What’s After Public Access?

Posted: August 30th, 2011 | Author: Bruce Borowsky | Filed under: Community, Film/Video Production | Tags: Public Access TV, storytelling, Video Production | No Comments »

Remember when we were promised 500 channels on TV? Well, it’s funny; now that it’s here, I’m wishing they would take some away. It seems like out of that 500, about 300 of them are “reality” shows of some sort, then another 150 are sports channels, and the remainder show back-to-back episodes of “Law & Order” or “CSI.”  Whatever happened to programming of the people, by the people?

Back in the day (meaning about 20 years ago), there was this thing called Public Access television.  It was where Zach and I, and many people we work with now, got their start in professional video production. It was a place where you could make a TV show about anything you wanted, and then have it broadcast to the whole city. For free. Did I mention it could be about anything you wanted?

Public Access TV was where you could find people talking about their cultures, their communities, their individuality. There were no class wars, because it was a level playing field: everyone had access to the same equipment, and it was all shown on the same channel. What mattered was how you told your story.  And boy, were there a lot of stories!  Living in San Francisco in the late 1980′s, there were shows being produced by everyone in that colorful community:  on any given day, you’d see Hmong stories, Laotian stories, Vietnam veteran stories – it was a gold mine, a treasure trove of community-based TV programming.

In those days, I used to volunteer on a show called The Doghouse. I was shown how to operate one of the three video cameras in the studio, and then all of a sudden, we’re broadcasting live to the whole city.  There’s a great feeling of excitement when working on a live TV show – any mistakes you make are seen immediately, there’s no editing.  So it would always be fun, during my several month tenure on that show, to see and hear the wild things guests would do, especially frequent guest-host Jello Biafra, who always had something fun to talk about.

When I moved to Boulder a little over 20 years ago, I started hanging out in the little Public Access facility here, volunteering on a variety of shows, meeting people, learning new equipment. There was a great energy, and it was exciting to see what people were doing in a town a lot smaller than San Francisco. Like most cities, the City of Boulder has a franchise agreement with Comcast, and as part of that agreement, Comcast would provide three TV channels, along with funding (equipment) for those channels! Those channels were to be for what is known as “PEG” programming:  Public, Educational, and Government.

Alas, these days in Boulder, Public Access is no more. For a variety of reasons, the wonderful Public Access channel we used to enjoy here is dead.  Somehow it got absorbed into the Government channel and the Education channel, so unfortunately people have to go to neighboring cities who still have a local station.

However, one could give the argument that, now in the 21st century, the Internet has made a “TV channel” irrelevant.  Now one can make that same program – about anything they want – and the world can watch it, not just a small town. BDA tries to fill the many gaps of Public Access by offering the Filmmaking Incubator that gets people to collaborate on a new short video project every month, a greenscreen production studio at well-below-market rates, and high-quality, professional trainingat very affordable prices.

Since the City actually still gets the money from the franchise fee (it’s just not used for Public Access), perhaps one day BDA will even have equipment to check out to people for free! Boulder Digital Arts would LOVE to be able to do that; as we have the perfect existing infrastructure to make it happen pretty easily. Maybe tell your Boulder City Councilperson, or the Boulder City Manager, if you think it’s a good idea. Maybe they might agree – weirder things have happened in Boulder!

Bruce Borowsky, Co-Founder
Boulder Digital Arts
www.boulderdigitalarts.com
www.bruceborowsky.com