I finally watched my DVD copy of “Opening Access” (photo above) produced by Denver Open Media. It’s an excellent overview of the possibilities that the Internet and user-driven media technologies provide towards revolutionizing Public Access TV. The DVD begins by situating Public Access TV in opposition to corporate television and other commercial media. It highlights the fact that large corporations sell viewers to advertisers in return for profit. Therefore, corporate media are biased in their tendency to cater to audiences in wealthier communities that have the money to spend on advertisers’ products. As a result, we have a commercial media landscape that largely fails to address public and social needs.

As an alternative, the DVD’s narrator and DOM Executive Director, Tony Shawcross says that Public Access TV is

* Inclusive
* A Free Speech Conduit
* Training
* Equipment Access
* Cablecast opportunities

Often for free or very low-cost.

Therefore, Public Access TV is an “alternative avenue that is not vulnerable to the inherent biases and restrictions of the corporate model.” But unfortunately,

“Support seems to be falling. Today it is a series of small, disconnected, and under-funded organizations. There is an opportunity to transform public access into something a more viable more powerful tool.”

Shawcross explains that “media distribution is moving to the Internet” and that the “many to many” internet model for distribution is the main use of the internet today.

Therefore, in order for Public Access TV to take full advantage of this new distribution technology:

1. All content must be made digitally
2. Creative Commons (public access TV content is noncommercial and CC allows us to get the word out)
3. Everything needs to be web-accessible
4. Rating and categorization. We need to let viewers watch, rate, tag and categorize content on the web.
5. Closing the digital divide

The DVD’s next section goes on to explain the model of Denver Open Media, which “flipped the switch” on this revoluntary new model in 2006. Shawcross explains that DOM is modeled after smaller companies like Wikipedia. A company with 5 staff members, but is more popular than Brittanica. DOM gets out of the way, so that the members can get involved.

In the video, DOM’s Station Director, Ann Theis says that DOM’s model fosters community because “community members are going to come in here and really have to rely on one another. They are going to have to help each other. And that in itself will just foster a greater sense of community and ownership.”

Brian Hiatt, deveropenmedia.org’s Web Developer talks about how DOM wants “the producers to be driving the station and hopefully through that model” people will “really feel that they own the station.” He also talks about how the website offers more traditional services, including equipment reservations and the opportunity to sign up for classes. They also hope to give producers the ability to upload content from home.

Most importantly, DOM is focusing on creating an open source model that other Public Access TV organizations can use. Shawcross talks about the significance of this system, in terms of connecting public access centers and the producers’ media through this system.

Mia McKenzie, DOM’s Education Director, talks about the fact that people with very little money are usually not heard from because they don’t have any way to produce their own media. DOM provides opportunities for people can get access “through very little cost and get the training and the tools to “be able to have a voice in media.” She goes on to say,

“We want everyone in the community to have a voice in media, but we want it to be as eloquent a voice as possible. So we train people to make the most high quality video they can make.”

The video explains that “public access fills the basic human need to communicate and to engage in one’s community in a way that isn’t limited by the financial profitability of your message.” It allows freedom and individual control. “The user driven approach will allow communities to mold TV into an institution that fulfills public and social needs.”

To watch the video or order a DVD copy, visit DenverOpenMedia.org. The DVD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license.

I wrote an essay, titled “Community Media in Transition: Exploring the Digital Culture within PEG Access Television.” It is an overview of my research and methods used for this project to date. My hope is that it will serve to help focus my work moving forward.

From the introduction:

In August 2006, following the Alliance for Community Media Conference, “Connecting Communities” at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, I launched a personal research blog, titled “Community Media in Transition: PEG Access TV and the Internet” to continue the conversation online. As I wrote about the project, I hoped “to explore the role of technology, public policy, and the Internet and its relationship to public, educational, and government access television.” Much to my surprise, I soon found myself at an exciting intersection of two worlds colliding without much of a roadmap to navigate the changes ahead. Through my professional and volunteer lives I realized I was in a unique position to help share the stories of those facing this intersection of cable access television and a complex new medium, called the social web.

This essay is about my process and discovery during this time. It is a document of the steps I have taken, up to this point, to investigate a thirty-year old practice by community media activists now facing a world uprooted by technology, politics and a global market economy. In it, I will present an overview of (1) the methods used, (2) the community observed, (3) the technologies being implemented, (4) the persistent themes and challenges, and (5) the potential paths of study moving forward.

Read more.

The image above is (two pages pieced together) from the Spring 2007 Issue of the Community Media Review. Because this image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 3.0 license, I can post it here on this blog. I can do that because I am giving the image attribution, I’m using it for noncommercial purposes and I’m using the same license for this blog. As a result, I can share it with my online networks. This is why Creative Commons matters for PEG access TV.

But, Creative Commons licenses matter even more when we talk about PEG access broadband video.

Access centers that post videos on their website (or through other web video platforms, see earlier post) and license these videos under CC licenses allow people, like me, to not only share them with my online networks, but (depending on the license) it would allow me to remix them for my own creative purposes.

For example:

Let’s say there was a recent cable franchising hearing in Massachusetts that happened to have something to do with, say, Verizon’s interest in entering the cable marketplace (hypothetically speaking, of course). And let’s just say there were 20 video cameras in the hearing room taping the public proceedings.

So then, if there were 20 different versions of 1 cable franchising hearing at the MA State House (let’s say this happened in June, hypothetically again) and all of these videos were published on the web, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 3.0 licenses, then I could remix my own version of the hearing to share with my online networks.

While it is important for an access center to get paid for the resources it uses, I think it’s even more important that videos produced by access centers (and producers) get found, watched and shared. Creative Commons helps to make this possible. The more PEG access TV shares video online, the more relevant it becomes - particularly in a “Web 2.0″ world.

So if you work at a PEG access TV center or happen to be a PEG access producer who is creating video for your community and sharing it on the web, please consider licensing your content under a Creative Commons license. By doing so, I believe it could lead to three possible outcomes:

1. Increase viewership
2. Increase community engagement
3. Increase support for PEG access TV in a “web 2.0″ world

By the way, I’d love to know who created this image above and wrote the copy that goes along with it (pages 24-25 PDF)? It’s fantastic. I’m looking forward to diving into the rest of the issue.