save access

Bunnie Riedel and John Rocco of American Community Television writes:

PEG channels are important to our communities.

The two were interviewed on an internet talk show, "My Technology Lawyer". You can listen to the interview here HERE .

Public Access stations, such as WCCA TV 13, across the country, play an important role in providing citizens with a voice in a public forum.

We continue to count on your support. Thank you

Many feel the Comcast/NBC merger is a bad idea for public access to the free flow of information. For example the following has been extracted from The CAP Times on line. More on the Comcast merger here
Some key quotes taken from the article:

"We are writing to express our opposition to Comcast Corp.'s acquisition of NBC Universal. If this deal is approved, it would further consolidate a U.S. media industry that is already controlled by a handful of corporate conglomerates. Localism, diversity, and competition in today's media, all of which are severely weak, would be nearly lost. At a time when it is critically important for the public to be able to access independent sources of information, we believe this acquisition should not go forward and urge you to reject it."

The following is from our friends at the Media Access Project. I blogged about this the other day:

Media Access Project (MAP) has been a strong voice of opposition to Comcast's
attempt to acquire NBC Universal, and has been busy providing guidance to
organizations and policymakers on the complex legal ramifications of the
proposed deal.

This merger would be the most prominent example of vertical integration in the
broadband era - it would lead to the union of the nation's largest cable TV
operator and Internet service provider with a major content provider.

The acquisition would be a dangerous deal for all Americans. At the local level,
it would cause an unacceptable level of consolidation in media ownership and
advertising in 11 of the biggest media markets around the country - including
San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and other cities.

The deal would also:

In today Worcester Telegram announces a huge loss for the people of EAST BROOKFIELD .

The Board of Selectmen last night signed a five-year cable TV contract renewal with Charter Communications, but the town will remain one of a few in the area not to provide local cable TV programming.

“We’re camera shy,” quipped Selectman Lawrence S. Gordon and Selectman Joseph R. Fish would have too much trouble trying to find someone to run the equipment.

Link to Telegram article

The attachment of this COMMON CAUSE article, written a few short years ago will tell you the story of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its aftermath.

The political environment may have slightly changed since 2005, but if Republicans
were to gain a stronger footing, community media, public access, and the ownership of the rights of way that allow cable and phone companies to profit from along with our right to participate and control such ways will be lost. Adding republican seats may continue the devastating trends revealed in this report. Thanks to William Houston for passing it on to us and to Common Cause the source of the report.
regulatory control does not always translate to bigger government.In the case of telecommunications and maintaining local cable franchises and support for public access television/community media, it can mean empowerment to the people.

A real lokk at best practices will easily suggest non-proift facilitated public access television offers the best bank for the buck. It's good to see other agreeing with this from outside our local community. The following is copied of the ACM's list serve. Enjoy! Thanks to Rob McCausland

Putting the Public Back in Public Media
Access channels offer an alternative
By Julie Hollar
FAIR's Extra! November 2009

For most Americans, “public broadcasting” means the local PBS affiliate. But there’s another kind of non-commercial media that’s established by the government: public access channels.

Cable deregulation has failed. Some states have moved local franchise authority over to state control and are now feeling the negative results. This has lead to a substantial decrease of public access centers , while, at the same time, there has been no strong evidence to prove cable deregulation has decreased prices or improved cable services or create jobs. In fact, in numerous states, many public access centers were forced to close due to a lack of appropriate franchise funding, culminating in a loss of jobs as well as citizen access to channels and community media resources.The cable companies will have you believe consumers will have more access to providers, but that is not the same thing as the type of empowerment that citizens benefit from a PUBLIC ACCESS television community media center. Saving public access is saving your voice, your capacity for empowerment, through a public electronic forum.

We discovered the channel was not transmitting over the cable system. We just saw snow on the return signal. In other words, for a quite a while, in the evening, on Saturday, cable subscribers, trying to watch channel 13, in Worcester, just saw black for their money.

We are not sure when the outage first occured but we discovered it around 8:30 PM ,or so, on Saturday, the 31st of October. We inspected the site and found that WCCA's equipment seemed to be working well, we were sending out our signal, however it was not coming back from Charter's return line which distribute it on cable channel 13 in Worcester, to the viewers.

We placed calls to Charter, their dispatch number apparantly was changed without notice to us, we did leave a message with one of the Charter tech supervisors, but being a Saturday night, it seems the People's Channel's only option was to leave a message.

It really stinks when some of those who we elect turn against us. It is important that the "net" is open to all whether you have money or not. Everything in life is not always subject to a "free market", or what some mega rich corporations want to exploit.

I read this in the Telegram the other day Questions are raised about cable TV contract" and I couldn't resist at least writting a little comment to pass on to our public access friends in Dudley, MA

I often wonder it cable executives believe that if they put on a three hundred dollar ($300) suit and others will believe what ever they say. ( apparantly sometimes they do, I guess but that's another blog story for another time )

According to the T&G article, during a public cable licensing renewal hearing , Dudley selectmen raised questions concerning the capital grant provisions to fund the PEG channels. It appears Selectman Steven P Sullivan was insightful to point out something that usually gets overlooked during the public hearing process. Mr Sullivan was keenly focused on the capital grant portion of the which, like the rest of the franchise provisions is a cost of doing business, cable companies pay in exchange for rights of way.