Call it persistence, tenacity or downright bulldog stubbornness, but in the end Bill Van Arsdale got what he wanted.

The year was 1991, and the livewire jack-of-many-trades had been badgering Palmer Cablevision, later Colony Cablevision (now MediaOne), to allow him to establish a Visitors Television channel to showcase the many attractions of Naples, Marco Island, Sanibel and Captiva.

His idea was to put a team together to shoot upmarket and entertaining "infomercials" which he would in turn run as a service to visitors to the area, but equally importantly as a marketing tool for clients such as shops, restaurants and operators involved in the excursion business.

"They [the cable people] listened to me," says Van Arsdale from his Exchange Avenue headquarters in Naples during a recent interview. "They said it was a great idea, but told me they just didn't do that kind of thing."

Undeterred, Van Arsdale figured his next strategy would be to prove that a visitors TV channel would indeed be viable, so he set about lobbying "everybody who was anybody" in Naples to find out whether they would be interested in supporting such a venture. He went to businesses, contacting individual shopkeepers, restaurateurs, boating operations, civic and communinity leaders - even the Mayor at the time.

The response was overwhelming.

"Every week I would take about 80 letters supporting my idea over to the [cable] company," says Van Arsdale, "and eventually they began to rethink their opposition."

The result was a 24-hour-a-day, informative, entertaining and commercially driven Channel 39 Visitors Television. VTV is now enjoying its seventh year of existence, and Van Arsdale and his team have in that time consolidated their niche into a professional operation that handles clients' requirements from start to finish.

VTV - A Tight Team

From briefing to scripting to shooting to editing all the way through to inserting the tapes at the MediaOne building on State Road 951 in East Naples, Visitors Television personnel apply their combined skills to hone the finished product according to clients' satisfaction.

It's a tight team, to be sure, with around nine people handling all these different aspects, and Van Arsdale takes particular pride in the fact that staff turnover since the company's inception has been virtually minimal.

As it happens, Bill Van Arsdale, who describes his involvement in various businesses throughout his career as coming in "five-year cycles," is right now embarking on just such a transition, but it is related.

Travel documentaries having been just one of his previous interests, he's branching into more mainstream TV, and he recently clinched a deal with PBS for a 13-part series about trips on cruise ships all over world to different places featuring leading visionaries on the concept of holistic living.

The VTV reins effectively now pass to Van Arsdale number two, Bill's brother John, who has been with the outfit almost from the outset, having come in with a background in aviation management.

"He's always been the numbers man," says Bill, "while I've been the one looking at ideas, so you could say it's been a perfect match."

Not that John doesn't have a handle on the creative aspects of the business. Although he doesn't go hands-on at many shoots, he is quite capable of editing and scripting, and often does so.

The VTV Philosophy

Although they have virtual free range with their subject matter and treatment thereof, the Van Arsdales have instituted their own kind of censorship. "We don't do cars and we don't do banks, for example," says Bill.

What VTV does do is attempt to show clients' products and services in a realistic, attractive light, without resorting to the "hard sell" that is often characteristic of standard ads on commercial stations. "We work together with clients to do this," Bill explains. "We try to express the character of their businesses through their characters themselves."

For this reason, many of the clients themselves become the "leads" in the spots, often resulting in a more intimate type of message being put across, which is exactly what most of them want.

"Sure we have competition," concedes John, referring to commercial stations wooing customers wherever they can, but he adds that VTV's novel slant and variable slot lengths serve their purpose. He gives an example of a 10,000 Islands boating excursion where the cameras can put people right in the action.

VTV Service

VTV targets itself in three zones - Captiva and Sanibel; the area from Corkscrew Road up to Kelly Road/McGregor Road and down to Fort Myers Beach; and from Corkscrew Road down to Marco Island.

Each half hour of VTV is divided into six five-minute segments - Now & Then, Shopping, Homes, Restaurants, Activities and Arts & Entertainment. The 30 minute "tours" enables viewers to either get a brief complete overview of the area(s), or they can watch longer to get more information in the second half hour's tour.

Advertisers appear only during their specialty segment. For example, restaurant ads appear exclusively during the restaurant segment. One segment, Now & Then, is open to advertisers who do not fit into any other category.

Programming is shuffled every half hour to create a different mix of programming and advertising, and each advertiser appears at least once every six hours in a 24-hour period. Latest costs for 30 second slots are $390 from May to October, $590 annual and $790 November through April.

Corresponding 60 second slots are $590, $890 and $1190; 90-second slots $890, $1190 and $1,490, and two minute 45 second slots $1,190, $1,490 and $1,990.