I spoke with Mara Altman of the Village Voice today. She’s doing a piece on “public access television and it’s relevancy in the age of YouTube”. She found me through my blog post, “YouTube = Public Access?“. We talked a bit about my graduate thesis project and some of the questions I’m looking for answers to (including the questions above) with the help from folks in access.

I told her that YouTube can be viewed as complimentary to, but should not viewed as a replacement for, Public Access TV. I said that you can’t find YouTube centers across the country that provide opportunities (found at most Public Access TV centers) for people to gain the necessary skills, tools, and knowledge to create and share stories through media about stuff happening in their communities. I said that while some cable subscribers may not like the programming on their public access channels, it should be considered within the context of local Educational and Government content, as well. PEG provides one of the few forums left on TV where people can find local news and information that is both relevant to their community and created by the public, not by commercial outlets.

I also told her about some of the innovative things happening in public access TV, including geotagging/geovlogging projects like Zip Docs at CCTV and Map Iowa City at PATV. I mentioned that while many access centers are realizing that they need to get up to speed with new Internet distribution technologies, the Alliance for Community Media has a new website using WordPress for its content management system.

We also talked a bit about how current state and federal legislation threatens funding for public access TV and local control of our public-rights-of-way (not to mention the issue of redlining). I asked her if she’d heard about saveaccess.org (which she had) and said if she wants to find people who oppose PEG TV, all she needs to do is pick up the phone and call any one of the many astroturf groups (see “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” Common Cause Report PDF) that are popping up across the country.

She was very nice and helpful in recommending the folks at Bronxnet to speak to for my thesis project. I look forward to learning more about them and their access center.

I don’t know when her story for the Village Voice will come out, but I look forward to reading it to see what others had to say on this topic.