On any given Friday, a group of politicos ? a member of Congress, maybe, or a state legislator, along with a passel of spin doctors ? files into a non-descript brick building in a desolate industrial stretch of Santa Monica, Calif.

Inside, they mix and mingle, take turns in the make-up chair, then enter a studio and await the tinny tinkle of what passes for a theme song in the low-budget world of local origination programming.

The occasion is a taping of Week in Review, a political talk show carried on local cable systems in California for nearly 14 years. It's evolved into an important venue for national and state politicos, despite not-ready-for-prime time production values, non-existent ratings, and such corny touches as the moderator signing off with, ?God bless you, and bye-bye.?

It's not the typical cable gab fest, but then the moderator, Bill Rosendahl, is not the typical talk host. In addition to his on-camera duties, he is a regional vice president for Adelphia Communications, which has more than 1 million subscribers in Southern California.

That the 56-year-old Rosendahl ? an openly gay man who grew up in New Jersey and once worked for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy ? maintains such a high profile is somewhat surprising given that his employer is Adelphia, a conservative, family-backed enterprise that shuns the limelight. When the Coudersport, Pa.-based cable operator took over the Los Angeles area cable franchise from Century Communications in 1999 (with several other small franchises), it became the 6th largest MSO nationally, with 5.7 million subscribers. Since then, it's irked some in free-wheeling Southern California by imposing a policy against carrying adult programming.

Rosendahl insists there's a desperate need for his show, which along with its spinoffs are among the few media outlets where politics are seriously discussed in Southern California.

When he started the show back in 1987, ?I was appalled by the lack of public affairs programming on local television,? he says now.

While cable operators are required by franchise agreements to produce public affairs programming, they are mostly content to beam city council meetings or high-school sports. Other system executives host the occasional public-service show, but Rosendahl is perhaps the only one in the nation to launch and host such an ambitious slate of public-affairs programming, which has given him singular influence in the nation's second-largest city. He's also expanded the notion of what a cable systems executive ? typically a low-profile manager who most viewers never see ? can do and be.

Politicians, realizing that Rosendahl avoids the attack journalism common on cable news networks, have yielded him uncommon access. Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dan Quayle have made appearances on his shows, as have California Governor Gray Davis, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, to name a few.

Quayle, in fact, has appeared on Rosendahl's shows three times. Former Quayle press secretary David Beckwith, now vp of communications at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn., says he chose Rosendahl's forum because, ?we were looking for places to get a fair shake.?

?If you want to talk issues or public affairs in California, this is where you go,? says Beckwith. ?You don't have to worry that you're going to get sand bagged.?

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Adelphia's territory on the Westside of Los Angeles is home to many influential, wealthy citizens. One local media observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Rosendahl has become so influential locally that area politicians are reluctant to take him on.

?Nobody has used the media and their own air time like Bill,? says Jonathan Kramer, a Los Angeles-based consultant who inspects cable systems for local governments. ?It's exceptionally unusual in the cable industry. You don't see cable officials with vice president in their titles on TV four times a day.?

Make no mistake ? Rosendahl relishes his close-up. Week in Review ? which often repeats several times a week, and is so familiar that Los Angeles City Hall denizens refer to it as ?The Bill Show? ? is piped into 5.5 million cable homes, thanks to carriage on the statewide California Channel and various other systems besides Adelphia's 1.2 million total households in Southern California systems. It's often shown in prime time, although no one knows exactly how many people tune in since Nielsen does not measure ratings for the public channels.

Indeed, Adelphia subscribers have to work hard to avoid Rosendahl; whenever they flip the dial, it seems, there he is. He also hosts or produces several other programs, including Local Talk, a discussion of Los Angeles, Beyond the Beltway, about national issues, The God Squad, a talk-fest where members of the clergy mix it up, and various other shows and specials.

Some might wonder how Rosendahl ? who does oversee more than 3,000 employees currently engaged in a major expansion of Adelphia's telecommunications services ? has time to do anything else. But he says it's all about scheduling: In non-election times, he crams his taping chores into one intense day each week, usually Friday marathons of two to four shows. He rises at dawn each day to digest multiple newspapers, but with the exception of Fridays, he's at work on cable business by 8:30 a.m.

He also keeps politics and work separate, he says. ?I don't do homework [for the shows] in the office,? says Rosendahl, who has 14 general managers reporting to him.

How senior management at Adelphia responds to all this is an open question; despite numerous requests, an executive from the corporate headquarters was not available for this article. But Rosendahl insists that his bosses have been supportive, as part of a companywide commitment to community service. To be sure, the programs generate heaps of good publicity. In April, the California legislature declared them ?informative, fair and insightful,? in an Assembly resolution.

Not everyone loves the shows, however. Rosendahl admits he's gotten hate mail, even occasional death threats, including when he put on a series about the war in Bosnia.

?Occasionally, I get a crazy. When you're on TV, it comes with the territory,? he says.

Rosendahl has occupied the territory since 1987, when the then-head head of Century Communications, Leonard Tow, suggested that he start a public affairs talk show.

?I obviously saw the political imperative and the opportunity it would give us [Century] in our relationships with electeds,? Rosendahl, then a government affairs exec, acknowledges. But he insists his chief motivation was high-minded, and sprang from his youthful obsession with politics. ?My commitment is to the democracy,? he says grandly.

As a youth opposed to the Viet Nam war, he was a campaign staffer for Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, and then hitchhiked the globe in search of enlightenment.

?I wanted to know why God made me,? says Rosendahl, the son of a corporate executive from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, who was then struggling with his homosexuality (today he is openly gay). In the late 1970s, then cable operator, Group W, recruited Rosendahl for a government affairs post in Los Angeles, where it was in a franchise battle.