[Peace] URGENT call to action - May 9th 7PM! Champaign city staff aims to torpedo new public access TV channel!

[Randall Cotton]

Summary:

This Tuesday, May 9th at 7PM, the Champaign City Council will consider the
future of Public Access Cable TV in our community. And although there has been
considerable community support building over the past two years for the creation
of a new, dedicated Public Access Cable TV channel, the Champaign city
administration is mounting a surprise 11th-hour effort to dissuade the Champaign
City Council from providing any support for Public Access Cable TV for perhaps
the next 15 years. Instead, they are proposing a substantial funding increase to
equip and staff the government-only cable channel they already run, which has no
public access. A strong public turnout will be necessary at Tuesday's meeting in
order to ensure community efforts to establish a new Public Access TV channel
are not dashed by Champaign's city staff.

What's at stake:

This is the single most critical moment, to date, in the effort to win the kind
of Public Access Cable TV facilities our community deserves. Strong community
turnout at the City Council Chambers (ground floor, city of Champaign building,
102 N. Neil St.) for the 7PM "study session" meeting of the Council will be
decisive in convincing them to reject the city staff's recommendation to
completely forego support for Public Access Cable TV. The Champaign City Council
is the last governmental entity that would need to sign on in support of this
new channel. Support has already been provided by all other relevant
governmental bodies, including:

1. Champaign-Urbana Cable Television & Telecommunications Commission (January
18, 2005)

2. Urbana Public Television Commission (Dec. 12, 2005)

3. Urbana City Council (March 6, 2006 City Council Resolution 2006-02-007R)

These bodies have all supported the recommendation to create a new, dedicated
Public Access cable TV channel managed by a non-profit Community Media Center
and funded by our cable provider, Insight Communications (as part of a new cable
franchise contract). But if the Champaign City Council chooses to reject
supporting Public Access Cable TV, this will destroy the community's chances
(for many years) to obtain the community-building, democracy-vitalizing free
speech public platform that Champaign/Urbana deserves. The duration of the
current cable franchise contract is 15 years. If the renewal is just as long,
our community won't have a chance to improve our Public Access facilities until
after the year 2020! Here's a summary of the envisioned facilities at stake in
the recommendations (which would be funded by cable company revenues, not local
taxes):

1. A cable channel just for Public Access, managed by an independent, non-profit
Community Media Center governed by a Board of Directors including public-access
media enthusiasts from the community.

2. Dedicated live, interactive call-in, and production TV studios for community
use.

3. Media production training and support services from hired professional staff.

4. Affordable services to assist with or perform video production for local
non-profit organizations.

5. Live broadcast capability from anywhere in the community using a portable
production unit and remote location van.

6. Video-on-demand technology which will allow viewers to choose what Public
Access programming to view at their convenience with pause, fast-forward and
reverse functions.

The current state of affairs:

Currently, our community's limited Public Access service available through
Urbana Public Television (UPTV - cable channel 6) is controlled by the City of
Urbana bureaucracy, which yields service that is less responsive and accountable
to the public than a Community Media Center management model. Since UPTV isn't
even funded at all by Champaign, its resources are limited. UPTV does not
feature the facilities described above (though some informal training is
provided). In addition, the complete control of UPTV by the municipal government
has led to repeated instances of political tampering with the station's
programming (e.g. Democracy Now!, VEYA/Miller/Thompson cop-watch video, etc.). A
separate, independent, fully-funded non-profit organization managing its own
public access channel is the preferred and recommended model that will provide
our community's diverse array of community groups, non-profit organizations,
schools, social clubs, churches, neighborhood associations, action groups,
children's centers, adult education facilities and area citizens with the
quality of Public Access Cable TV we deserve.

What we could have if we only insist on it:

A high level of Public Access TV services surrounding a vibrant Public Access
Cable TV channel (something we've never really had in Champaign/Urbana) will
foster a greater sense of community and enhance our quality of life:

Non-profit organizations would have excellent new opportunities to create video
programming that will allow them to publicize the work they do, attract new
volunteers, request financial support and in some cases even provide training
videos to instruct their own organizations or provide public-service instruction
to the community at large.

Community discussion and debate in the form of live call-in talk shows,
interactive televised political debates and town meetings will encourage and
assist local residents to become more informed and involved in their community's
schools, government, churches and other institutions.

Local community events such as public concerts and performances, speaking
engagements or school events such as high school athletic games could be
broadcast live and then rebroadcast later as well.

Also, providing a true "free-speech" forum will allow our local community to
express ideas and opinions outside the increasingly narrow range available on
commercial media. As commercial media becomes increasingly homogenized and
consolidated into fewer and fewer very large corporations, programming that
touches on local news, issues and events is gradually fading away in the
interest of greater profits. As media channels become increasingly owned by
national corporate behemoths that are progressively being influenced more and
more by large corporate advertisers and even the federal government,
community-controlled, locally-originated programming and channels will become
increasingly valued over time.

