Sedona's Televisionaries

Is Sedona ready for its close-up? Starting in May, a national TV network, the Wisdom Channel, began airing the first 30-minute episodes of Sedona Now, produced and hosted by Glenn Scarpelli and Jude Belanger. The series -- carried to a national audience primarily on the DISH satellite-TV network (serving 9 million homes), as well as a smattering of cable systems across the United States and select Comcast video-on-demand services -- is a compilation of segments created here for Glenn and Jude's now two-year-old Sedona Now network (airing locally on channel 18).

How did Sedona become the star of its own series? And what makes these two entrepreneurs think they can build a national video production company in a town of 17,000 people? Welcome to the new world of media.

The big story in TV over the past couple of years is a change in the "rules." Reality shows like Survivor, The Bachelor and The Apprentice have shaken one notion of how you make TV; that you assemble a team of writers and actors; build sets on a Hollywood soundstage; and act out a script. Popular entertainment now comes at least as frequently from dropping "regular" people into a situation, turning the camera on and editing it all into a compelling story.

But there's another, quieter revolution going on in TV, one driven by technology. It broadens the spectrum for programming, allowing a "niche" lifestyle network to launch in West Virginia and reach people's homes. And it enables two guys working 120 miles from the nearest major market to produce programing of broadcast quality, with Sedona as its star.

"We go to L.A. a lot -- we have friends there who produce national TV shows. They kind of look at us like we're Newhart [the sitcom where the star's character hosted a talk show from a quaint Vermont public access facility]," Glenn says. "It's like, 'Oh, small-town TV, how sweet.' "

Here's a wake-up call for the big city: It may indeed be sweet, but it's neither amateur nor low-tech.

"We wouldn't be doing any of this without the technology advances," Glenn says. "Before, [editing programs] would cost you $60,000; now we are talking a $12,000 program or less. And we are all digital; digital editing makes everything simpler and quicker. With the kind of budgets we have, our decision from Day One was to put every penny that we raise for the station on that screen. And that is what we do."

Both Glenn and Jude spent time in front of the camera before expanding their sights to include the business side. Jude began modeling in college to earn money while completing his degree in architecture. When he finished school, the modeling continued, but the architecture was put on hold until, oddly enough, he got on the set of the soap opera All My Children.

"At the time I was very frustrated," Jude recalls. "I had an architecture degree I was sitting on, and I was running around modeling. The money was great but I was really bored. A friend of mine said he was doing set design for All My Children and he asked if I would come in and work with him, which I did. While I was there I met the casting director and they offered me this little role as a young doctor intern, so whenever the medical set came out so would I, with a few sentences to read. So I had this small part that I did in conjunction with learning a little bit of set design. It was like working both worlds there. And then [AMC star] Susan Lucci's character drove her car over a cliff and was in a coma, so I had a lot of work for a month or two!

"That was my exposure to that whole world [of TV production]," Jude continues. "I learned lighting, I learned cameras, I got to be on the set and perform too. This friend of mine really gave me this great experience with the whole package. Eventually, I got offered this really good job with this neoclassical architect, Juan Pablo Molyneaux, and I left the whole business, I left modeling, and I went into architecture completely after that."

Glenn made his Broadway debut at age 8, appearing with Anne Bancroft in the play Golda. He returned to the Great White Way later with a role in the production of Richard III starring Al Pacino. Next came Hollywood, where he landed a regular role in the hit sitcom One Day at a Time, joining the series in 1980 and staying with it until 1983. With TV stardom came the perks of fame -- Love Boat appearances, a recording contract, and even a "special guest appearance" on the cover of Archie comics (see above; Glenn's dad, Henry, has been a top cartoonist at Archie Comics for more than 30 years now). But Glenn wasn't sure it was the life for him.

"I left acting for privacy," he explains. "The drawback to being a child actor -- and there weren't many for me because I had a great time: I felt like I had won the lottery, I way preferred it to school and I loved acting -- was the inability to freely make my own personal discovery of myself, of who I am. I was told how to wear my hair, what to wear, what to say during interviews. I was very much dictated to in regard to a marketing persona that was 'me.' I had publishers, managers and agents. I became a commodity so to speak. So that is what I needed to break away from. I have always loved the performing part; it's the stuff that comes with it that made me want to step away from it and really get into the other aspects of the business that we do at Sedona Now."

