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Indy Producers Savor Hard-Won Victories

dianakuan — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:59:18 -0500

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Published November 13, 2005 by City Limits

Local grassroots media-makers are preserving their access to NYC's airwaves.

By Sada Stip

Sometime cab driver and full-time taxicab industry spokesperson Michael Higgins would still be paying $1,200 a month to independently produce his show, “Taxi Talk,” on leased-access TV if it weren’t for New York City’s public-access TV franchise agreements.

With public access, “I can use high-end equipment to shoot and edit the show and air it for free,” said Higgins. For more than 20 years, franchise agreements between cable TV providers and the localities in which they operate have stipulated that a certain percentage of funds be put aside for public, educational or governmental (PEG) access channels.

In the city it means that Bronxnet, Queens Public Television, Staten Island Community Television, Brooklyn Community Access Television and Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) can air shows made by residents and provide production training for these producers through public access centers. “This way the shades of gray can have their own show as well as the left and right media,” said Higgins, whose show airs on MNN’s channel 34. “It’s a niche you can scratch.”

Today’s media marketplace often leaves creators of this kind of television feeling threatened, so MNN took time out at its midtown studios recently to celebrate some political victories that should keep its niche protected for at least a little while. In September, City Council voted to require cable providers operating in the city to carry and support public access television as a condition of doing business in the five boroughs.

Representatives of Verizon, the newest entrant to the city’s cable scene, testified before Council members, who required the company to accommodate PEG TV channels in accordance with franchise agreements already in place with Time Warner and RCN, the city’s current cable providers.

MNN Executive Director Dan Coughlin called the network’s year-and-a-half-long campaign to fight a variety of attacks “a Herculean effort” and said it appears that federal legislation that also would have changed the way the Internet operates (violating “net neutrality”) is dead in Congress – at least for now. (See Signal Interference: Feds Retool City Public Access TV Structure”, City Limits Weekly #542, July 3, 2006.)

MNN’s effort also led to a more general statement of support by Council for PEG TV back in the spring, in which it stated opposition to the federal legislation – an overhaul of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 called the COPE bill.

Looking forward, over the next 16 months, MNN will be working to switch its systems from analog to digital and to introduce the most up-to-date technology in their public access centers and to the public. “It’s still not accessible to folks, especially in low-income, immigrant communities,” Yu said. “People need affordable hardware” for Internet services, she said. The network also is preparing for the upcoming franchise agreement renewal in 2008, when the current agreements expire.

PEG TV “is an important thing for community development and education … and we can reach people on a street level,” said Michael Max Knobbe, executive director of Bronxnet. He mentioned that many producers get their training at Bronxnet and move into the mainstream TV and film industry. “It’s nice to see that there’s a growing interest in the training. Our classes are full,” he said. [11/13/06]

External Link

http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/weeklyView.cfm?articlenumber=2024

Local Franchises Get Local Support

dianakuan — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:00:20 -0400

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Published May 15, 2006 by MultiChannel News

By Kent Gibbons

New York— The nation’s biggest phone companies have excellent lobbyists in Washington, working hard to see to it that their clients don’t have to go city by city, across the country, negotiating entry into the video business the way cable companies had to do it.

The cable companies, not wanting any such legislation to make life easier for their telephone rivals, have some interesting allies who’ve taken their side. On the steps of City Hall in Manhattan last week, those allies included organizations that:

Aid sweatshop workers in Chinatown;
Assist apartment renters in disputes with landlords;
Provide training to city residents eager to learn the TV-production business.

Representing the last category were officials from the city’s public-access TV corporations, and they brought all three categories together by providing a platform for documentary programs and call-in information shows that potentially reach millions of cable-TV watchers.

Michael McKee, associate director of the New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition, was among about two dozen people who attended the City Hall rally last Wednesday, while cameras from several public-access shows and Time Warner Cable’s New York 1 News network rolled.

