Bringing the standards and practices of broadcast journalism to the public access facilityBy Paul D. Berg

Doing News! 2

Foreword

In a recent article addressing the changing face of public, educational and governmental(PEG) access TV centers today, Kari Peterson, Executive Director of Davis CommunityTV in Davis, California suggested that as they have matured in their communities,access centers have had to reinvent themselves -- reconsider their basic mission.Where public access was once seen merely as an "electronic podium," standing at theready for a citizen to come forward and exercise his or her right to free speech, thelessons learned through years of operation within communities have required thataccess centers meet other demands and expectations of the communities which supportthem.Many access center directors will have experienced a certain misplaced expectation laidupon them by well-meaning boards of directors or town cable advisory panels. Thesegroups, fresh from a franchise renewal process in which they had asserted that the cablecompany's

local origination

channel was not doing the kinds of programs the townwanted, and winning the battle to get that company to give the town its own

accesschannel

, now turn to their newly hired access director (You!) and say: "Make us the kindof programs we want to see!"It is easy to see how this situation became confused. First, there were few hard-and-fastdefinitions in the early days about what local access or origination channels weresupposed to do in a community. And the community didn't know what it wanted either --didn't know what to ask for.But as communities came to realize that they've been given what amounts to their own

TV station

-- in some cases complete with a multi-camera studio, live capability, andeven a paid professional or two -- they start to ask (and rightly so!), "Where are the TVprograms?"In the early days, access center directors who had studied "the gospel" of PEG accesswould respond that access centers don't make programs, but that they stand ready toteach citizen volunteers how to make their own programs. To this litany, the committeemembers would respond with a question which we've all heard, that is more of an angryexclamation: "You mean we have to wait for somebody to want to make a program, andthen let them do whatever they want!?" To this, of course, we answered, "Yup!"It was right that the early, growth years of access asserted the free speech, do-what-you-want aspect of the "P" in PEG access. And it is surely the most vital and sustainingquality of our centers today -- the fact that we provide a vehicle for freedom of speech.This right to and means of access must be maintained. But communities have rightlycome to understand that the "E" and the "G" in our missions have some potential tobuild, as Kari Peterson said, "community value." Though the agreements andordinances under which we operate may be vague on the subjects of educational andgovernmental access, or they may not have exactly given local authorities the rightto demand that an access center produce programming,

it is in our vital best interest to fulfill a TV programming need when such a need is identified by our community