been pulled off the air three times since 1998 because it was deemed obscene.
But after Aivaz's most recent appearance before SCAN's three-member content-review committee, he came away with a victory. Based on a U.S. Supreme Court test, the committee ruled that Aivaz's porn-on-parade did not meet the definition of obscenity, meaning his show may remain on the air. The committee did not release the details of its finding.
The reprieve for Aivaz may be short-lived, however, as another obscenity complaint against two more recent shows is still pending.
"You mean I can still make TV?" Aivaz said upon learning of this week's ruling. "Cool!"
Officials of SCAN, the independent nonprofit operator of public-access TV, are now left having to bear it — without the grin. After all, they run the review committee as a process to control — censor, Aivaz says — programming that viewers complain about.
"We may not like the ruling, but we established the process and it's working," says Chris Coy, SCAN's board chairwoman. "Great courage is needed day-to-day to uphold the First Amendment. It's not easy."
Aivaz brags that the democratic nature of public-access TV lets him always stay one step ahead of those trying to silence him. But some of those who want Aivaz off the air are pursuing the one thing they hope can stop him: a criminal indictment.
The show must go on
Here's what you would have seen had you watched Aivaz's 30-minute live show, "Seattle Loves Mike Hunt," at 1 a.m. Thursday: A tattooed porn starlet named Sapphire in the studio showing off an ornate glass bong and her body. A rowdy, foul-mouthed Aivaz fielding phone calls from viewers, including one he called a pervert for watching. Interspersed cut-ins of a triple-X porn flick. Closing credits ending with, "Now go and have sex!!!"
"I think it's ridiculous that anyone would call my material obscene," Aivaz says. "I get all of my (porn) material off of local video shelves, which means it falls under the definition of community standards. And besides, that station had been playing that kind of TV before I ever became a producer."
Aivaz, 39, grew up in the California central coast town of San Luis Obispo. He landed in Seattle seven years ago and, within two weeks, found public-access TV. He moved to Seattle permanently a year later to produce a show.
It didn't take long for the mayor's office to learn who Aivaz was. After viewers complained to the city, the cable company at the time, TCI Cablevision, directed that all adult content on public-access TV had to be shown after 1 a.m.
"That was in effect a form of censorship, but I didn't fight that," Aivaz says. "All I have ever wanted to do was to be able to make my show and have people see it."
In 1998, TCI pulled Aivaz's show and that of another producer because the programs contained nudity and sex. With assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, Aivaz and the other producer sued TCI in federal court. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour agreed with the cable company that the producers' programming was obscene, scolding Aivaz for his "protocognitive wallows in adolescent sexual retardation."
But the judge also said the cable company should afford Aivaz and all public-access TV producers due process.
In an ironic twist, the content-review committee that Aivaz now criticizes is of his own making. The settlement of his lawsuit resulted in the three-member panel, which is composed of one person chosen by SCAN's board, one by public-access producers and one by the other two panel members.
AT&T Broadband, which took over TCI, washed its hands of public-access headaches in March when SCAN went independent.
"All AT&T does now is provide a channel space for public-access," company spokesman Steve Kipp says. "We've never wanted to be in the position of making decisions about content, whether it's something on public-access or on 'The Sopranos.' "
Aivaz has faced obscenity charges before the panel three times in a little more than a year. Last fall, the panel revoked his producer privileges for 30 days, and last December it banned him for six months. He would have been suspended for nine months had the panel chosen to slap him again. Before the committee even ruled, Aivaz received a letter from SCAN saying he was being called before the committee again, this time for two shows that aired in October.
Crusade for free expression
The bedrock of public-access TV is its diversity of voices, says Coy, a former producer on the channel.
"What was important for me was to give a voice to people in the community who wouldn't have one otherwise, allow them to tell their story and provide a forum for that," she says.
But in Seattle and across the country, public-access TV also has brought out the wisenheimers, producers who revel in exploiting the democracy of it. Aivaz claims to not be one of those. He says the porn he shows is more harmless than much of the violence on regular TV and that he is giving the public what it wants.
"There is no way I can allow censorship to win this battle," he says.
Aivaz's crusade for free expression, however, has created a fallout that could result in public-access being less accessible to the public.
"This place (channel 77) is about power of the people," Aivaz says. "It's about giving people a voice. And if people want this on TV, there isn't a thing they can do about it except shut down public-access TV."
The City of Edmonds considered dropping SCAN from its city's cable channel lineup earlier this year after Council member Tom Miller, a former city police chief, heard complaints from constituents about pornography on the channel. The council voted to retain it, so Miller went another route. He brought the case to Edmonds police detectives to see if Aivaz could be brought up on obscenity charges.
"Snohomish County does have a process in place for the criminal prosecution of obscenity laws," Miller says. "My position is that we're just not going to have that kind of stuff on TV in Edmonds. It's just shocking to me that any child — or unsuspecting adult — could see that."
Obscenity tough to prove
Miller got the idea to bring the case to the police department from Stuart Heady, a SCAN board member from Edmonds who had urged the council to keep the channel. Heady, however, also could appreciate Miller's problem with guys like Aivaz. Heady had run-ins with similar producers as a cable TV regulator in Austin, Texas, 10 years ago.
"I've seen this movie and I don't want to see it again," Heady says. "In Austin, we went the indictment route because we ultimately found, after a long and painful experience, that obscenity could be judged only by a jury in a trial. No committee can be as convincing and unchallengeable."
Coy, however, notes that the review committee derives from a settlement of a lawsuit and therefore has been sanctioned by a court. Sgt. Mike Drinkwine, an Edmonds police detective, says he thinks Aivaz's show is trash but indicting him would be difficult.
"Obscenity is hard to prove in court," says Drinkwine, who hinted before this week's ruling that the Police Department was willing to sit back and let SCAN self-police. "The statute is so convoluted that it is tough for us to make a clear call."
Aivaz doubts he can be found criminally liable. He also says that even if SCAN revokes his producer privileges again, porn is likely to remain on public-access TV. On air, Aivaz has encouraged his fans to go through the orientation to become a SCAN producer so they can make more shows like his.
He also could find another producer to air his show. Surrogate producers, however, risk losing their own privileges if brought before the content committee.
"People are acting like I'm trying to turn the whole world upside-down," Aivaz says. "I'm not calling for the assassination of public officials, and I'm not standing up in a crowded theater yelling 'fire!' I'm showing people having pleasure at 1 in the morning. How awful."
Stuart Eskenazi can be reached at 206-464-2293 and seskenazi@seattletimes.com.
FACTS
Supreme Court's definition of obscenity
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, and
2. The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and
3. The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
If the item meets all three of these criteria, it is obscenity.