Community Video Report (Spring 1974)

pies The last issue of Community Video Report featured some of the conclusions we have reached here at WCVC regarding the theory and practice of ‘community video."’ This issue we are continuing to explore the many issues and problems in general. area by talking with representatives of several community-based video projects around the country. These interviews were conducted during the hectic days of the NCTA annual convention last April in Chicago. In addition, we are printing excerpts from a transcript of a rather lively panel on public access and related subjects held at the NCTA Convention. Finally, we are printing interviews with FCC Chairman Richard Wiley and communications consultant and businessman Theodore Ledbetter. The following are excerpts from a workshop on Public Access programming held the final day of the NCTA Convention in April. Panel members, in speaking order are: : Maurice Jacobsen, Los Angeles Public Access Project; Marsha Dolby, Bakersfield, California, Video Access Center; Jim Thomas, Rockford Cablevision, Rockford, Ill.; and David Othmer, author of The Wired Island. There was a lively exchange from the audience, including a few cable programmers and those workers in video and public access. (Jacobsen started off his presentation with a short tape called ‘‘Public What?. . ."’ showing responses by L.A. residents to the question, what is public access? Out of some 80 responses, only two really knew for sure what public access is. The rest responded with a variety of interesting, often hilarious descriptions.) Jacobsen: The point of the tape, obviously, is that folks really don’t have any idea what public access is, and all the people in the tape we talked to live in cabled areas. ..So what does that mean?...The two people on the staff of the cable system in L.A. in charge of public access weren't allowed to come to the convention, presumably because the management felt that there was nothing to learn here. ...The main thing I would like to say to the cable operators who are here today is that public access could be an incredible tool for building interest in the cable system and as a direct correlation to that, building a subscriber base in the community. In Los Angeles, for example, the cable system passes 225,000 homes...and the saturation rate is about thirty-five percent. If just one percent Memphis: women get cable channel By Victoria Costello Cable programming for and by women will begin in Memphis, Tenn. when the first women’s channel begins its operations there this fall. At the recent NCTA convention, Ms. Ann Rickey, president of the Memphis Women’s Channel Inc., related to me some of the group’s history and its current status there. We spoke about funding, and about the exciting potential of other women’s channels organizing around the country. It is towards this goal of a future network of women’s channels in CATV systems that the Memphis women direct those inquiring about their project, and it is in this same hope that I'll pass along some of the information I picked up in our conversation. : Women in Cable of Memphis, Inc., raised its own seed money with the sale of stock to members of the community, including many of their own groups and other local women. They also carried on a massive publicity and organizing campaign, an effort of a coalition of 18,000 Memphis women. The Women’s Channel represents a vast spectrum of women's groups within the community ranging from the AAUW, the Women’s Political Caucus, to the DAR and Church Women United. In the earliest days of the franchise hearings before the City Council, this highly organized group <f Memphis women approached all of the CATV bidders and got each of them to agree to the idea of a women’s channel. Apparently the present cable owner hasn't actually given much support to the project but the firm coalition of Memphis women have gathered their own audience, demand, and potential advertising revenues and thereby have virtually assured their own existence. Because of its success at becoming the first women’s channel, the Memphis Women’s Channel Inc. is evolving into a clearinghouse for information and resources for women with [See MEMPHIS, p. 13] of those 225,000 homes hook up to the cable because of public access...and would not otherwise subscribe to public access, then the theta system would bring in over $140,000 a year. That’s a substantial amount of money, just as a direct result of public access besides all ancillary publicity and public interest, that can be generated by public access programming. It has been a message that we have been bringing to the convention for 212-3 years, that public access is an incredible tool, if you market, publicize, and support it, but we have always been put in backseat positions that here is something that these crazy mediafreaks went down to Washington and lobbied for and now got it and now we gotta live with it. Without really understanding it, or what's really worse, taking the effort to try to under_.and what the potential of public access is. A lot of the groups have an amazing amount of energy, idealism and drive to make it work. It was interesting to note that at the convention this year, that independent of any discussions we had between ourselves, a lot of major independent access groups are now turning to PBS for support and interest and to our surprise finding incredible openness, incredible support in our efforts to utilize public broadcasting UHF, VHF, channels for public accéss-type programming. I think that the cable industry is really going blow a good thing with us. I really think that you are not going to take advantage of the potential in this room, and by