For about nine years, McKee said, he has hosted a call-in program for apartment tenants on Thursdays. “We do anywhere from eight to 15 calls a segment, in an hour,” he said, with the main variable being how complicated the caller’s issue is. “Then on Fridays and even Monday and Tuesday, we get 10 to 15 calls to our office, from people who’ve been watching.” His show isn’t Nielsen-rated, but he certainly hears directly from his viewers. And he’s afraid national franchising will mean his show, Tenants & Neighbors, gets canceled.

City council members who backed an anti-national-franchising resolution that passed, 50-0, the same day as the rally had more than public-access TV on their minds — namely, the $81 million per year that Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems Corp. and RCN Corp. pay in fees under the franchise contracts that provide for the 16 public, education and government channels in the city’s five boroughs, plus other perks like an institutional communications network.

“We at the local level are getting caught up in the middle” of lobbying campaigns by cable and phone companies, Council member Gale Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat, said. She also complained that national franchising legislation would mean New Yorkers who had a cable complaint would have to call the Federal Communications Commission instead of the city’s “311” government-information number.

Brewer pointed to growing opposition to HR 5252, the national franchising bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), from groups like the National League of Cities as evidence that localities weren’t about to give up their current rights quietly.

Public-access TV advocates spoke knowledgeably about differences between Barton’s “Communications, Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act” (COPE) and the telecommunications reform bill, S. 2686, from Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska). They’re hoping that differences between those two bills will mean the effort stalls, especially in the Senate. “Our chance now is to try to slow it down in the Senate,” Betty Yu, outreach coordinator for Manhattan Neighborhood Network, said.

“The fact is, if the cable companies weren’t required to give something back to the communities, they probably, in all likelihood, wouldn’t do it,” BRONXNET executive director Michael Max Knobbe said when asked if public access might not survive national franchising.

Network neutrality also came up, translated by this group to mean preferred access granted to higher-paying customers of broadband services, rather than the usual definition of certain content providers paying more to be assured of reaching broadband customers (the kind of thing Mediacom’s Rocco Commisso was talking about last week). Buildout requirements — the possibility of excluding low-income neighborhoods from advanced services — was another concern.

Cable companies have backed some grassroots anti-telco lobbying efforts, but no cable people were in evidence at City Hall. Yu of MNN said some individual cable executives have voiced support for their efforts at public hearings.

But last Wednesday’s event was an example of local groups that needed no separate funding to get local elected officials on their side. It just remains to be seen how much collective influence actions like the City Council’s unanimous vote last week will have on heavily lobbied representatives in Washington.

External Link

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6334330.html?display=Opinion%3Cbr%20/%3E

Access Denied: Will public access TV go dark?

dianakuan — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:00:00 -0500

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Published Feb. 21, 2006 by AM New York

BY MICHAEL CLANCY
amNEWYORK CITY EDITOR
February 21, 2006

From the strangest street theater to the driest of city council committee hearings, the weird and wild world of cable access TV should be familiar to most New Yorkers who've ever had a bout of insomnia or flipped around the TV dial.

But a clash in Washington between big phone companies and giant cable providers might silence the council and other cable access staples such as the Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping and the Black Israelites.

Public Access also has launched the careers of the infamous sex-show host Robin Byrd and Max Kellerman, the cable TV sports-show host who had a show as a teen on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks.

People who present their TV shows on MNN, Brooklyn Cable Access Television and other such systems nationwide could be silenced if and when cable TV is made available on a nationwide franchising basis. Nationwide, some 1.2 million volunteers and 250,000 community groups who produce the grassroots programming could be blacked out.

" There's an African proverb that says 'When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled,'" said Anthony Riddle of the Alliance of Community Media, a group dedicated to preserving public access nationwide.

Phone companies argue that the 30,000 franchise agreements that cable companies have negotiated with municipalities are simply too burdensome. It's those franchise agreements that give municipalities leeway in negotiations because cable companies use public right of way to run their lines. Cities and towns get a chunk of cable revenue and bandwidth as part of those agreements.

