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Public Access 2.0

by Josh Goodman

My story began by telling about Gordon Bloyer, a longtime public-access television host from Portage, Indiana. Bloyer doesn't mind that his public-access channel is off the air — a casualty of Indiana's statewide video franchising law — because he's just as happy making videos for YouTube. Tellingly, though, Bloyer's YouTube videos don't cover the local politics that made him famous (or infamous) in Portage. Instead, they focus almost exclusively on national politics. Here's one recent example in which Bloyer criticizes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Public-access supporters say that their T.V. stations pay attention to local affairs, unlike commercial channels or Internet videos. Local content produced by local people, they argue, should be preserved. You can see all of Bloyer's YouTube videos here.

Critics, including some state lawmakers, say this idealistic vision doesn't reflect the reality of public-access television. Instead, they see the shows as poorly produced, rarely watched and occasionally profane. Here's an example of a show out of Los Angeles where the host exercises on a treadmill, paints, and eats a pie — simultaneously. He also takes calls from viewers, or at least tries.

In making their case for funding to legislators and the public, public-access television stations have faced a lot of disadvantages. They don't usually have the money or the political sophistication for extensive lobbying campaigns. One of their strengths, though, is that they know how to produce and circulate video content. Here's a video from Wisconsin that defends public-access funding and another one from Florida.

These sorts of videos have proliferated in the past couple of years, as the threats to public T.V. become obvious.

Beyond the funding issues, public-access T.V. faces growing technological challenges, especially from AT&T's new television service, U-Verse. With U-Verse, viewers will have to navigate a series of menus to find public-access stations. Public-access supporters fear that because channel surfers won't happen across their content, U-Verse will stunt public television viewership. Here's a demonstration of U-Verse in San Jose, which illustrates the cumbersome process.

AT&T hopes U-Verse will have 30 million customers by the end of 2010, which is one reason the future of public-access T.V. doesn't look especially bright.

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