Many of today’s video producers got their start in public access television, whether they admit it or not. I was involved in access in the 1980s as a way to practice my craft on different subject matter than the corporate stuff I produced during the day. And it gave me a way to practice my professional mission: To help people leverage electronic media to achieve their goals.
I’ve just started to get re-interested in public access as an activist and free speech platform. There have been a lot of changes in 20 years. Recent state regulation (authored by the large telecoms) have lifted access requirements from city franchises by shifting authority over franchising to the state level. That has endangered public access as people have known (or scorned it).
This article, Public-Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age, takes a high level look at public access today and how it fits, or doesn’t, with online user-generated content sites.
The Alliance for Community Media (ACM) is the primary organization advocating for Public Access. I just found a new one called the Public Access Awareness Association (PAAA).
The Internet is amazing in how it has democratized media internationally. But in the U.S. most people get their information from television (Pew Research). That puts public access at the forefront of media-tized free speech and makes it something worth defending.
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