AND PUBLIC ACCESS FOR  ALL

by Timothy Liebe 
(originally published in VIDEO Magazine, ©1997)

If you were to ask most people what came to mind when you say "public access television", the response you'd most likely get would be either "amateur smut" or "Wayne's World!". A few folks might bring up "that Nazi guy" who was in the news about a year back, and ask why there isn't some sort of law to keep him and others like him off the air. While it's true that there are public access programs that are either "adult" in content, low-rent vanity productions, or downright offensive for one reason or another, public access television is much more than sum of its headline-grabbing or easily-lampoonable parts.

In the early Seventies the FCC began requiring cable companies to negotiate with local governments to provide at least one channel devoted to "PEG (Public, Educational, Government) Services"--noncommercial programs created for the community which the cable company serves. Public access, as part of PEG Services, is intended to ensure that the First Amendment rights of those who aren't lucky enough to own their own television station are honored in practice as well as in principle. It's coverage of the community that might be otherwise overlooked, entertainment for a diverse group of minorities, showcases for up-and-coming artists, educational programming, how-to programming, even religious programming--any type of show that might be made with a purpose other than profit in mind. It is much closer to the streets people walk every day than the prepackaged, cookie-cutter shows produced by local commercial or public TV channels.

            Public access television is your television. Do you belong to an organization that you feel would benefit from having its own TV show? Do you have skills or information you'd like to share? Do you have videos, movies, artwork, or anything visual you'd like other people to see? Do you have something you'd like to get off your chest? Then maybe you should produce a show for public access.

You'll Never Get Rich This Way!

Before you decide to set yourself up as a public access TV producer, keep in mind that public access is noncommercial television in every sense of the word. Since it's intended as an 'electronic soapbox' and not a profit-generating mechanism, you can't sell any ad time to make money off your show. You are generally permitted to have your show 'sponsored' by an organization or business as a means of financing its production, provided you don't openly advertise their products or services.

Some businesses get around this nonprofit provision by sponsoring a program that works much like an 'infomercial', providing information about products or services while at the same time letting people know that their business offers them. Producing shows like that, however, often means walking a tightrope between satisfying the sponsor and convincing the public access provider that this program is not a 'glorified commercial'.

In New York City, for instance, there used to be a popular public access program called IN AND OUT WITH DICK, sponsored and hosted by the owner of a local adult video store chain. This show was recently pulled from the public access schedule when it was determined that it was simply a half-hour advertisement for the sponsor's stores.

 Getting Started

Before you do anything, you'd first better make certain your local cable system has a public access channel. Since the PEG Services provision pretty much leaves it to the local government's discretion whether or not the community is capable of supporting public access, it is possible your cable system may not have one if it services a small population.

Interestingly, it's equally possible that a small community will have an extremely active public access channel, especially if it's some distance away from a city large enough to support a commercial television channel. For these communities, public access is their local TV station, sending out non-educational, non-municipal programming of interest to people living in the area.

Assuming your cable system does have public access, get in touch with their public access provider--which can, depending on the terms of the cable license, be either an office within the company itself, or a not-for-profit corporation set up for this purpose--and request their information package for public access producers. These packages usually include the company's policies for public access, technical guidelines for the videotapes submitted for cablecast, programming agreements and scheduling requests. They may also include a list of facilities in your area that rent studio time, video equipment and/or post-production facilities to public access producers, which can be very useful if you decide to go ahead with putting on a show. 

Straight From the Horses' Mouth

Another way you can get information on putting a show on public access is to get in touch with the producers themselves. Though much of the information they may give you will be included in the public access information package, talking with producers will help you get a feel for what it's really like to put on a program.

Many public access shows run a title with the producer's address and/or telephone number. Write this information down and get in touch with the people who produce those shows you like. Let them know you'd like to pick their brains about putting together a program, problems they've come across, and what it's like dealing with the public access department. These producers are often perfectly happy to speak with someone who's seen their work and is genuinely interested in doing a show themselves.

Also, if you're curious about doing a public access program but aren't quite ready to actually mount one yet, you might volunteer to help one of these producers with theirs. This will give you experience with the ins and outs of producing for public access, as well as putting you in touch with a number of people, facilities and locations that you can draw on yourself when you're ready to be a producer.

Your Facilities or Mine?