not doing that, I think public access is a sucker, possibly the industry might suffer. Dolby:. I represent the,Community Video Access Center in Bakersfield, California, which is approximately 100 miles north of Maurice here. We have developed over a year and a half, a sort of different attitude from the people in Los Angeles, and from many of the people around the country. Maybe it’s because Bakersfield is sort of a conservative town. We have about 200,000 people in greater Bakersfield. Really isolated by deserts and mountains. There just aren’t a lot of what cable people call videofreaks in our town. So keep that in mind as I give this talk, which is going to be sort of different from some of the things that video people have come to know. Our public access is on a Warner system. It was one of the AMC [Alternate Media Center, New York University] projects begun in 1972, and we were supported for a year by Warner, as was DeKalb. How many heard DeKalb’s presentation this morning? We’re in the same position that they are. Warner supported us for a year, and then in December decided to give us only equipment and no money. Anyway, the philosophy we have developed in Bakersfield is that public access is an opportunity for the community, rather than a right. Maybe this is because this was offered to us by the cable company, not by a group of people who went out and lobbied. . . But what has happened is—and we’re very proud of this—that all kinds of people in Bakersfield are using public access, from Establishment groups....I’m public information director for the Library and we have used cable and video very, very heavily. Many county departments have used it. Clubs have used it. People from the college and high schools, elementary schools. We have reached a broad crosssection of the community in using access. They are using it with the idea that we are developing a community resource center, a community information system, where anybody in the community can go and make a tape. In some communities, I think that people who feel videofreaks are the ones who use access are afraid to come in or feel it’s not for them. I don’t know; we don’t have the freaks, so they all come in. We don’t try to compete with commercial television. In fact, we have a good relationship with them. We can get all the news on commercial television we want. The only reason I’m here today is that one of the commercial station managers donated the money to send Mes Another way we differ from many access groups around the country I know is that we don’t go into production, especially those who emphasize creative kind of video. We try to make everything as easy as possible, because we know we have housewives, elementary school kids, and senior citizens all coming in. A lot of them won't come in if we’re going to require them to come to all sorts of production workshops. In terms of our set-up, it’s really very simple. It’s not nearly as elaborate as say DeKalb’s. We have 5 black-and-white portapaks, two 3650 editing decks, accessories, etc. We have access to the cable, but we don’t have our own channel. We are allocated a certain time slot on the Warner system. We make our tapes, take them down, and they put them on. We can’t do our own cablecasting. We can’t go on, but we do have the access, and that’s what’s important. During the first 1!4 years, we trained about 900 people, plus representatives of many groups in town. We cablecast about 600 hours of programming. Some of the projects we have VIDEO PEOPLE FROM throughout the U.S. and Canada set up two rooms to screen tapes and hold discussions at the NCTA Convention in late April in “Video Environments.” been working on... through the local college, which operates a program for senior citizens, is to give a class in video to them. In return for our doing this, Bakersfield College has given us a building for facilities for rent-free. The Kern County Library where I work has applied for some federal money to operate a project to carry library services to shut-ins and people who can’t get out of their homes using video. We'll be working through the Video Access Center to do this... . I want to talk for a minute on funding. From what I’ve heard, this has been the major topic of discussion so far. As I said, the Access Center in Bakersfield was completely supported far Warner cable for a year. And we have now been extended until the end of June. Since that time, we have done a lot of the things that everybody else has been doing... writing proposals, going to city government, all the businesses in town, anyone who has money, giving presentations, everything we can think of to get money. Last week we were asked to give a presentation to the California Joint Committee on Telecommunications. . . . They, I think, are developing the attitude that [See NCTA, p. 12] uewaesy puejoy :0}0Ud Chicago. Above, folks are watching tapes in on€ of the MAURICE JACOBSEN and other public access advocates interview FCC Chairman Richard Wiley in Interview with Maurice Jacobsen, LOS ANGELES PUBLIC ACCESS PROJECT, 1802 Berkeley St., Santa Monica, Calif. 