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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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MEETING GRASSROOTS NEEDS
by Diane Agosta

Community television in the United States is at a turning point.
Though it now has substantial public presence and involvement, the
legal framework and commercial pressures of the latest changes in
electronic communications systems threaten its existence.
Community television activists in the US are facing this challenge
in several ways: by expanding their outreach into their own
communities, by networking among themselves and with other media
organizations, and by expanding into new technologies.

Community television in the United States mostly exists in the
form of public access TV on cable systems. Public access TV
provides free channel time, portable or studio production
equipment, training and some form of program publicity such as
newsletters or on-channel listings. These facilities and services
are usually coordinated by a dedicated non-profit organization
funded primarily by fees agreed to in cable franchises or other
contracts with cable companies. (The franchise is the contract
between the cable company and the city or county it serves.)

Public access to television is also based on the First Amendment
to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right of freedom of
speech. For example, public access TV was originally
conceptualized as the electronic equivalent to the streetcorner
soapboxes of previous generations.

The emergence of public access TV is related to the struggle of
independent media producers in the 1970s for a broader diversity
of voices on publicly funded television, with the idea that TV's
purpose was to represent the nation to itself. This struggle was
itself rooted in the redefinition of democracy's meaning forced by
the popular revolts of  the 1960s, which asserted that public
discourse must not only be more diverse but must especially
include the voices of the less dominant and the less powerful
members of society. These concepts informed the fight for public
access television throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1994, the Alliance for Community Media, a membership
organization of public access organizations and advocates, found
that 1.2 million volunteers produced over 20,000 hours of programs
at over 3,000  public, educational and governmental access centers
across the U.S. These programs were produced by a wide variety of
individuals and non-profit organizations, and included programming
in many languages including Spanish, Vietnamese, Farsi and
Portuguese.

Despite this tremendous growth, community TV's existence is
threatened by the forms that communication technology development
is taking. For example, Federal cable legislation allows cities
and counties to demand the provision of public, educational and
government access in their franchise agreements. But telephone
companies do not have these obligations even as they increasingly
are poised to provide video services and a huge range of other
electronic information and communications services. Community
television activists are battling these developments in several
ways.

Firstly, they are making sure that they are meeting grassroots
communication needs. For example, Manhattan Neighborhood Network
in New York City has established a grant fund that helps
community-based organizations provide training and equipment
access for their particular neighborhoods and constituencies.
Recipients have included a children's art organization in Harlem,
a group of activists in Chinatown and a Latino women's group in a
predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Collaborative production and national program exchange is another
way community TV activists are increasing their strength and
visibility. Deep Dish TV was established in 1986 to use satellite
to distribute programs to public access channels nationwide. It's
eclectic mix of documentary, dramatic, experimental and
autobiographical programs come from the grassroots. Deep Dish's
spring series which focused on health care reform was produced and
programmed after a year of discussion with nearly 100 alternative
health organizations, activists and community organizations to
determine priority issues and perspectives.

The current transition is also provoking broader networking: the
independent, grassroots and alternative media communities in the
US are beginning to work with each other more regularly, from
reporting on each other's events and services in their newsletters
to holding joint conferences.

Networking is beginning to be complemented by  moves to expand the
range of technologies in which services are offered: community TV
centers are beginning to explore desktop publishing, Internet and
other computer networking, community voicemail, cable radio, even
satellite teleconferencing. At this point, only of handful of
public access centers have made these concrete steps.

Minneapolis Television Network (Minnesota) has added desktop
publishing and raised money for a pilot Internet access project.
Davis Community Television (California) provides access and
training to a community-wide Internet access project. And, Grand
Rapids Public Access Center has developed a cooperative-like
structure of several media projects, including a radio station, a
film archive, a Freenet with a community bulletin board and
Internet access.

It may seem that just as community TV in the U.S. has evolved into
a communications resource of some significance, it is faced with
redefining itself. As the Queen said in Lewis Carroll's Alice
Through the Looking Glass, "Now, here, it takes all the running
one can do to stay in the same place!"
_________________ Diana Agosta has worked in community television
for over 10 years and is now a graduate student in anthropology at
the City University of New York.

Resources:  Alliance for Community Media 666  11th St. NW, Suite
806 Washington, DC 20001-4542
USA

Deep Dish TV 339 Lafayette St.  New York, NY 10012
USA