Depending on the details of the licensing agreement your local government made with the company supplying your cable system, it's possible that the public access provider might supply low- or no-cost facilities for the production of public access programs. If they do, it will be noted in the public access information package, along with what sort of certification or assurance you will need to supply them with in order to use these facilities--usually, that you take and pass a training course on any equipment you intend to use.

If your public access provider doesn't offer their own production facilities, the situation becomes a little trickier. Though most cities have video production companies for local television shows which can be rented, they're often too expensive for productions that aren't taking in any money.

If the show you intend to do benefits a particular business or organization with its own video equipment (i.e., a local music club, arts collective, or business corporation), you might speak with whoever is in charge of the equipment there about your show, and if they'd be interested in letting you use what they have available for this purpose. Other possible means of gaining access to video production facilities are college media departments, local groups like the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club, and churches.

Before you approach any of these organizations or businesses, however, be sure you have a clear, carefully-thought out proposal for the program you will be doing and how it will benefit them to help you. It's probably a good idea put your proposal in writing, both for clarity's sake and since many groups will require you to submit it to their governing board in that fashion.

If all these fail, you can always use your own video equipment. If the show you intend to do can be shot in the neighborhood around you, it should be fairly easy to produce; after all, isn't that what you've been doing with your camcorder all along? On the other hand, if you intend to do a live studio interview/call-in show, that may or may not be possible depending on where you live.

"Live, From Minneapolis, MN"

Going back to WAYNE'S WORLD for a moment, this extremely popular comedy sketch/motion picture series posits two young men cablecasting their weekly public access program live from Wayne's parents' basement, with the capability to take phone calls on the air from the viewing audience. Amazing as it may seem, this is not just a case of taking comedic license--though I couldn't swear to Aurora, Illinois, there are cable systems already in existence, including Paragon of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which are capable of transmitting signals both to and from your cable box.

As explained by Pamela Colby, General Manager of Minneapolis Telecommunications Network (the PEG provider for Minneapolis), "Our A/B system permits us to do 'interactive' television, provided there's a modulator hooked up to the cable box which transmits the signal back to us. If we get 60 days' advance notice from a producer, we can out and hook up the modulator free of charge so that they can cablecast their show back to us. We haven't had a lot of call for it outside of the recent election, when we sent signals back from all the precincts using this method. Usually when producers do a call-in show, they use our two studio facilities-- but a show like WAYNE'S WORLD would be possible in Minneapolis."

Before you rush out and ask for your own modulator, though, keep in mind that Minneapolis' interactive cable system is still more than the exception than the rule. Most other providers cannot yet offer this feature and some, in fact, do not offer any means of live cablecasting at all.

"Live From New York--Maybe..."

In New York City up to a few years ago, the only live public access studio facility offered by either of Manhattan's two cable networks--Manhattan Cable or Paragon of Manhattan- -was one studio at the Paragon offices, which was seldom used due to both its inconvenient location and the fact that most people didn't even know it existed! To help fill this gap in one of America's largest cities, a couple of video production companies--most notably James Chladek's Metro Access studio--got permission during the 1970s to run hookups for live 'feeds' to Manhattan Cable's and Paragon's cablecast facilities for both public and leased-access programming. Studios like Metro Access, however, are for-profit businesses and, while their rates are quite reasonable compared to other video production houses, they cost a bit more money than public access producers are able to spend.

Manhattan Neighborhood Network (or "MNN"), a not-for-profit corporation which since the early 1990s has managed public access for Manhattan Cable and Paragon Manhattan, is hoping to change all this via their new studio facilities which will offer both full-fledged live production studios and mini-studios called 'hot seats', where a producer can simply sit down in a booth, turn on the camera, and both go out live and take phone calls. However, this studio facility still under construction, and is not expected to be fully operational for another year or more. Meanwhile, MNN's currently available facilities are nowhere near up to the demand, and Paragon Cable has closed down its one studio.

'Virtually' Live

What several New York City producers have done to get around this lack of live studio space is actually quite ingenious. If you live someplace where your cable system doesn't yet offer interactive cable, and happen to see a show on public access where the host appears to be 'live' from their home taking phone calls about the show, what you're probably watching is something called 'virtual call-in'.

As explained by David Channon, public access activist, member of MNN's Board of Directors, and producer of the VOLCANIC VIDEO series, "Every week of the show, the producer will flash a phone number on the screen and invite people to call in. While the first show's on the air with the number on the screen, the producer sits at home and videotapes himself or herself answering the calls that come in for the show that's on cable that day, then incorporates that into the next week's show. So it's not a real call-in show, because people aren't responding to the show that's being made when they call, but it works really well and a lot of producers do it."