90404 (213) 828-8900. Nick: Number one, what are some of the similarities of problems in community video around the country? Jake: It’s kind of progressed. Three years ago we all had a common problem of trying to figure out how we were going to get access to cable and access to the media. Our whole philosophy was basically alien to broadcasters and cable people. I think we've gotten beyond that now. I think the whole concept of public access has gained a lot of credibility in the last three years. The next level for video groups was how to get equipment. I think a lot of groups have solved that through initial foundation support and/or institutional support. So, now we're beyond the philosophical goal of access, beyond the simple fact of getting the equipment to produce the programming. Now there are two: critical areas: one is how to best use the medium to its potential to create programs that people will watch in a meaningful fashion—there becomes a real interrelation between the community and the producers of programming; and there’s the problem of developing an economic base to let that happen on a long-term basis. Those are shared needs, shared problems between groups. Nick: Is there a major distinction between groups that have cable in their cities and groups that don't? Jake: No. I only see cable as one channel of access. I think broadcasting is important, obviously. The whole concept of closed-circuit systems—where a tape is made for specific audiences—is really critical. So cable is just one method of distribution that can be considered by a community video group. If there’s not cable in a community, and with the current degree of sophistication in the cable industry and the marginal degree of support from the industry. . .we find that many of the more important groups are ones that are independent of the cable. It is the whole question of utilizing media to organize people and raise their consciousness about issues of life. Nick: But those groups which came into being around the cable system—which wouldn’t have existed but for some cable operator giving them money—they are more inhibited in their philosophical outlook. They don’t agree with what you just said. Jake: I really feel, especially after being here at the convention and meeting all sorts of people, that public access really reflects an awful lot about the person or persons running the access center or the access channel. If the people in a community have a strong political sense, then their programs are going to be much more relevant than if someone running the access center sees himself really as a facilitator, without understanding totally the reality of being part of the cable industry itself. A lot of the groups tied directly to the cable operator are incredibly naive in their whole approach towards media, how they are uewaely PUB/OY :0\0Ud the hall outside the “Video Environment” at the NCTA Convention in Chicago (Interview starts, p. 1) Milwaukee: three pre-cable video projects going strong Interview with Michele Goldstein and John Pawasarat, INPUT, Community Video Center, 1015 W. Mitchell, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204. [414] 645-8116. Nick: Could you describe INPUT? John: INPUT started in April 1972 out of an alternative high school, the Independent Learning Center in the south side of Milwaukee, a Latin and poor white community. How it started was that we were working with media, trying to find ways to help community groups better articulate what the issues were—slide shows, 16mm, 8mm, and we got turned on to this videotape thing. We got a loan—$3,000 from friends—and bought some equipment on the promise that we would get funded within a year to pay them back...so we began, teaching ourselves. And the thing was so successful that about 6 months later we moved out of the school and incorporated, starting to try to get grant money to survive. The basic issues we were concerned with were offering training and resources to community groups, and to do some research on cable television in Milwaukee, which was becoming pretty imminent. Nobody knew anything about it...so we’ve been doing this for two years. Michele: | think it’s important to say that the INPUT thing was primarily focused on the South Side. We weren’t going to go all over the city to all sorts of community groups and doing a million different things that really didn’t affect any kind of an area and where you couldn’t see the results of what you were doing. Nick: Are there other community video projects in other Milwaukee neighborhoods? John: INPUT was the first one, and then about a year ago, some West Side people, mostly from an organization called West Side Action Coalition, an Alinsky-type organizing group. We knew a lot of those people and they started using our equipment. So we said, OK, it’s a very valuable tool, and there wasn’t nearly so much tight, professional-type organizing going on in the South side, so we all talked and let them use our equipment for about six months on the premise that they would get started and begin their own thing, which was very successful. Michele: West Side working with the Coalition has, I think, put together some very effective video on very specific issues: the kind of work they do is very action-oriented. They will make a tape documenting the issue, but then they use the tape to follow the actions, to use in kind of an evaluation thing; one, just for themselves—to see how things went, what they could do next time to change things; but also, then for people who couldn’ t participate: they have tons of showings in the community of what happened at the action, what’s the next step. It’s a way to involve more people than just the bodies that participate in an action. The other thing that has happened in Milwaukee is that John and other people at INPUT wanted to make the kinds of things they were doing there available on a citywide basis. That’s how the Community Video Exchange Project began. They talked with people from Channel 10, the Public Broadcasting Station in Milwaukee, to try and cooperate in developing this kind of thing citywide. They did a survey of community agencies that service people to see what kind of need there would be, and what kind of interest in video resources. On the basis © that the project.was formed. Then the