For week 6 of this program I did research into the current state of public access television. While there are unfortunately few, if any, scholarly articles about public access written in the last five to ten years. However, nearly every access station has a website. While some websites are no more than a single page on the city government’s website, the vast majority have pages of extensive information about the services, programming, policies, staff, and more.

For this small research project, I looked at 22 public access centers chosen from the membership list of the Alliance for Community Media. The centers were chosen mostly randomly. For each station, I went to the website, gathered general information, and looked for the answers to the following questions: Is the station still in operation? How many cable channels does it operate and how many are public access? Besides cable, what other media platforms are utilized? How many classes are offered this month? What sort of facility are they in? How many staff members are there? What additional revenue bringing services do they offer? How much is in the “about” section? And what is the general look and feel of the website?

These questions, while they don’t give a complete picture, illuminate the current state of public access as far as how well it is funded and positioned in its communities, and what services it is capable of offering. Additionally, I noted trends in the types of programming and other aspects of public access. Let’s look at the results.

Geography of Stations Covered

I looked at public access stations from across the country. From a small town in Nebraska, to two huge centers in New York City. From Hawaii, to central Kentucky. Based on my findings it seemed that generally larger cities had better funded centers with larger staff and higher production values than smaller towns. However, I should note that many large cities did not even have a station on the Alliance for Community Media membership list.

Certain states had significantly more stations than others, for example, Hawaii and Vermont both had a high number of stations relative to their population. Vermont had about as many as California. Massachusetts had 93 stations, more than any other state. Notably, many states had zero stations, particularly southern states. Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas had none. Texas only had three. It’s worth mentioning that this is only a list of public access stations which are members of the Alliance for Community Media. There are likely many stations which are not members.

Existence

Out of the all the stations I surveyed, one was shut down, and two had such limited and difficult to find information online that I wasn’t sure if they were still operating or not. For example, Hastings Public Access in Hastings, Nebraska has no website of their own. The city government lists them as the public access franchisee, but the link to their website is just a link to the city chamber of commerce website. Deep within that site is a page for public access. That page has no information other than stating the fact that this is the public access channel and giving an email address for contact. The remaining 19 stations I surveyed were fully operational.

Cable Channels

For each center I looked at the number of channels they operated, whether they also operated government and/or educational channels, and how many channels were public access. Most small towns tended to be a single channel, sometimes running the government and public access services on the same channel. Many access centers which served medium size towns and counties operated 3 or 4 channels, typically reserving 1 for public access. Major cities had the most channels for public access, typically having a separate entity managing a separate government and educational channels. New York’s Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and BRIC in Brooklyn operated 8 and 7 channels respectively, all of which were public access.

Additional Media Platforms

Almost every access center that is operational livestreams their channels on their websites. Most have an array of programs available to watch On Demand, usually as Youtube videos embedded in their websites, sometimes as Vimeo or archive.org. Several had Roku Channels. Interestingly, 4 of the stations surveyed also operated a community radio station. Finally, 1 station in Massachuttsets operated a local news website with text based articles and videos.

Staff, Classes, Open Hours

The number of staff, the classes offered, and the number of days open are metrics of funding and services provided to the community. Basically every public access center operates on offering training courses for community members to learn production skills which give them access to equipment and the ability to make shows. More staff allows for a greater variety and frequency of classes. More open days gives working people more ability to use the services of the access station.

Most stations had around 10 staff members, with a typical range of 3-16. One had as many as 100, and one had only 1 paid staffer. The number of classes offers is equally as variant. The typical station offers 3 to 5 distinct classes, usually an orientation, field production, studio production, and editing. Some stations only offered classes on a case-by-case basis depending on interest. Some simply didn’t list their class times online. The Brooklyn center had over a hundred different classes, from one day workshops to months long courses on everything from particular types of cameras to social media advertising.

Facility

The facility can say a lot about the funding of the center as well as the quality of productions. A stand alone building has the capability to be constructed into a full television studio. Sharing a building often means compromising and dealing with noise from the neighbors. About half were in their own building, which is an excellent sign! Most of the lower budget centers were in shared retail/office spaces. Some were in large downtown-style buildings. And 4 were located in school campuses.

Additional Revenue Generating Services

This question looked at how a station gained revenue besides cable franchising fees and donations. Half of the stations had no additional operations. 4 offered for-hire video production services to non-profits (one of which also served businesses). 3 Have corporate underwriting of productions. 3 have partnerships with non-profit agencies, businesses, or government agencies to put on large community events. This shows that unlike PBS, which has become wholly dependant on corporate America, the public access television system is sustaining itself almost entirely on local government funds.

About and History Section

No website had more than about a page of information on their history, with Brooklyn’s access center having a detailed timeline of the organization’s history. The majority had no history at all, only giving a basic overview of what the place is and what services it offers the community. Generally, better funded stations had more detailed histories. This shows the difficulty of preserving the history of an organization on a shoe-string budget.

Look and Feel of Website

Surprisingly most access centers have modern and highly functional websites which are easy to navigate. This is important for an institution which calls itself community media. As the world moves away from cable television, these websites need to be ready for more visitors. There were unfortunately a few websites that had very little information. Central Vermont Community TV’s website was only a single page, which looked very old. Fortunately it did have the location, hours, and a channel guide. One channel in New Hampshire consisted of a single page on the city government’s website which had only the most essential information.

Programming

By and large the majority of programming that I could see is in-studio talk shows. Likely, this is because this style of programming is highly informative but easy to produce. This type of programming will cater to a specific community’s needs without burning anyone out. Many channels had a show which involved interviewing local elected officials. While I didn’t actually record any numbers on this, it seemed like the next most common programming was high school sports and church worship services. Some towns seemed like they only had those three categories of programming (I’m not including city council meetings which fall under the category of “government” rather than “public-access” TV). There are also a number of narrative style shows, shot with relatively simple technique.

It was clear that better funded and larger stations had higher production values, a larger variety of formats, more experimental formats, and more interesting ways of doing the traditional formats of talk shows, high school sports, and worship services. For example, in a small town, a high school football game might be recorded with only 1 or 2 cameras and broadcast after the fact with minimal graphics. Whereas in Fresno, CA, a city of about half a million, high school football is recorded with 4+ cameras and broadcast live via a mobile production van with full graphics, instant replay, and slow motion switching capabilities.

Interestingly, a number of stations ran a weekly news show produced by the station’s staff with collaboration from volunteers. This is an expensive and time consuming endeavor, but extremely valuable for a community to have a local non-profit news show.

Finally, I looked at the variation between channels within a single station. 4 access centers had multiple public access channels. All of them employed a strategy of dividing up the channels by genre, for example “public affairs,” “arts/culture,” “religious,” etc. The two New York Channels both had a channel for the best public access productions.

Conclusion
It’s clear that public access continues to operate despite a culture which is shifting away from cable television. Some stations are better positioned than others to weather such a change. Some stations have massive staffs and budgets and offer hundreds of community programs. Others operate on shoe-string budget and can barely get enough content to fill their airtime. While this divide is typically a big city-small town divide. There are notable exceptions. For example, Humboldt Public Access in California has an extremely vibrant system with two dedicated public access channels despite being a rural community.

It is also clear that there is a need to do more rigorous research on public access, and find out what’s driving the institution today. Perhaps I’ll take this on for my final project.