Prime time democracy: a growing number of public affairs networks demystify democracy.

• Author: Jackson, Sarah

How's everybody positioned? Are we good to go?" a programming coordinator asks in the TVW control room as technicians switch from camera to camera, checking the lighting.

One room away, on the set of "Inside Olympia," anticipation builds as host Dave Ammons prepares for his guests, Washington Representatives Gary Alexander and Helen Sommers, who will be videotaped--and only lightly edited--before the show is broadcast to more than 1.5 million homes in the state.

"I'm amazed at how many people watch TVW," Sommers says, adjusting her blazer and preparing to discuss the House's budget proposal. "People comment on it."

"Have a great show," another TVW staffer interjects, closing the door to the set.

It's all part of a typical morning for the private, nonprofit TVW, also known as Television Washington, which aired its first program 10 years ago last year.

"We kind of take it for granted," says TVW founder and former legislator Denny Heck. "We have brought government into family rooms of citizens throughout this state."

Unfiltered, unedited, unbiased state government at work was the goal when the concept for TVW--Washington's homegrown version of C-SPAN--was born.

Heck and Stan Marshburn, a veteran state official, asked a key question: Why should citizens miss one moment of government action, even in the judicial and executive branches?

"It just seemed to us that for such a small amount of money, we could give it all to them," Heck says. "I think we look around this town and what state government has been able to get done, and I think TVW is one of the best accomplishments of that time. It's a giant closed-circuit system to state government."

LEADING THE WAY

TVW, a nonprofit corporation that currently operates out of a 5,900 square-foot studio in Olympia across from the state Capitol, controls 36 wall-mounted cameras in 12 rooms and three buildings on the Capitol campus.

Featuring everything from floor debates to point-counterpoint interviews with legislators, TVW offers legislators, political junkies and the general public a raw, gavel-to-gavel look into all three branches of state government, 24 hours a day.

TVW reaches 95 percent of cable households in the state with an average of more than 2,000 hours of original programming every year. TVW also can be seen as live streaming video from TVW's Web site--www.tvw.org--which received more than 500,000 visitors in 2003. TVW President Cindy Zehnder, who also serves on the board of the...