Community Video Report (Spring 1974)

‘peviews: 11 Media: do it! Doing The Media, 1972, The Center for Understanding Media, Inc. 267 W. 25th St., N.Y.C., N.Y. 10001, John M. Culkin, ‘Director. 219 pages. In the words of John Culkin, director of the Center for Understanding Media (CUM), the collective author of this book, “It has always made good sense for people who live on water to learn how to swim.” Doing the Media arrives in the media ocean as a life preserver for many of us floundering around about there, some too tired or unwilling to learn new strokes, others recently pitched in for the first time. Obviously dedicated mariners, the ‘“‘wasteland”’ attitude towards media is absent here. While Culkin’s group would object to periodic network oil slicks, their book advances a positive attitude towards media. It exhorts readers to try their hands in doing media in a variety of forms including videotape, film, cameralens film, still photography, overhead projectors, graphics. The readers are urged to bring what they learn into the classroom to, as Culkin says, ‘‘to move media up by moving ourselves down.” Marking the gap between the culture of media and school culture and the resulting dissonance in the experience of our youth, CUM set out to bring media into the schools. The first step was to import media skills to teachers and then to students. They experimented at an elementary school in Mamaro neck, N.Y. and from 1% years of work modeled a curriculum of media studies applicable to any school situation. This book describes that curriculum, which, for its breadth, and imagination, most graduate students’ of media would do well to embrace. All teachers should read it for it discusses the uses of media in relation to all subjects, as well as how to teach media. The guiding principle of CUM in this endeavor was to allow “‘our’’ children to be active, intelligent, appreciative and selective consumers of total media culture, just as in the past we have tried to develop taste and appreciation for the traditional arts and humanities. Doing the Media will contribute greatly in advancing the principle in our schools. —Grady Watts Cosmic Cosmic Mechanix Communications Directory (INDEX Publications, P.O. Box 699, Port Townsend, Washington 98368. 1973. $2.95) This large-format, Whole-Earth-Catalogsized publication is the first in a projected series dealing with future-oriented technologies. It consists of some 62 pages of reprints from all manner of sources about various communications technologies, including satellites, spacecraft, space photography, videocassettes, cable TV, videotape, computers, video, biofeedback devices, etc. It’s a strange melange of materials, from sources as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Radical Soft ware. For the novice, the book provides an array of information samples. However, if the section on video and cable is any guide, much of the material is several years out of date. INDEX (which stands for Information Delivery Experiments) plans additional issues of Cosmic Mechanix on alternative energy, including solar, methane, wind, hydrogen, geothermal, and tidal. You can order both from the address above. Finding bread The Bread Game: The Realities of Foundation Fundraising, by Regional Young Adult Project & Pacific Change. (San Francisco: Glide Publications, 330 Ellis Street. 94102.) 88 pp. $1.95. “Well, just how do you get money to do video?” the earnest young videofreek asked in a conclave of video people at the NCTA convention in April. And so we all talked about our experiences with filing for tax exemptions, to forget about Ford and Markle Foundations, how he should concentrate on his local community foundations first. We all had tips and suggestions, made lo these many times. The easiest way for us to have answered his question, however, would have been to hand him a copy of The Bread Game. Written for non-establishment, community-oriented groups who are trying to raise funds for the first time, this handy little manual has the most comprehensive and easiest-to-understand instructions that we’ve ever seen. There are no hot secrets about how to cop a bundle of dough quick, but there are chapters ‘on ‘classification, how to write a proposal, how to find non-profit sponsors and apply for an IRS tax-emption, how to set up accurate bookkeeping procedures, how to report to a foundation once you have a grant, and some sample proposals. ‘Media organizing workshop setin L.A. during August “What the Media Does to You & What | You Can Do to the Media” is the title of a ‘summer workshop on public access to the media in Los Angeles July 29 to August 30. Organized by L.A. Public Access Project and Antioch College/West, the workshop is designed for people interested in gaining the skills of community media organizing. Focus of the course will be: why there should be access to media, how it can be acquired, and what can be done with access. Resource people have been scheduled from WCVC in D.C., Community Coalition for Media Change, Berkeley, Committee for Open Media, San Francisco, UCLA, USC’s Annenberg School of Communication, and National Film Board of Canada’s Challenge for Change. Full tuition for three hours college credit from Antioch: $350, and $300 for non-credit registration. Full and partial scholarships are available to those demonstrating financial