BAVC Fights to Keep Free Speech and Public Access Alive in California
At yesterday's CTN Connect event, leaders in the field of community technology met to discuss SF Commons, San Francisco's new public access television station. One of the many challenges San Francisco's public access station has faced since changing hands and experiencing extreme budget cuts — along with fighting to keep programs running with less staff, equipment, and studio space — is the management of online tools for accessing and distributing content created for public access. To aid in this fight, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) has developed a tool to aggregate relevant local content that can be viewed directly on the SF Commons website.
In the face of massive budget cuts and new legislation (The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006), 300 public access television stations across the state have been forced to close their doors in 2009. Now that these stations are unable to provide the public with a forum in which to broadcast thier own content, many cities and towns across California no longer have access to public service announcements, socially valuable programs created by nonprofits, or a way to easily experience content created by fellow citizens. Cable companies continue to demolish free speech as they extend thier monopoly over this valuable publicly supported tool.
As more and more viewers turn to websites like YouTube and resources like SF Commons online, it is more important than ever to heed the lessons learned from the recent crisis in public access television and to insist on an open and accessible Internet in the face of corporate greed and government control, to ensure that all citizens are able to produce and distribute content freely and that the Internet remains a global bastion of free speech, even in regions in which people would otherwise have no way to create and distribute critical content.
As a supporter of CTN and the digital inclusion movement, you are doing your part to ensure that all people will be able to use the tools they need to create content. As a citizen, do your part to ensure that this content can continue to be distributed freely by supporting public access television and an open Internet. To learn more about Public, Educational, and Government Access Television worldwide check out The Alliance for Community Media, the Global Village CAT, or the Community Media Forum Europe. To learn more about the fight for an open Internet, visit the Open Internet Coalition or the U.S. Government's website about the Open Internet.