And with emerging video-on-demand technology already being implemented elsewhere
in the country (e.g. Shrewsbury, Massachusetts), public-access programming can
be played on demand at the touch of a button on a subscriber's remote control,
greatly magnifying all these benefits.

Vital and vibrant Public Access Cable TV has great potential to bind our
community tighter, encouraging folks to become more involved and connected
within our community and increasing our qualify of life. And it could be
entirely funded not by tax revenues, but by the cable company itself from their
millions of dollars of revenue. Cable franchises are guaranteed money-making
monopolies. Profit margins in the cable industry are estimated to be as high as
40% (according to Sue Buske of The Buske Group - www.buskegroup.com , who was
consulted by the Champaign-Urbana Cable Television & Telecommunications
Commission). And with new digital video tiers, Internet access and telephone
services coming on-line nationwide, cable company revenues are projected to more
than double in the next 10 years (Kagan Research, LLC, 2005). The funding of
local public access facilities can be easily absorbed by the cable company -
it's just a matter of the cities negotiating it into the cable franchise
contract (which is currently up for renewal).

The surprise road-block:

However, the City of Champaign management staff (and potentially the City
Council, which is strongly influenced by the staff) intends to stand in the way
of all this. A staff report to be presented by City Manager Steve Carter at this
Tuesday's City Council study session declares on page 6 that "Staff recommends
Council not support the establishment and funding of a new public access
channel." The full staff report, which was published just yesterday (Friday, May
5) is available on-line at:

archive.ci.champaign.il.us/archive/dsweb/Get/Document-3975/SS%202006-029.pdf
(note: this is a very large download - 10MB)

The primary argument the staff uses to justify disregarding the recommendations
of the three other government bodies supporting a new channel is "City staff
does not believe there is sufficient public interest in a new public access
channel" (again, page 6). Yet that same staff report includes, as an attachment,
a Public Access Study Committee report (to which I contributed as a member of
that committee) that describes how "The Committee finds there is a high level of
interest in Public Access in this community" (on page 15 in Chapter 9). That
same chapter ("Assessment of Local Interest in Public Access") also describes
how:

1. over 500 community members signed a petition in favor of a "fully-funded,
independent non-profit community Public Access Television Center with dedicated
public-access cable channels" (page 21)

2. there has been a recent "dramatic growth" in use of the existing (somewhat
limited) Public Access cable facility (UPTV), having grown from 12 members in
2002 to around 200 now in 2006 and forecast to grow to nearly 500 by 2009, when
the current cable franchise contract ends (page 21). Interestingly, about half
of all UPTV members are actually residents of Champaign.

3. in response to a survey of community organizations (76 organizations
responding), 95% of the respondents said their organization has a need to
communicate with the public, 91% indicated that if staff from a Public Access
center could be used to make videos for their organization, they would use this
service. 93% said they would make use of a low-cost community camera crew or
community video production service (pages 15 through 17).

There is a clear disconnect between the findings above and City staff's
statement that they do not "believe there is sufficient public interest in a new
public access channel".

Ironically, immediately after recommending against any funding of public access
facilities, the city staff recommended (page 6) increasing the franchise-related
fees charged to the cable-company by 66% (from 3% of cable company revenues to
5% - about $225,000 annually) to fund the government-only cable channel that
they already operate (CGTV - cable channel 5) . That is, they are recommending a
dramatic new increase in funding for equipment and staffing at their own cable
channel, but none for public access.

In this way, their recommendation appears to disregard the clear public interest
in improved Public Access Cable TV in favor of self-serving funding increases
for their own existing operations.

Another curious justification the City staff puts forth as a "disadvantage" to
supporting a public access channel is that "Though supported by City dollars,
programming content on Public Access has First Amendment protections and could
not be controlled" (page 7). Of course, that statement misrepresents where the
funding would originate (cable company revenues), but more seriously it seems to
represent an unsettling contempt for free speech.

The time to act is now!

Our community will likely have only one chance to speak out in opposition to
these developments. The best way for our representatives on the Champaign City
Council to learn of the true public interest in Public Access cable TV (and the
free-speech forum it provides) is to have a strong public turnout at this week's
Champaign City Council meeting (again, 7PM Tuesday, May 9th, in the City Council
Chambers, ground floor, 102 N. Neil St.) This is a crucial and defining moment
in the effort by our community and parts of our government to finally establish
the forward-looking, community-building Public Access Cable TV facilities that
our towns deserve. Our Public Access resources have fallen behind other similar
municipalities around the country. If our community doesn't mobilize now and
speak out on Tuesday, we may have to live with feeble and increasingly
inadequate Public Access resources for more than a decade. Our community
deserves better.