Complaints received about cable access show

The Cape Girardeau City Council should look at pulling the plug on a Democratic commentator's cable access show after he allegedly used profanity to refer to U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Mayor Jay Knudtson said Monday.

The mayor said he has received several citizen complaints about the program. "This is a joke if this is on TV," Knudtson said at the council study session. He said the city shouldn't allow obscenities on public access channel 5.

But the commentator, Tony Heckemeyer of Sikeston, said in a telephone interview Monday evening that he never referred to Emerson as a "rat b______." Said Heckemeyer, "I don't use language like that. You will find no profanity, just straight old raw politics."

City manager Michael Miller said he saw no profanity on the few tapes of the show that he reviewed. "Very frankly, I found it more boring than anything else," Miller said.

Heckemeyer, a former circuit judge, lost to Emerson, a Cape Girardeau Republican, in a hotly contested congressional race in 1998.

Heckemeyer said he has been hosting a weekly radio commentary show on KSIM, a Sikeston radio station for the past four years.

Tom Neumeyer, a former Cape Girardeau city councilman, asked Heckemeyer to tape the show so it could run on local access channel 5. The show aired for several months, beginning last year.

The taped show, minus commercials, about a half hour on the access channel.

But city officials pulled the show about seven to eight weeks ago, Neumeyer said. City staff members plan to carry the show again, possibly as early as next week.

But Knudtson said city attorney Eric Cunningham is reviewing the situation.

Neumeyer said city staff had no right to take the show off the air. "It meets every guideline there is for airing on cable access," he said, adding that it is a First Amendment free speech issue.

Andrew Chronister, a member of the city's cable television advisory committee, said he sees no reason to yank the show. "The show may offend people because of their political beliefs, but it does not seem at this point in time to go against the criteria for getting on the cable access channel."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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