Obviously, 'virtual call-in' wouldn't be of any use if you want people's responses to a particular subject or person being interviewed, but it's surprisingly effective if you want to know what the viewers think about the show that's on the air when you tape. If you aren't fortunate enough to live in a community with interactive cable, but you still want the immediacy that call- in shows provide, 'virtual call-in' may be a way to accomplish this.

Guerilla Video

Despite the efforts of organizations like MNN or Minneapolis Telecommunications Network, there is rarely enough equipment, space or time available to effectively serve all the people who put on, or want to put on, public access programming. By and large, most public access producers utilize a combination of perseverance, talent, available consumer equipment, and sleight-of-hand to get their shows produced and on cable week in and week out.

As David Channon points out, "A lot of individual producers for public access are putting together programming with no financial support and few resources. MNN offers $250,000 of annual funding for public access programs, but that all goes to arts or community service organizations and not to individual producers... We're trying now to work out a 'voucher' system whereby producers can get financial support to continue using their own equipment and so they can be reimbursed for making their facilities available to other producers, in addition to MNN's studios, but there's some resistance on the MNN Board for this."

Rick Little, producer of New York's highly-original public access series THE CHURCH OF SHOOTING YOURSELF, describes some of his production experiences: "Basically, the whole show is about trying to deal with technical problems, like how can I act in a movie and shoot it at the same time, which you can do more easily in video than in film...or the space aliens that show up in my show, which came about when I had this cheap camcorder and the lights came out out of focus, so I gave them these scary alien voices. I try to use everything, so that inferior optics become a character in the story...I decided to try and make something productive out of garbage."

The Gay Cable Network--Spreading the Word

The Gay Cable Network ('GCN'), which offers an eight-program weekly schedule of original gay-themed programming on both public- and leased-access channels in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Winnepeg, Tampa, Long Beach, CA and Long Island, NY, has been able to set up and maintain its own production facilities. GCN's in-house capabilities include 3/4" studios capable of two-, three- or four-camera shoots, Hi-8 camcorders for field shooting, and edit rooms with NewTek Video Toasters for titling and special effects work.

The founder of GCN, Lou Moletta, is justifiably proud of both his video production setup and of how GCN utilizes both public- and leased-access to serve his community and foster understanding. "We're correcting misconceptions about the gay community," Mr. Moletta says, "and the homophobia that comes from these misconceptions...Our most popular program is GAY USA, which is a gay newsmagazine kind of like 60 MINUTES, with news, sports and health issues.

"It's interesting to note that, when we come onto a new public or leased-access system like Long Beach or Tampa, the response is usually negative in the beginning. Later on, it becomes positive when they see we're not going to put on 'gay porn', but that we're doing information programs and educational programs about gay issues and AIDS."

For those segments of American society like Mr. Moletta's that are rarely heard from except when they do something 'newsworthy' (like get beaten up while someone else is videotaping it), public access is a means to communicate both with each other and with the rest of the world. 

 

"I think public access is a good thing," says Rick Little, "because it takes control of the media out of the hands of the few. People keep asking me, 'How much does it cost to get your show on?', and they're amazed when I tell them public access time is free...Most people, from watching TV all their lives, have subliminally picked up a basic filmic education--they know when a shot's gone on too long, and what a bad shot it. It's just a small step from that to taking your own camcorder and being on the same screen as Dan Rather."

Despite the efforts of thousands of public access producers like Little, Channon and Moletta, along with nonprofit organizations like Minneapolis Telecommunications Network and Manhattan Neighborhood Network, public access is still one of the great underutilized resources of the consumer video revolution. For that reason, it's especially vulnerable right now: Cable industry giants Time Warner and Preferred Cable are currently mounting legal challenges to the 'must carry' rule for both PEG Services and leased-time access, claiming in part that their First Amendment rights are being violated by having to provide for yours.

Producing for public access can be time-consuming and often frustrating; to quote Dave Channon again, "I suggest to people who tell me they want to do a show to start out with a one- show special instead of a series. A lot of people know they want to do a series, but they seldom really think about the amount of work that that entails." Still, the nonfinancial rewards can be enormous, as Lou Moletta points out: "I think one of the most important things about public and leased-access is the networking--that you get to meet other people, and that you're in a helping position for those people, and they for you."