But the system has been shaken by rapid technological change. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been rendered nearly obsolete by high-speed Internet connections. In short, the law must be and will be changed -- the question is how, and that outcome will shape the fate of public access TV.

A culture under threat

It would be easy to dismiss public access television as simply a repository of the weird just because its programming is as strange and diverse as the population of New York.

Yet for every aspiring rapper, aging stripper or low-brow wannabe sitcom actor appearing on public channels, there are the community activists, preachers or aspiring artists who produce their own shows.

That's not to say the weird doesn't have its own intrinsic value.

" Just showing people that television doesn't have to be this cookie-cutter thing," said Rick Jungers, of Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, "that it doesn't always have to promote crass commercialism, that in itself has value."

What's more, proponents of public access note, the programming better reflects the city's diversity.

"Public access ets stuck with the image of 'Wayne's World,'" said Denis Moynihan, the outreach director of Democracy Now!, the radio show that's been able to branch out to 48 states through public access channels. "If you watch carefully, you'll see that you are seeing immigrant communities, people of color and those who have been largely shut out of the corporate media systems make up the majority of the programming."

External Link

http://www.mnn.org/about/news/access_denied

Community Development Television

dianakuan — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:15:11 -0500

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Pending federal legislation may endanger documentary projects from many community organizations.

External Link

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/communitydevelopment/20051130/20/1666

Proposed Legislation May Affect Future of Public-Access Television

forestmars — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 00:05:09 -0500

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Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 by the New York Times

by Felicia R. Lee

One recent afternoon, in a small brownstone dwarfed by the shine and sprawl of the nearby Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, Joel Igartua got ready for his close-up. The 18-year-old high school senior was honing his interview skills and mastering video camera basics to make public service announcements for Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a public-access television station.

"People should have the right to make their own shows," Mr. Igartua said. "TV is powerful. Everyone watches TV."

For every hour of "Desperate Housewives" on ABC, the nation's 3,000 public-access television channels present dozens of hours of local school board meetings, Little League games and religious services. Not to mention programs like "The Great Grown-Up Spelling Bee," a spelling bee for adults that raises money for the Kalamazoo, Mich., public library, and "Fruta Extrena," a bilingual gay talk show in New York City.

Now, though, the future of the channels deemed "electronic soapboxes" in 1972 by the Federal Communications Commission is uncertain, as proposed legislation about how the telecommunications industry is regulated winds its way through Congress.

The main concern for public-access advocates is that the law preserve the ability of municipalities to negotiate franchise agreements for cable television. Those agreements pay for the public-access programs and allow municipalities to determine how many channels they want and allow public access programmers like Manhattan Neighborhood Network to train nonprofit groups to produce their own shows. The proposed legislation varies in its specifics, but several bills aim to allow more video-services competition - easing the way for telephone companies to compete for the franchises - and minimize regulations for franchises. Advocates of the legislation say that the fears of the demise of public access are exaggerated and that some local control of franchises is written into the bills.

Currently, most cable franchise agreements include a franchise fee paid by cable providers for using city property, putting millions of dollars in city coffers, some of which can be used for public-access channels. Some agreements also provide explicit financing and support for the community's use of the cable system. Public, educational and government - or "PEG" - access channels tend to be uneven in their quality and production values. But, say advocates, these shows are not meant to sell products or just entertain, but to mirror community interests and needs.

"There has to be some portion of the system open to public use, which has public revenue supporting it," Anthony T. Riddle, executive director of the Washington-based Alliance for Community Media, said of his advocacy of public access. The group represents 1,000 media centers nationwide.

Yesterday, to take advantage of election eve, thousands of public-access channels nationwide were scheduled to show one minute of video snow simultaneously to protest the legislative proposals, beginning at 9 p.m., Eastern time. The alliance is joined by the National League of Cities and the United States Conference of Mayors in opposing any bill that would strip local control of cable franchises. Public-access advocates are appealing to politicians and to the public to hear their case.

