HippoPress -- The Hippo -- Guide to Manchester and Nashua NH

“I wanna do it in an edgy informed way but I don’t want to talk about Anna Nicole Smith....” she said. “And I understand there’s a real push to cover that stuff.”

Arnesen had a show for about three years previously, but it was discontinued when the station was sold.

Now Arnesen is back in a more grassroots fashion. The idea actually originated with the president of New Hampshire Coalition for Community Media, Dottie Grover, who e-mailed Arnesen when she noticed Arnesen wasn’t on the air last fall. Public access doesn’t pay, so they devised a hybrid that probably won’t turn a profit very soon, she said.

With the help of Southern New Hampshire University interns, Londonderry Public Access volunteers and her husband, Arnesen now films an hour-long interview show called Political Chowder covering state and national issues. She buys time from 11 a.m. to noon on MyTV to air it, and tries to sell commercials to cover the cost of that air time. The show runs weekdays with public service announcements in place of ads on 28 public access channels around the state. She also has an intern-run Web site that links people to full episodes of her show posted on YouTube, plus downloadable podcasts. You can take Arnie anywhere.

Grover hopes this show will promote public access as a medium to be taken seriously.

“I now have 28 communities also airing Political Chowder,” Grover said. She expects all the presidential primary candidates to come on the show.

Arnesen said she wanted to do a political show because she felt there was limited opportunity to talk about presidential politics, new leadership in Washington, Concord and Massachusetts within the current radio and TV programs made in New Hampshire.

“I knew time was of the essence with the presidential primary bearing down,” she said.

The Political Chowder Web site had 60,000 hits by last week.

“My job is really to bring the best talkers who can enlighten the state from the entire spectrum,” Arnesen said. The first half of the show is about New Hampshire, and the second half is devoted to wider issues, although those often have a New Hampshire connection, Arnesen said. During the March 4 show, Michael Johnson, a fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace, was a guest; he was chief of prosecutions for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as well as a Merrimack County attorney for almost 20 years. About a week later, a Rawandan who had been watching the episode on Manchester Community TV called Londonderry’s studio, where the show is made. He said he wanted to talk to Johnson about the issues Johnson had addressed on the show. “That’s the reason to do the show,” Arnesen said.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, presidential primary hopeful, was a guest on the first show. Former Massachusetts Gov. Paul Celluci was scheduled for the March 11 show to talk about why he’s endorsing Rudy Guiliani as a presidential candidate. Arnesen picks the show’s guests and topics.

Posting the episodes on YouTube and creating podcasts are way to make sure not only that people in New Hampshire without cable can see the show, but also that people in other states can check it out to see what the candidates are talking about.

“It’s very important that anybody on the planet could access our conversations,” Arnesen said. “We are a very small state we have the honor and the responsibility of picking a president.”

Five SNHU interns work on set design. The backdrop is a compilation of old campaign signs. Props include cans of “Political Chowder: Made with fresh politics since 2007.” The interns also work on marketing.

Arnesen contributes money to the Londonderry studio, a nonprofit. Whether Arnesen will make money from showing Political Chowder on MyTV is unknown. “Ask me in two years, ask me if I haven’t mortgaged my house,” she said. Currently, Arnesen also speaks on Iowa Public Radio every three weeks.