Public Access TV’s Audience Won’t Follow It Online, Activists Say
SEATTLE -- YouTube is not a credible replacement for a dedicated public, educational and governmental (PEG) channel, activists told a city advisory board Tuesday night. They were protesting Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposed 2011-2012 budget, which would slash funding for PEG by 85 percent, to $100,000 a year. The decision was defended by the city’s chief technology officer given the availability of low-cost Web streaming. Several content producers for the nonprofit Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN), whose 10-year city contract to run channels 23 and 77 ended in December, suggested ideas for expanding access but said the bulk of their viewers wouldn’t migrate online.
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"We can’t support doing things in the old way,” said Tony Perez, director of the Department of Information Technology’s Office of Cable Communications, at the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board meeting. Advisory board chairman Ted Schmitt said the city needed a “new model” for public access, asking the audience what it should include. Using handheld voting devices, audience members voted on a series of questions about their priorities. Internet video drew 60 percent of votes as the best distribution channel to supplement TV, leading Schmitt to suggest that the PEG community nationally could create a Hulu-like platform for on-demand access.
David Keyes, community technology program manager for the city, suggested bidders for the contract consider hosting on the Internet Archive. The problem with existing, low-cost Internet video platforms is their time limit, said T.J. Williamson, a content producer for SCAN: YouTube limits uploaders to 15 minutes, though in December it started lifting the cap for users with a history of copyright compliance. Most public programs run 30 minutes to an hour, Williamson said.
Content producer Jason Moorehead said TV channels are indispensable for public access because viewers don’t necessarily know what they want to watch, just as readers go to libraries when they don’t know what they want to read. Schmitt said city libraries could do something like Redbox kiosks for public access. Content producer Marlee Walker said the city could encourage more people to become content producers if it provided cheap facilities and “let me get rich” if their programs “go viral,” an arrangement YouTube has offered to original content creators.
Asked what platforms the audience used to access PEG programming besides cable and broadcast TV, 36 percent said DVD and 29 percent smartphone, with only 14 percent via Internet TV. One of the major problems in the current system is public access programs aren’t delineated in cable programming grids, meaning DVRs can’t automatically record a specific program, Williamson said. The more fundamental hurdle is public programming largely serves audiences that don’t use computers or newer technologies, Williamson said: It’s “disenfranchised folks” such as immigrant communities that rely on the “virtually free” facilities of public access to reach their audiences. Perez, the cable communications director, said city surveys had found 75 percent of residents subscribed to Internet access in 2009.
Finding non-city revenue sources for PEG was one of the major directives from the city council. Cable franchise fees support facilities and programming. The audience’s top votes for alternative funding sources were grants and underwriting at 27 percent and fee-for-service productions at 20 percent, in which producers pay for access to facilities. A third of voters supported “other,” however. Content producer Keith Ljunghammar said cable companies could include a public-access donation option in subscribers’ cable bills. Schmitt said that option had legs -- the region’s electric and gas utility raised money to provide heat for poor residents through a similar donation checkbox in subscribers’ bills.