Public-access television

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Public access television is one type of PEG access, short for Public, Educational, and Governmental, the three traditional structures of access within a municipality.

Contents 1 History 2 Principles of PEG access 3 Public access television 4 Educational access television 5 Government access television 6 Local origination 7 PEG technologies 8 PEG challenges 9 Future of PEG access 10 Public access in everyday life 11 Public-access stations 12 Notes 13 External links

[edit] History

In the United States, public access is an alternative system of television which originated as a response to disenchantment with the commercial broadcasting system, and in order to fulfil some of the social potential of cable television.^[1]

Public Access was created to provide a free-speech forum, open to all on a first-come, first-served basis without discrimination or favoritism based on content. It should be noted that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is not public access television and has no official connection with PEG. PBS is funded publicly and by private grants and contributions, as well as an element of commercial sponsorship. PEG is funded by cable television companies through subscription fees, and also by private grants and contributions. PBS does not regularly provide free use of facilities to produce programming.

In 1968 the Dale City (Virginia) Jaycees' Junior Chamber of Commerce operated the first community-operated closed-circuit television channel in the United States, when Cable TV Incorporated gave a channel to the public access center Dale City Television (DCTV) but the center failed two years later.^[2]

The FCC issued its Third Report and Order^{[citation needed]} in 1972, which required all cable systems in the top 100 U.S. television markets to provide three access-channels, one each for educational, local government and public use, where if there was insufficient demand for three in a particular market, the cable companies could offer fewer channels, but at least one, and any group or individual wishing to use the channels was guaranteed at least five minutes free.^{[citation needed]} The requirement was certified by the US Supreme Court in June, 1972 in United States v. Midwest Video Corp. ^[3]

The rule was amended in 1976 to include cable systems in communities with 3500 or more subscribers, and the cable companies had no discretion.^{[citation needed]} In 1979 the US Supreme Court, in FCC v. Midwest Video Corp ^[4], set aside the FCC's rules as beyond the agency's jurisdiction.

The 1984 Cable Franchise Policy and Communications Act written by Senator Barry Goldwater, allowed local governments to require PEG channels, barred cable operators from exercising editorial control over content of programs carried on PEG channels, and absolved them from liability for that content.

Congress passed the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, which gave the FCC authority to create rules requiring cable operators to prohibit certain shows. The Alliance for Community Media and others brought suit, and in 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court held the law unconstitutional, in part because it required cable operators to act on behalf of the federal government to control expression based on content.

Currently the Alliance for Community Media and others are focusing on operational challenges after new deregulation rules across Texas are directly threatening PEG access.

[edit] Principles of PEG access

PEG access may be mandated by local or state government to provide any combination of television production equipment, training and airtime on a local cable system to enable members of the public, accredited educational institutions, and government to produce their own shows and televise them to a mass audience.

Municipalities must take initiative and petition the cable operator to provide the funding for PEG access as laid out by law, but municipalities may also choose to take no action and will instead keep the franchise fees in a general fund. A municipality may also choose to allow Governmental access but not Public access or may replace it with Governmental access or may take away Public access altogether, depending on the disposition of the local government or its voters.

Municipalities have a broad spectrum of franchise agreements with cable television service providers and may not create a monopoly through these agreements. Depending on the size of the community and their contractual agreement the PEG and local orgination channels may take many forms. Large communities often have a separate organization for each PEG type, smaller communities may have a single organization that manages all three. Because each organization will develop its own policies and procedures, constituent services differ greatly between communities.

[edit] Public access television

Public access television channels may be run by public grassroots groups or individuals, private non-profits or government organizations and policies and regulations are subject to their own ordinances and community standards.

Services available at public access organizations are often low cost or free of charge, with an inclusive, content neutral, first-come, first-served, free speech ideology. Monies from cable franchise fees are paid to government for use of right-of-ways, hopefully allowing other general fund monies to be used to operate the facilities, employ staff and trainers, develop curriculum, operate training workshops, schedule and maintain equipment, manage the cablecast of shows and publish promotion materials to build station viewership. Funding and operating budgets vary significantly with the municipality's finances. Ultimately it is left to the cable franchise to determine how they operate public access. The FCC does not mandate a cable franchise to provide any of the above services mentioned.

Users of public access stations may participate at most levels of this structure to make content of their choosing. Anyone may have their programming aired on a public access channel. Users are not restricted to cable subscribers or even residents only. Many public access channels try to favor locally produced programs while others also carry regionally or nationally distributed programming despite the first-come, first-served requirement. Public access centers are not necessarily bound to traditional one-and-one-half hour block schedules, programs may be about 30 or 60 minutes but may also be of any length, depending on local organizational policies. In the event that a public access channel becomes filled up with programming a franchise may state that more channels may be added to suffice the demand.

Public access centers often allow members to sponsor programming that was produced outside of the municipality. A show that originates outside the municipality is often referred to as "bicycled" programming. Public access centers often try to solicit programming that a few individuals working there feel is valuable to the community and this violates both the spirit and the law of public access.

[edit] Educational access television

Educational access is the institution set aside for fulfilling the needs of the educational departments and organizations within the municipality. Educational access channels may be associated with a specific school, school district or even private organization that is contracted to operate the access station for the city.