Public Library agreed to house the thing at the Central branch, and it got off the ground. Nick: Where does the money come from? John: The money comes from the Cudahay Fund, a local foundation in Milwaukee, with secondary grants from the Milwaukee Foundation and the Johnson Foundation—Johnson’s Wax, in Racine. I think the significant thing was that Channel 10 saw this as an opportunity to extend a lot of their programming into the community. Michele: The Library, you know, is faced with the real problem of people not coming into the Library anymore. It’s obvious they are going to have to do other things to get people involved in their resources. .. .One effect we hope we're having is that the playback part of our work can become taken over by the library institution itself, and that would free us to work on training and other things. Many libraries, in fact are actually getting into buying equipment and doing production themselves, going out and trying to get the community involved. That, I think, is really exciting. You know, libraries are pretty neutral things in most communities, and that gives them the potential to provide a great many resources in a way that people will use them. Nick: Do you relate to other institutions in the city as a formal thing? . John: We offer basic video training to Just about anyone...just a simple hour-long workshop on how the equipment works, etc. Our policy is that any institution. . .government, universities, public schools. . . people with bucks...We’re not going to be a free service to groups with tax-based budgets. We offer free services to community groups in Milwaukee. Individuals cannot just come in by themselves, even. They can’t ‘just come in and make an artsy-craftsy tape. They have to be working with a community group on some issue to gain access to the PortaPaks. Nick: One last thing: what point is the cable TV franchising process is Milwaukee? John: They're going to give a franchise out, maybe next fall. Michele: A year ago one of the aldermen had appointed a citizens advisory committee to study a cable ordinance that they city attorney had drawn up. Four years before that the city council had granted a franchise, which was vetoed by the mayor. Then the issue was dead for a while. Then there was a moratorium on cable statewide, and a state commission, Then last year our city council got back into it by drawing up this ordinance. John and I serve on this so-called citizens advisory committee, which isn’t really too much. We were supposed to be evaluating this ordinance. What has happened is that a city utilization committee within the government has become real active. Government is moving in on the issue from their point of view, what they like to see happen. Nick: What sort of community organizing have you been doing around cable? John: We do a lot of things all the time. A lot of time, it kind of gets to be a pain in the ass. Groups just have us come in to talk about cable tv because it’s a nice thing to talk about at a meeting. But I think as groups begin using the video equipment, they begin to realize the dimensions of the technology and what cable TV might mean. That's usually how groups get interested in cable in the first place. Michele: We're not going around pushing cable. We talk about the fact that cable is becoming a reality, that it is an issue that is relevant to them, to become involved in. Cable seems to be a constant part of our work, though, because it is an issue that isn’t going away. But there’s not a high level of awareness in Milwaukee, I'd say... . using and being used by the cable system. | And when the plug is pulled—the plug being the financial support of the cable system— they don’t know where to go, where to turn. They’re not prepared for it because they’ve been handed things. Access is something that anyone could run—a pet orangutang could run an access center. Nick: That’s true, once you’ve got the concept together—who you're serving, what you're doing, how you're able to go about it. The biggest problem, though, isn’t defining your audience in the first place, isn’t it? Jake: I don’t know whether some of the access groups are fully cognizant of that, it’s something you have to learn over time. The first impulse is—wow, let's just go out and let people relate to it, not really thinking about the whole process of what getting it on the cable means....Two or three years ago, people used to come to us and say, we've gotta tape this conference, there’s just great material that people have got to save... .This sort of thing still happens, but we sit down with them, before we even talk about taping and say, ‘‘Look, these are the questions you’ve gotta answer for us: how is your tape going to be distributed, how’s it going to be edited? How are you going to handle the finances? How are you going to show it, so that you don’t have to depend on us for a playback deck everytime you want to see the tape.” Two-thirds of those people, once they understand the realities of the situation, will decide that maybe taping is not the best thing access: 9 for them to do, it might be more energy or expense than they want to utilize. We have been educating members of existing community groups as to how they can best utilize the media to get their message across. As far as cable is concerned, I see the concept of leased-channel access being ultimately more important than the public access stations. Nick: Could you explain the difference? Jake: Public access channel—and rightly so—that is scheduled on a first-come, firstserved basis. A leased channel is one where a group of people can get together to schedule their programming in some sort of meaningful fashion, whether it be