Huge In Salt Lake City

The Kelly Choi juggernaut rolls along largely unimpeded:

“I play this character, this kind of spy, that goes to places that the typical New Yorker could never find themselves in,” Ms. Choi said. “The things that I get to tell people are things that even somebody who was born here and who’s lived in New York all their lives wouldn’t necessarily know.”

. . .

In municipal television terms, NYC TV has blown past all previous ratings benchmarks. “Secrets [of New York]” has garnered strong market share numbers in unexpected places such as Salt Lake City and Albuquerque (although in some places it shows in the middle of the night or other off-peak hours).

[Arick] Wierson, a former investment banker who was named general manager of the station after working for Mayor Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign, said the station is getting people from places such as Utah to think more about New York. That New York boosterism is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg wants. In August, the mayor said the PBS deal would get millions of potential New York tourists thinking about the city.

“Secrets” costs about $35,000 an episode to produce — a cost the city says is four to 10 times less than other national programs. While the show does not currently draw down revenue, station officials are in discussions with several potential underwriters to sponsor it.

Mr. Wierson said the show is also ripe for product placement. That means Ms. Choi could soon be darting between locations in a Pontiac Grand Am or using a T-Mobile handheld computer instead of the nondescript device she uses now on the show to find out where her next “secret” destination is.

Ms. Choi, a former model and a Columbia University journalism school graduate who has worked in television and print reporting, is an off-camera ham who likes to joke and flirt with the crew and with onlookers. Between takes at the monument, Ms. Choi, a self-described foodie who also hosts the station’s “Eat Out NY,” fanned her coat to disclose black gym shorts and a Tshirt underneath. She jokes that the coat is like a “sausage casing” when it gets hot.

Her spiky high-heeled boots, cinched black coat, and regularly rotating jewelry are so carefully watched by fans that the producers had a code from “The Matrix” scanned onto one of her chokers.

Some critics have questioned why the city is in the business of producing fast-paced, nontraditional programming that has little to do with government. City Council Member Gale Brewer said she had no problem with “Secrets,” but that if the city is going to invest in the station’s other flashier shows, it should improve its other station’s coverage of public hearings. Station officials say there will always be critics, but that NYC TV is drawing in viewers for the first time in municipal history.

The director of production at the station, William Fitzgerald, said that when an NYC TV show features a New York business, the owner almost always calls to report a spike in sales.