Give one big assist for Glenn's decision to break away from the grind to master film director Martin Scorsese. "After One Day at a Time I did a short-lived series called Jennifer Slept Here with Ann Jillian for NBC. It wasn't a hit show, so the whole experience just wasn't what I got from One Day at a Time. When that ended, I did one very short guest appearance on a show called Amazing Stories. Steven Spielberg produced that show, and Martin Scorsese directed this episode. I had been in this off-Broadway show and he came to see me and I became friends with his daughter. So I got this call from the Spielberg people saying Scorsese wants to cast me on the show. I was thrilled to do it, but this came up right when I was asking myself some serious questions about who I am and what I really wanted. I was 18, and going through a heavy transition internally. So I did this episode and got the chance to talk with Marty, and I started telling him what I was feeling: 'I'm a little disillusioned with acting...I don't know if this is where I want to be...I love acting but I don't know who I am...I grew up in this business but I would like to learn more about the industry...I would love to direct and write.' He said, 'You have to go to NYU [New York University]. No question, you have to go to NYU.' That was his Alma Mater. He said, "You have to get out of L.A. Why don't you go to N.Y.?' And I realized I'd have loved to be in N.Y. right then. So I moved. And I've focused on the [production] side of things since. And I am really glad I did." He ended up going back to L.A., as president of GKS Entertainment, a digital mastering and editing facility.

Meanwhile, Jude was working in architecture and landscape design in California (including, interestingly enough, landscaping and rose garden design for One Day at a Time executive producer Norman Lear). He and Glenn, who have been partners for seven years, both had history in Sedona, and would come here on vacation. When Jude had an architectural opportunity here, they decided to make the move. The possibility of producing local TV shows had crossed their minds, they say, but owning a TV station was not something they ever expected to do.

"We had these ideas for these tiny shows," Glenn recalls. "But we'd had it with living in big cities. We knew we wanted to be in Sedona. So, OK, we started thinking, 'How do we do these shows in Sedona and still be able to make a living?' We were literally flipping the TV here and we saw Channel 18 was blue."

The wheels started turning. "We started thinking, if we had a TV station, develop programming for Sedona, kind of as a test market, sell advertising time and make it a sustaining business, then the pressure is off having to sell these show ideas to bigger markets right away," Jude says.

The ability to turn the dream into a reality came when they met Pat Hickey, the woman who originally loaned them the startup cost for the local station. "We are so grateful to her," Glenn says. "Her on-air talent and visions for the station has played an important role all along the way."

And next thing they knew, they were local media moguls. "Where we came from emotionally is, if [selling a show nationally] is to happen, that is fantastic. If it's not then we have this great life in a place where we want to live with a business that we're growing," Glenn says. "When we heard from Wisdom, it felt like such a natural flow. We have created an environment where we can pitch without the pressure. Which is a beautiful place to work when we do go into these spaces creatively to do these shows. Because it's not like we had to sell everything to do a pilot for Wisdom, worrying that we will run out of money. You know that vibe?"

Their vibe -- and Sedona's -- mesh easily with the fledgling Wisdom Channel, which is developing a slate of programming dedicated to personal growth and spirituality, with the tagline "Mind. Body. Spirit. Earth." When Glenn and Jude got in touch, the word "Sedona," which has come to represent all of the above, quickly opened doors.

Over the course of the past two years, the programming Glenn and Jude have developed for the local station lent itself naturally to a compilation for Wisdom's target audience. The two host the show, taping new introductions to lead into the segments that introduce the rest of the country to the people and places that make Sedona tick. The show premiered with a profile of artist David Sine of the Yavapai-Apache nation, and visits to the Institute of Eco-Tourism and the Sedona Creative Life Center. Future segments include a history of Tlaquepaque with managing partner Wendy Lippman, wellness at the Sedona Spa, and visits to Native American sacred ruins.

And to think, it's all a homegrown operation. They've done it their way. "We went through the phase of getting a fancy office," Glenn says. "But then we asked ourselves, Do we really want to cross that line? What are we doing, why do we want to go there? [Keeping it small] is like the best situation possible.

"We have grown a great crew of people," he continues. "It's not a large group; less is more when you are dealing with people. We have a wonderful editor, Dave Park, who also works camera. Our sound guy, Robert Cory, Rick Forman who does sales for us. But Jude and I do all the creative brainstorming, provide the spark. And then we all work as a team and put it all together. We built a team in Sedona. We are very grateful for that. When we look for people it's not only about what they know creatively. It's how we all interact as people. Because this business is too hard to do. The people that work for us, it's like a little family, a clique. A corporate thing will not work for us. In a big city you have a lot of people but not everyone gets along and that's not worth it. We didn't move away from that to do that again. So that's the biggest lesson with whoever comes into our space and works with us. It has to be a jammin' thing. That's very important to us."

"One of the things that we love about this TV station is we don't know how to run a TV station," Jude adds. "We had never done it before. We have both worked in production but as far as a TV station goes, it has made us grow as human beings because we get to push ourselves in areas that we have never been. We didn't realize when we started here that we were getting into the media business. We just wanted to make some fun shows."

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