news, education, whatever. But that station or channel will have some direction to it. Some of the things that will obviously happen to the public access channel are: groups who have money, who are established, will be able to produce better programming for public access. And they’re going to be the groups who already have access now—the symphonies, community drama centers—they’re going to be able to get money to produce for public access, and it’s going to be a perfectly socially acceptable vehicle for this to happen. And the sophistication in programming in public access will probably become very, very high over the years. But it won’t mean very much, because it’s all going to be watered down together, homogenized. And I think that’s a reality we’re going to have to face. [See LOS ANGELES, p. 13] Minneapolis: student-based video work Interview with Ron McCoy, UniversityCommunity Video Access Center, Studio A, Riarig Center, U. Minnesota, Minneapolis. (612) 373-9838. McCoy: What we're doing in Minneapolis is the University-Community Video Access Center, which is a room, a space at the University of Minnesota, which we use as a workroom. We don’t do any in-house studio productions. It is sponsored through student fees at the University of Minnesota, through the Minnesota Unions, the student union, which provides 60% of the budget, $25-30,000 to run a video access center—access to portapaks. The other group up there is the TeleCommunications Corporation, which was formed by the student government. Student government at Minnesota isn’t very strong, they realized that and formed three non-profit organizations before they folded. They just folded three weeks ago. There was a referendum on campus and the students voted down the student government. There are 40,000 students at U/Minn; it’s a commuter campus. 80% drive in. Some dorms. The campus has its own cable system, much like Syracuse. It has good educational programming on this cable system. We've been subsidized by student fees for two years. We were independent last year. We have a combined operating budget of $50,000—3" paid staff. One person is picked up by the New Careers Program. We have work-study students and interns who work there. Our big effort this year has been programming on the cable system—15 minutes at the top of every hour. We have a captive audience in the classrooms. We also try to do ‘public access. We’re in the same boat as D.C.—no cable. We've been trying to do access for two years, but there’s no cable. Cable’s been studied to death in Minnesota. It’s under state regulation now. The State Commission has to write rules and regulations concerning cable, the technical part of it as well as the access. Most of the cable in the state is rural. TelePrompTer is in Duluth, Rochester. .. What we've been trying to do is profit-making gigs. We now have a corporation which has profit-making components to route the money into worthwhile activities like public access. We have a 70-30 breakdown for gigs we do. The equipment’s available, but most of the money goes into the Center. In the middle of this are 5-7 people who have been doing this for the last four years now. West Bank Union Community Video Access, which started in 1972, and the TeleCommunications Corporation, also started in 1972, together form the University-Community Video Access Center... . Since there’s no cable, our efforts at a video theatre failed. Our visibility on campus is very low. We’re on the Sth floor of an academic building. The only video storefront in town folded. We can’t really leave the University, because we’re funded from student fees. So we’re working on the pilot for a PBS access. The pilot, called Communi-Tube, ran in January. It was a half-hour, 2” color production, a 2” color intro with a sampler of half-inch tapes run off a scan-converter to i tapes....We’re now into negotiations for a regular weekly half-hour or bi-weekly hour on the local educational station, which is a PBS affiliate. _ Unfortunately, the management of Channel 2...feels that they are doing public access now. They have one program on prime-time Wednesday nights on their UHF affiliate, which is in the same building, called ‘‘People and Causes.” People pay $20/hour to come on, using their studio with 16mm film or slides. We've used that a number of times, with half-inch tapes shot off a monitor. . . But nobody can get the UHF channel anyway. The only way we got the show in January was through the University. People at the station didn’t know it was half-inch tape until the day before... We've had more response to the CommuniTube since it was aired by our playing it closed-circuit. We did it at a museum show, some 61,000 people went to that. So we actually got more showing at that and trucking it around than on broadcast. Nick: Why did the storefront fold? Ron: The storefront had no funding base. It was run through the College of Art and Design, Minneapolis. Some students borrowed the equipment from the College. They screwed it up somehow, and got that taken away. The University Video Center hadn’t started then, so the only place in town to get equipment was at the Model Cities Communications Center, which ran for 2% years, and is now phased out. There was a group prior to that a few years ago that tried to set up the original Community Video Center in Minneapolis. These were the same core of people that are now working at the University Center. Different organizations, same people -working together, trying to make public access work. So this is the last bastion of public access in Minneapolis, the Video Center at the University. If we don’t get through the funding hassles we're having now, we’ll probably fold up and go underground. nts