The cable business has $60 billion in revenue annually, and last year cable operators paid $2.4 billion in franchise fees, according to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's principal trade association.

Under federal law, cities can collect a franchise fee that is up to 5 percent of the gross revenue generated from the delivery of cable services.

With 33,000 local cable franchises across the country, telephone companies are now pressuring the federal government for speedier access to franchises and fewer restrictions. In Texas recently, SBC and Verizon got that state to set up a uniform clearing-house approach, meaning that these companies can apply to the state for franchises and do not have to negotiate agreements with each municipality separately.

"One of the big questions is, Is there a place for public interest in our media policy, or is it one size fits all?" said Rick Junger, the director of community media at Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association has not weighed in on any specifics of the proposed laws because it is too early, said a spokesman for the association, Rob Stoddard. The organization's concern, he said, is that any new rules on franchises apply to all video providers, whether they are traditional cable providers or telephone companies.

What advocates hope is not lost in all the fights over politics and technology is their idea of public access as a First Amendment right, especially for people and towns underrepresented on television. The local franchise agreements, they said, have provided a tried and true mechanism to handle customer complaints, determine local programming needs and deliver the money to produce those programs.

Mr. Riddle said that the groups he represents produced 20,000 hours of new programs a week, using 1.2 million volunteers and 250,000 community groups in any given year. That's more programming, he added, than the broadcast networks combined.

"It's where we turn for a sense of self," Laurie Cirivello, executive director of the Community Media Center of Santa Rosa, said of the four access channels in her Northern California community of 150,000. The channels feature locally produced shows like "Mrs. Twizzleton's Magic Garden," a children's program with a local psychologist as host, and a number of Spanish-language shows.

Ms. Cirivello noted that Santa Rosa, near San Francisco, has no local television stations.

Legislators say their bills are needed because the current telecommunication laws did not foresee the Internet explosion, or new video technology like telephone service over the Internet, and interactive television.

The Video Choice Act, introduced in the House by Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Senate version, introduced by Gordon Smith, Republican of Oregon, and Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, has been referred to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. In the Senate, a bill introduced by John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, which covers a broader range of telecommunications issues, is known as the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act.

"This legislation allows consumers - not government bureaucrats - to choose the best services at the best prices," Senator Ensign said in an e-mail message. The Ensign bill, now also in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has drawn the most fire from opponents, who say the House and Senate versions of the Video Choice Act are more flexible in their language.

"It is just flat wrong to say we eliminate public, educational and government channels," Senator Ensign said. "Our bill specifically requires video providers to carry up to four PEG channels."

He said his bill did not eliminate the 5 percent franchise fee. It extends it, he said, to new video providers and also has an entire section protecting the ability of state and local governments to manage their rights of way.

Representative Blackburn said that her bill was intended to create more affordable video options and more diversity in programming. "My bill seeks to keep limitations and regulations to a minimum in order to encourage an active, growing marketplace rather than the atrophied one we have right now," she said in an e-mail message.

But public-access advocates argue that these are empty words and that questions remain, including those concerning how franchise fees are defined and who oversees the collection of right-of-way revenue. Senator Ensign's aides acknowledged that the definition of "revenue" for franchise fees was still debatable. Whether revenue from purchases on a home shopping channel should be included, as they currently are, is one question that has to be answered, an aide to Senator Ensign said. The Ensign bill also caps the number of access channels at four in each municipality, although some big cities already have more. New York City, for example, has nine PEG channels.

Ralph Engelman, the chairman of the journalism department at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, said, "The whole concept is a somewhat radical, democratic vision - giving ordinary citizens access to the most persuasive communications medium that exists." He added: "It's incredibly diverse, and it's very raw. It's probably a better reflection of what our society is than mainstream television."

The personalities from public access sometimes even make it onto mainstream television. RuPaul, the cross-dressing entertainer, kicked off his career in 1982 on a weekly public-access show in Atlanta called "The American Music Show."

External Link

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D12F63F5A0C7B8CDDA80994DD4044...