need. Inexpensive accommodations have been arranged. Further information: Cary McMahon, Maurice Jacobsen at LAPA, 1802 Berkeley St., Santa Monica, Ca. 90404 (213) 828-9800; or Charles Bell at Antioch/ West, 1067 Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles Ca. 90046. (213) 656-8520. Ledbetter: ‘I think cable is a great technology’ [LEDBETTER, from p. 6] CVR: What do you think this will do in terms of programming on your station? Ledbetter: Well, that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to predict. There are so many variables. I know what kind of things are possible today. But a lot of it will depend on the response of the community, and our ability to work with the community and vice versa. We will be just like every other television station—a licensee working in the public interest— and I don’t say that lightly, at all. We will be looking to do certain kinds of things because we know our success will depend on how well we respond to the communities. So what happens really depends on that relationship, on the education of the people that we bring on the staff. But at the same time, it will depend on the ability of the community with respect to what can be done with television. Right now, I think a lot of people, not just in Washington, are in great awe of television. When they see something they don’t like, they accept it and say, there’s nothing I can do about that. What they should be doing is calling and writing the station. By the same token, when they see something they do like, they ought to be letting the station know... . CVR: With respect with your hopes to develop ties with different communities, do you think that the existence in D.C. of quite a large number of people working in half-inch video will be an advantage? What kind of relationships do you see developing there with your station? Ledbetter: This will be an advantage. There are a lot of people who are familiar with equipment, who have worked with cameras. More importantly, people who have had good reason to think of television programming as form and content, and to turn over in their minds what they would really like to see. Again, I don’t like to predict what will happen with anything... . CVR: Let’s put it this way: at what point in time would you be interested in hearing from people who have program ideas and suggestions? Ledbetter: Oh, I would be interested in hearing from people who have program suggestions anytime. No problem. What we can’t deal with now are specific programs. It’s just too early.... CVR: D.C. has always been pointed to as one of the cities with a significant history of communications activism, because of the major challenges to the broadcast licenses here. You’ve had some involvement there, and your colleagues have been involved. Did this experience in not succeeding in efforts to deny broadcast licenses have anything to do with what you’re doing now? Ledbetter: My main experience in working with license challenge groups was as a technical advisor, with respect to Black Efforts for Soul in Television. To balance that, though, I've been a technical advisor to the Office of Telecommunications Policy. What I was interested in doing with both of these, and everybody who was a client of mine when I was a communications consultant, was to de-mystify the technology. To deal with the technology in plain layman’s terms. I figured that I’m no smarter than the average person, and if I could understand how a television station or a cable system works, and I could explain it to somebody else, then they could understand it.... There was something very beneficial to me in working with community groups, and that was getting a good feel for and understanding for the kinds of attitudes they had toward television, some of which they weren’t aware of. Prior to that time I used to sit and watch television programs and I would get pissed off at something that happened on TV, I’d have the attitude that well, it’s just me. All the ratings and the networks and everybody says that most people like that. So there must be something wrong with me, I was telling myself, since I didn’t like it. But working with community groups and clients, I discovered that there are a lot of people who felt the same way about it as I did. It gave me a lot more confidence. I felt that if we were able to get some cable TV stations, some TV stations, that there was an audience out there for it. Prior to that, I wasn’t sure there was an audience with interests similar to mine, to my friends, like yours... .I think the response to WHUR-FM here in Washington is a perfect example of that. Minority cable ownership CVR: Could you comment on where the cable television industry is today, particularly as far as the progress of minority organizations in ownership of cable? Ledbetter: The most beautiful thing—something I never expected to have happen this soon—happened a few weeks ago in Gary, Indiana, when an agreement was reached between Gary Communications Group, which is a local, black-owned cable television system, and its competition, the TelePrompTer (TPT) subsidiary in Gary. The agreement said that Gary Communications Group would buy TPT’s physical plant. This started two years ago, when TPT had a franchise and were slow in constructing the system, so a local group of 20 black guys got together, put up some money and went