Educational access centers usually operate a cable channel on the local cable system and often include elements and principle that echo Public access in terms of training and resources. Many school media and video training programs are based in the educational access centers. Programming distributed by these centers ranges from student or parent produced media to coverage of local school functions and bodies (such as the School Council or Committee). There are a number of notable Educational access organizations that produce programming for a national audience and experiences a very broad distribution.

[edit] Government access television

Government access television is a resource of the city to address local municipal programming needs. Often the city or town may use the G channel to cablecast city council meetings, election programming, local emergency announcements and other events and programs as valued by the local government.

[edit] Local origination

Local-origination is typically local programming produced by a cable operator. In contrast with public access, which is government-mandated access for programming, local-origination programming is usually programming of local interest produced by cable company employees or contractors for the cable company. A local high school graduation ceremony produced by cable studio employees and aired on a local cable channel is one such example, however, in some cities and towns in America Local-origination, ostensibly, acts to satisfy the government mandate if those communities don't have their own facility.

[edit] PEG technologies

Equipment available for public access broadcasting is evolving quickly. At its birth, the state-of-the-art PEG facilities were composed of racks full of analog tape decks and an automated video switching system. Recently, the low cost of digital production and distribution equipment, such as cameras, non-linear editing systems, digital video playback servers and new internet technologies have made digital content production the norm. The dropping cost of digital production and distribution gear has changed the way many PEG facilities operate.

[edit] PEG challenges

PEG television has come under fire from many angles including local governments and officials, producers, viewers, and even corporate litigations from potential copyright infringements. Special interest groups have also frequently applied pressure on PEG operations.

PEG often struggles to balance freedom of speech with free, open access to the cable systems and as a result cable operators or PEG organizations have occasionally rightfully or wrongfully banned producers , discriminated between programming in their allocation of airtime, or removed based on the impact of a specific program, or have removed or banned programming based on PEG organization's values (or lack thereof).

Funding for PEG is managed through the government issuing the franchise agreement. This same government receives franchise fees that ultimately come from the local cable subscribers. PEG television probably experiences interruptions in contract negotiations by the local governments, late payment of contracted operating monies, or obstructive or restricting behavior from the government issuing the franchise agreement.

PEG television has been challenged by the cable companies. Large cable companies in the United States have lobbied for significant legislation through the US House of Representatives to reduce or end PEG television.

Municipalities, local governments and even residents often confuse the difference between commercial broadcast television and PEG television. PEG television has been reported to the FCC about infractions that may apply to broadcast television, even though cable television content (including public access television) is not subject to the same rules. For example, Janet Jackson's appearance at the 2004 Super Bowl appeared on broadcast systems which spurred the FCC to threaten networks and their affiliates with additional fines for displaying indecency. The same goes for the Monday Night Football sketch which featured Nicollette Sheridan and Terrell Owens.^[5] Because cable television is a closed system with elective access there are fewer rules and restrictions about the same content.

PEG television stations are often poorly managed and give rise to numerous complaints. Complaints range from the poor scheduling and playback, programming playing late or not at all, or signal strength being so weak that the program becomes unviewable. Complaints may reflect viewers' general disagreement with other people's viewpoints that result from running programming created by other member's of the public on a first-come, first-serve basis. Complaints may also reflect discrimination in the resources a PEG organization applies to one type of programming vs. another.

[edit] Future of PEG access

Public access organizations remain in service in their municipalities. In a changing technology industry, many PEG organizations began investing in training and technology to distribute media in new ways using the internet. In 2005, the consumer media market became flooded with blogs, vlogs, RSS syndication and aggregation, iPod and cell phone media, and countless new methods for distributing information and ideas. As cable television adopts new technologies, many access centers adapted these new technologies in order to continue serving their missions and goals within their own constituency.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Public access in everyday life

Nevertheless, a PBS program called Mental Engineering started at SPNN, the public access channel of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was picked up by KTCA, and had an episode broadcast across the U.S. after Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, which analyzed the advertisements from the game.

A famous fictional public access program, Wayne's World, draws some comedy from the often stereotyped low production values of material distributed on public access channels.

Many PEG organizations rebroadcast programming from satellite distributions such as Democracy Now!, Free Speech TV and Deep Dish TV Network.

A new site launched in October 2008 to subvert public access television's first-come, first-serve charter [1] www.PEGHUB.com/ PEG Hub lists video series and programs by genre, broadcast dates for satellite downlinks, distributors of public service announcements, and media distributors nationally.

Elvira and The Food Network's Bobby Flay all started out on public access. Comedian Tom Green got his start on a community channel, a similar but not wholly identical type of service in Canada.

In the book How to Talk Back to Your Television Set, Nicholas Johnson, FCC commissioner, 1966–1973, in part discusses prototype public access.

The Philo Awards named after Philo Farnsworth is an annual public access television competition where the winners receive notice for their efforts in various categories in producing community media.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Found Footage Festival collects examples of generally older public access shows that are unusually badly produced, as a form of comical found art.

[edit] Public-access stations

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• The Alliance for Community Media is the national organization representing PEG access centers in the United States.
• FCC Fact Sheet - Public, Educational, and Governmental Access Channels ("PEG channels")