WCCA open meeting

Citizens want WCCA TV, their voices are shouting everywhere:
Back before 1986 the city of Worcester put together a group of citizens for the purpose of starting a private and autonomous non-profit corporation which will be the facilitator of Public Access for all. The group formed a Board of Directors, set up the company as a 501c3 charitable organization, created policies, hired a Station Manager, and weened itself away from city control. The company slowly and steadily built itself into one of the finest , cutting edge, public access centers anywhere. It has grown leaps and bounds from where it began. The staff. volunteers deserve to be commended. Today it stands as a beacon of inclusiveness, participatory and democratic media, reflecting the diverse heart and fiber of the city. A place where free voices, share in an exchange of free flowing information, knowledge, community spirit, with access to empowering community media tools, education and resources. If that is not a priority for leaders then there is something seriously wrong.

I thought I share some selected Reader Comments Extracted from the T&G web site:

I was very pleased to read the City Manager has extended the existing contract with WCCA-TV until September 15, 2008, and that WCCA has now held its own, open community forum to gather comments about Worcester's current and future cable-related technology community needs and interests. Apparently, that community meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of community leaders and residents.

Public access TV is not a luxury today, what with Worcester's only newspaper owned by the NY Times, and its TV news outlets served by lone reporters from Boston stations, standing atop insurance buildings as if all of Worcester's news can be seen from the sky!

The 'mainstream' media monopolies are not getting any smaller, nor their influence lessened.

Worcester needs and deserves a community access channel with state-of-the-art, modern communications equipment and facilities.

Now it is up to the city's leaders to see that WCCA-TV receives an adequate share of Charter's local access funding to assure WCCA's bright future -- funding which is not a tax on the general population, but a pennies a day fee charged to cable TV subscribers.

-pdberg

First: the city should have placed WCCA at the center of table 'prior' to negotiating with Charter Communications. The city should have done all they could, up front and in the open, to work for franchise assurances to ensure WCCA's mission and its increased growth into the future, as a center piece of Worcester's technological infrastructure.

Second: Worcester's city law department failed to apply itself and negotiate with Charter to meet the expressed community needs that were expressed, demonstrated, recommended in numerous reports and documented during the time it was conducting its cable renewal ascertainment process. YES, ws, the need exist. Quantitatively and qualitatively. Common sense will tell you, just Look at the station's programming, if it wasn't needed it would be black, like the government and school channel was from 1986 through to 1997. It's not it teaming with diversity and community programming. During that time, by the way WCCA was up and running and well utilized.

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone if the city took on a more supportive and opened role rather than an apparently closed and adversarial one, as other cities do?

-rr

Charter has no competition in Worcester 'cuz no one else wants to come to Worcester. In a February Worcester Magazine interview a Verizon VP said Verizon wasn't interested in coming to Worcester 'cuz there was no money to be made here. Comcast and Time Warner have never expressed any interest in Worcester.

City Manager Michael V. O'Brien never commissioned anyone to research why Charter was the only company that is interested in Worcester so he had no reason not to accept whatever they offered. Could he have done any work on this or was delegating good enough?

City Manager Michael V. O'Brien did ask the Research Bureau where to cut costs. But he conveniently neglected to tell them about the raises he wants to give to himself and his friends. If the people of Worcester let him do what the Research Bureau tells him to do then the Senior Center and WCCA, two things Worcester NEEDS to keep, will no longer exist and he will richer for his delegating.

-O'Brien's Worcester

I wonder if it's the same 'necessary due diligence' that led them to fund their obscene pay raises? Quit the double talk and fund Channel 13 and the Senior Center not your own pockets. Your pockets don't need funding and it doesn't take a Research Bureau to figure that out.

-Sal