Culture click

In less than a year, a pair of unlikely journalists have turned a bare-bones video webcast about the local arts scene into a miniature media empire, with a TV show, a radio segment and a burgeoning Web site.

Klayton Elliot Kendall and Craig Richardson set out simply to show people what was happening around town with art, theater and music. When they launched Springs Culture Cast, though, they connected with an arts community hungry for the attention.

“I think it’s something that’s essential to an arts community like ours that’s trying to find some stable footing,” said Christopher Lynn, director of the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. “It’s amazing what these two guys and some other correspondents have been able to pull off.”

Kendall and Richardson launched Springs Culture Cast in February at springsculturecast.com. The pair had met only a month before, but both were interested in the arts, and both thought somebody needed to shine a spotlight on the local scene.

“The goal is to get these people who aren’t participating in the cultural scene to see that this stuff is going on,” Richardson said.

Richardson, 31, is a Colorado Springs native. Kendall, 34, moved here four years ago for his wife’s final tour of duty in the Army, and they stayed after she finished her commitment.

“When I came to town four years ago, I thought there was nothing to do,” Kendall said. “It’s overflowing with things to do.”

Richardson is the reporter, conducting interviews and introducing segments, while Kendall runs the cameras, microphones and the technical side of things.

“I saw in Craig a celebrity waiting to be born,” Kendall said, half joking. “I really needed somebody to get in front of the camera because I don’t particularly like to be in front of the camera.”

Richardson, who sports a goatee and is never without a newsboy cap, takes a relaxed approach to interviews. He avoids scripting things and jokes around during the conversation, deadpan while asking a model at the FLAUNT fashion show, “What’s your biggest challenge as a male model?” (“Not to trip” is the answer.) During a conversation about the Manitou Art Theater’s children’s adaptation of “Zorro,” Richardson jokes about the play’s message of oppressive governments, then goofs on himself, saying, “This is getting really weird, isn’t it?”

Kendall, who’s working on growing a mohawk, is more intense, staying focused on the camera and getting the sound right.

“I was sort of fascinated when I watched them start,” said Delaney Utterback, general manager of the local public radio station KRCC (91.5 FM). “The first episode, Craig is hilarious.”

Utterback asked them to produce a daily five-minute arts report for the station, which airs at 11:55 a.m. and 8 p.m.

“They have an interesting sort of take on things,” Utterback said. “At KRCC, we’re not zillionaires, but it’s a very affordable way to get this much arts and culture (coverage).”

The KRCC broadcast started in June, the same month the webcast expanded to a weekly half-hour show on Comcast Channel 2. The program recently moved to the Pikes Peak Library Channel, Comcast Channel 17, where it airs at 6 nightly, plus at 10 p.m. Saturdays.

Kendall and Richardson rented an office in July, and they’re contemplating bringing in some interns to help out. Kendall, a former GED math teacher, also recruited his former co-teacher Sue Spengler early on as a correspondent.

“I had no idea it was going to grow the way it has,” she said. “I thought it was going to be this little webcast.”

The growth wasn’t anything they planned, Richardson said. It just seemed like a natural progression.

“The first two or three weeks it was just ‘Let’s go out and do this fun thing,’” he said. “After the third or fourth week, it became this responsibility to expand what we’re doing.”

Kendall and Richardson work full time on Springs Culture Cast, even if it’s closer to part-time pay. They hope someday to be able to run pledge drives, like public television does, to keep things rolling. So far, they’re supporting themselves through grants from groups such as the Bee Vradenburg Foundation and the Smokebrush Foundation.

“We thought it was a wonderful opportunity to support something that’s new and exciting and a benefit to the community,” said Josh Kempf, general manager of the Smokebrush Foundation. “What I’d more like to see is organizations realizing that this is happening in the community and finding ways to support it.”

It’s still a shoestring project. The Culture Cast Media office is a single room on the fourth floor of a downtown building, just a little bigger than the two desks Kendall and Richardson sit at, facing each other.

There’s a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red whiskey atop a minifridge, which is empty except for a bottle of vodka. The ceiling is covered with squares cut from a foam mattress-topper — a cheap substitute for acoustic shielding, Kendall said. They turn in their video, on a DVD, to the Library Channel on Monday mornings, which usually requires marathon editing sessions Sunday nights. Kendall estimates that every minute of video that airs on TV requires two hours of work to create.

“Oftentimes we’re here until 6 o’clock in the morning,” Richardson said. “There’s a hell of a lot of work that goes into it that’s not apparent.”

They measure the program’s success by whether they’re reaching viewers and listeners beyond the existing arts community. There are no Nielsen ratings or circulation numbers, but it seems to be working.

“Especially for the smaller organizations, that little bit of impact we give them does help,” Kendall said.

Eve Tilley, president of the Pikes Peak Arts Council, said word is getting out.

“I have friends in the business world who just don’t pay attention to the arts much who have seen my interview on Comcast,” she said. “We’ve never had a spotlight on us before in this town. “I think the idea has taken off,” she said, “and I hope it’s here to stay.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0275 or awineke@gazette.com

SPRINGS CULTURE CAST: WHERE IT’S CASTING

- 5-minute radio reports at 11:55 a.m. and 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays on KRCC (91.5 FM)

- A weekly half-hour TV show that airs at 6 nightly and 10 p.m. Saturdays on The Library Channel, Comcast Channel 17

- A frequently updated Web site, springsculturecast.com