in and got a second citywide franchise. The TPT administration at that time took a hard line stand to fight these guys. It got down to some very close skirmishes on the poles and in the alleys. At the same time, the companies were relating to each other very competitively. With the changes at TPT, they had to back out of some systems that they couldn’t afford to construct. So we come to a very significant point, when a local black group, that on its own financed and built a cable television system in its own community, is able to buy out its competition. Overall, in the country, there are three major cities that have all or part of the city franchised to black groups—Gary, Seattle, and Atlanta, as of last summer. In the last few months, additional franchises have been granted to black groups in cities like Los Angeles and Compton, Calif., some franchises in upstate Michigan, and smaller towns around the country. You can get an exact update on that from Cablecommunications Resource Center, Charles Tate’s office. The most positive things are: 1) these are black groups that are doing, for the most part on their own, without assistance from the multiple system operators. 2) They are local groups, the majority of the groups are local, long-time, life-time residents of those communities... .I think it’s very positive that they now know they can do it, and are in a position to make the decisions that will affect their community, because that’s where they live. . . . CVR: What about the state of the cable industry as a whole? Optimistic, pessimistic? Ledbetter: I'm optimistic. I think cable is a great technology. I think it’s been over-regulated, on all levels... . The most important determinant in terms of cable service, is the ownership, not the specific regulations. You can’t anticipate every situation or it’d be 500 pages long. The only area I’m pessimistic about cable is the major urban markets, the top ten cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, etc. I’m pessimistic, primarily because: 1) the federal regulations discriminate against the urban markets... . .2) In the last year or two black groups have reached a position of strength where a lot of the franchises in these major markets will go to black groups when they are franchised. And I think there are still a lot of people in this country on all levels who are not ready to accept the fact that a black group is able to build and operate and construct and service a cable television system for all people in a particular community. The economic discrimination with respect to the central cities in the top markets, coupled with this attitude, basically an attitude that “niggers can’t do it’—those two combined will delay cable development in the major urban markets for some time. Washington has a third thing going against it. The rules are even more discriminatory because of the closeness of the Washington television market to the Baltimore market. A cable system in Washington could not carry the Baltimore signals as local signals, even though half of the people in Washington can pick them up quite well. . .so you would have a situation where a cable television salesman in NE Washington would be trying to convince somebody to pay $6/month for fewer channels than he would get off the air. And that obviously wouldn’t work. ‘D.C. cable TV problems CVR: Are there other problems you see for cable in Washington? Will Washington ever be cabled? Ledbetter: I think Washington will be cabled. I’m not sure it will happen in the next five years, even if the franchising started by the end of this year, which may be a possibility....We have some local regulations that affect cable in Washington. One is the fire-code zone limits, which means in the downtown areas and along the major arterial streets—which is about one-third of the area of street miles—you cannot have any aerial construction of cztle.... Since it costs so much to build cable under the grouad, costs will be much higher here. Also, a lot of the downtown area has ducting which is, to a certain degree, restricted, which may make costs even higher. The most important decision to be made in any cable television franchising as far as I’m concerned. ..is going to cause those of us who live here to really think about it. That is how to franchise multiple districts. Most of us agree that you shouldn’t have one franchise going to one group, whether it’s local or national. ...Somehow, we have to split Washington, D.C. into districts. All of the studies show that cable is feasible in an area of medium density, that is 200-300 homes per mile, when you reach into an area with subscriber potential of 20,000 subscribers. There are parts of Washington with household densities above 1,000 households per mile. So, yeah, cable will work in D.C. But somehow D.C. has to be split into multiple cable districts so that 1) franchises will be granted to corporations which included local residents in each of those areas so that the programming, and other needs could be best determined; 2) and by splitting it up, you lower the capital costs necessary to build each system, thereby bringing it into range of local people. If you franchise the whole system to one company, it will take more than $30 million to wire Washington. I don’t know of any local group that can afford that, outside of The Washington Post. .