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  Longing for the good ol' days of public access By Barbara Venezia For television addicts like me, satellite and cable's hundreds of programming choices is like hitting the mother lode. But one program option that's quietly disappearing on cable is public access and not many are noticing. Public access cable has its roots in the late 1960s when cable companies started approaching cities for franchise agreements. As incentives, companies started offering cities designated channels for community based "local origination programming." In 1972 the FCC issued its Third Report and Order, which required all cable systems in the top 100 television markets to provide three access channels: educational, local government and public use. If there wasn't a demand for all three, they could offer fewer channels, but at least one. The cool thing about public access: Residents within the broadcast area not only got air time, studio, equipment, editing and training, but it was all at no charge! Anyone could have their own local TV show. Back in the late 1980s to early 1990s, cable access in Newport/CM was booming. Some may remember shows like "2 Moms and a Camera," that was pre-reality TV. On my first cable show, "Networking USA," I interviewed OC entrepreneurs and later John Crean and I created "At Home on the Range." In LA producers like Dr. Susan Block gave advice from her bedroom. In NY Screw Magazine's publisher Al Goldstein did interviews in the buff, San Francisco had "The Hippie Gourmet" …across the country local access produced a wide variety of shows from everyday people. But a California law passed in 2006 allowed cable companies to drop access channels, the free studios, equipment and training as of January 2009. This paved the way for phone companies to enter the world of cable. Beginning this year, Time Warner announced it would close 12 access studios around LA. "Twenty other states, including Texas, Nevada, Florida, Illinois and Michigan, have enacted legislation similar to California's Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act, or DIVCA," according to Alliance for Community Media. I called Time Warner in Anaheim and spoke with Linda Maxwell in charge of public access, and she told me that they still had two access studios open in OC but when franchise agreements expire, who knows what will happen then. The future doesn't look promising. I recently ran into Marilee Jackson who runs the government access channel for Newport Beach. Marilee and I were in the trenches way back in my access days. She told me she couldn't really talk about the public access issue and referred me to the city's public information person. (Those folks are pretty useless when you're trying to get "real" information.) So with the quiet demise of public access cable, cities like Newport and CM will retain one channel, the government access channel that they control. I decided to see if they were interested in any other programming from the public. With more than 228 episodes of "At Home on the Range" collecting dust on the shelf, I e-mailed Marilee offering the programs gratis for public access. I never heard back. … So where does this leave the independent local producer with a hot idea? Does the word YouTube mean anything to you? |
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