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The following article is from the latest issue of Videazimut's
newsletter CLIPS.  CLIPS is available in separate English, French
and Spanish editions.  It is published three times a year.

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COMMUNITY TV AND LOCAL IDENTITY

As economic globalisation advances and technologies are
increasingly combined, telecommunications will, inexorably,
universalise our world. Urgent questions thus arise: What will
happen to local identities in the global melting-pot? What impact
do the new forms of community TV emerging alongside global TV have
on collective identities? What are the new aesthetic and narrative
challenges posed by this audiovisual evolution common to local and
global realities?

A few answers were forthcoming in the recent Workshop on Community
TV jointly conducted in Lima by CODAL (Communication for
Development in Latin America Project, supported by the CIC, Italy
and VTM, Canada) and the AVL Andean Region. This event brought to
light the rapid proliferation of local TV broadcasters and
channels as well as their particular characteristics in terms of
management, programming, production and reception which
distinguish them in important ways from previous experiences in
community access TV.

According to participants, in only the last four years 500 cable
channels were established in Argentina, as were at least 100
satellite broadcasters in different cities in Peru and another 500
community broadcasters in Colombia. These come on top of the 80
channels that already existed in Bolivia and the countless
regional and municipal broadcasters still regulated by state or
private monopolies in Brazil and Chile.

Julian Tenorio of the Association of Television Viewers in Cali,
(Colombia) informed us that: "In the Cali valley alone there now
exist 21 community channels. And yet, no laws exist either to
encourage them or prohibit them.

One of the characteristics of the globalisation process is
precisely a deregulation of telecommunications which provokes a
fragmentation of both supply and demand. That said, it's obvious
that this temporary liberation of the television market has more
to do with the trade in symbolic production than with media
democratisation. The opportunity to watch programmes from anywhere
in the world, absolutely free from any regulatory control, has
proven irresistible.

Another participant, Yashin Salas of Channel-10TV in Yurimaguas
(in the Peruvian Amazon) explained that: "...we use the satellite
dishes in our town to receive the main channels' satellite
signals. We also broadcast our own local programming--without much
technical sophistication... but we do it creatively. It's mixed
with theirs, but it's different from theirs..."

Clearly the difference is not primarily on the technical level.
What really matters is the distinct cultural idiom through which a
local broadcaster relates to its audience by acknowledging its
identity, respecting its diversity and projecting a positive
public image of it.

The challenge for training is to develop the creativity needed to
discover themes, languages and narrative forms which don't simply
compete on the level of mainstream efficiency, i.e. in terms of
entertainment, but also on the local level per se, i.e. in terms
of effectiveness in communication and collective participation.

Fernando Carrasco of El Canelo-Comunicaciones-TV-Chile reminded us
that: "it's been demonstrated that a neighbourhood issue, or a
local personality or a motorist who speaks like us, attracts more
viewer interest in regional television than national or
international questions..."

Television authenticates, acknowledges and provides legitimacy.
While audiences are a mix of global, national and local
identities, that which is relevant to people's lives and feelings,
and is immediate and identifiable with their own culture, will
always take priority.

Cecilia Quiroga of Noticiero Mujer del Alto-Bolivia (Women's News
in Upper Bolivia) spoke of the importance of financing and
management:"...we must develop our management capabilities to
generate sufficient resources to maintain production and compete
in market terms.

Independent production, like coproductions, are fraught with
uncertainty (collaboration is never easy). Consequently, we must
accept the challenge posed by self-financing. That means lowering
costs, developing popular programming with few resources, creating
networks of local broadcasters, doing coproductions with private
enterprise, developing local advertising, co-administering with
local institutions and most importantly, getting people to
participate actively in their TV station.

Through this workshop we discovered that in the new local TV
everything remains to be done: they aren't organised for community
access, they lack state protection, they lack sources of
self-financing, their personnel lack technical training, their
programming is a mix of local and international content and they
don't even have legal status.

However, what they definitely do have is a great potential to
recognise diversity, strengthen identities, appraise local
cultures, promote citizenship rights and participate actively in
the democratisation of communication.

Mario Gutierrez of A.C.S. Calandria-Peru, is a trainer-teacher in
the CODAL Project and a researcher at the Universidad de San Pablo
(Brazil).