Paul Morton received a bathrobe from a local Rotary Club recently, but he won't be wearing it after showering.

It's actually part of the getup that Morton, president and chief operating officer of Bend Cable in Bend, Ore., has adopted for his monthly appearances as co-host of Opposable Thumbs, a movie-review show that airs on his system's network, Central Oregon TV, on channel 11.

?We're taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to Siskel & Ebert,? says Morton, who plays a bathrobe-and-torn-jeans-clad Oscar Madison type opposite a buttoned-up Felix Unger type portrayed by Dave Jones, Bend's VP-ad sales. The Rotary donated the bathrobe after Morton invited local businesses to donate terry-wear in exchange for a plug on the show.

COTV, which is seen by Bend's 27,000 subscribers, also produces and airs an hourlong morning news program, several local magazine shows, a home-redecoration program and a series for wine enthusiasts.

For small and large operators alike, such locally focused, operator-generated programming creates a crucial differentiation for operators as they fend off the challenge of direct broadcast satellite. What's more, local programming can be an extra source of revenue for operators as well as a tool for promoting better relationships with local advertisers.

Thumbs, for its part, helps publicize Bend's digital pay-per-view offerings, which Morton regards as a precursor to getting customers interested in interactive television and video-on-demand as Bend expands the scope of its services. At a maximum cost of $150 per episode, the pay-per-view buys generated during the month following an airing usually more than cover the cost of Thumbs, Morton says, although he stresses that no direct correlation can be made.

?To the extent that it shows the people in our community that we're involved in community affairs and want to have a place in the area to publicize what goes on here, it's definitely a competitive advantage [over DBS],? says Morton.

But Morton does concede that, as far as financial returns are concerned, ?we pretty much underwrite [original programming],? even though the production budgets for his programs are, he says, ?very small.? For instance, to produce a local high school basketball game costs ?in the neighborhood of $1,500,? with costs saved by having high school students and work-study program participants doing the camera work. The games are Bend's most expensive local programming.

But the value for the players and their families, says Morton, is immense: ?It means that Dad can tape the game that he has to miss?and it gets the average guy watching in the bar involved as well.?

Jonathan Gorchow, the general manager of CN8, the mid-Atlantic-based network owned and operated by Comcast Corp., explains the reason for original programming more acutely. ?People don't give their cable operator credit for bringing them HBO, ESPN and CNN, even though we do, so we had to create a platform for programming [that] people would give Comcast credit for,? he says.

In CN8's case, a mixture of talk shows, news, concert and comedy specials, cooking programs and high school sports is helping it gain a fiscal, as well as a competitive advantage. Gorchow says that the 5-year-old network, which reaches nearly 2 million viewers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, saw a 40% spike in ad revenue during 2001.

Ultimate Weddings, a series in which couples have their weddings profiled by the network from beginning to end, has been particularly lucrative for CN8. Weddings was started in large part because an ad sales executive observed that the Philadelphia area was inundated with bridal shops and other wedding-related businesses, all of them potential advertisers. And, though he wouldn't give exact numbers, Gorchow says the response has been ?phenomenal? and that demand for ad space is greater than the supply.

The CN8 GM says he has managed to keep programming costs down by avoiding the use of expensive field producers and doing as much production in CN8's studios as possible.

Cooking shows, for instance, are especially useful because besides a workable set and some pots, pans and knives, the only real expense from week to week is food, which amounts to very little. As a result, the network has three cooking shows on its schedule, which make up an hour-and-a-half block every weekday afternoon; the block does a respectable 0.7 rating in its area.

When the producers of one of CN8's more popular shows, Let's Cook, wanted to do a shoot in Jamaica to feature Caribbean cooking, the network worked with all-inclusive resort Sandals to pay for the crew's travel and hotel expenses ? in the tens of thousands of dollars ? which would have made the project too expensive.

R.B. Lerch, VP-original programming at AT&T 3, the local-programming network for AT&T Broadband's Massachusetts systems, also considers his original shows, whether a local sports roundup or an entertainment magazine, branding opportunities for advertisers. ?Dunkin' Donuts, for instance, which has a very strong association with New England, is the title sponsor of our hometown sports show,? Lerch says. ?It gives them a lot more value-added than some tired, old 30-second spot on Nickelodeon.? (The local-entertainment magazine format show is, with somewhat questionable fealty to the local accent, called Chowdah, but there's no word on whether Progresso will be sponsoring it.)

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