Bill Copeland Combines Passion For Politics And TV With His Show

Bill Copeland’s day is a blur of initials - KREM, KLXY, KHQ, CNN, CSPAN. Four hours a day, they whirl around his living room like alphabet soup.

His love affair with the tube is such that he only buys a newspaper on Sunday, and then just to get the TV guide.

Three years ago, Copeland’s TV passion got a bit more serious and public when he started making his own.

Since then, Copeland’s handlebar moustache and quirky humor have become part of the letter scramble through Cox Cable’s community access broadcasts.

“I am part of the TV generation,” said Copeland. “I’ve lived with TV my entire life, so it was a natural to start making it.”

Copeland’s “What Really Happened” is a weekly political soapbox for his pull-no-punches conservative idealogy. His show often gets city and county politicos for round-table discussions found nowhere else.

Part David Letterman, part Larry King, part Saturday Night Live, Copeland opens his show each week with seven figures he introduces as the Seven Dwarfs, Spokane’s City Council.

“From the right, as they appear at the City Council meetings … Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful and Chris Anderson,” he says.

“One City Council meeting can result in ideas for 10 shows. I see that many ridiculous things happening around Spokane,” Copeland says.”

When asked to describe himself, he does so in political terms - as a conservative atheist. Any perceived contradiction shows “labels just don’t work.”

Copeland’s shots are not limited to the City Council, although it is his favorite subject. He reserves a dummy seat each week - occupied with an orange traffic cone - for Spokane County assessor Charlene Cooney, the only guest to walk out of a show.

He also makes short work of what he sees as a ridiculously expensive Spokane Transit Authority plaza, shoddy copy editing in The Spokesman-Review and secretive methods of downtown developers.

Copeland says his jabs come out of love for the city. Born and raised here, Copeland left after high school for a stint in the Air Force.

When he returned, he earned a business degree from Eastern Washington University and took over management of his father’s real estate holdings.

“I look at myself as a common sense person who approaches problems in town with common sense solutions,” says Copeland.

Doesn’t that sound like Ross Perot? “I have better common sense than him.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ON THE TUBE Bill Copeland’s “What Really Happened” can be seen Sept. 1 at 9:30 p.m. on cable channel 25. The show will feature a Q&A of county commission candidates. The show will be rebroadcast Sept. 8 at 9:30 p.m.