Fourteen semesters ago, in the basement of the Darrin Communications Center, a group of students introduced the mayor of Troy to the concept of community media. Seven years later, a new mayor is poised to introduce a community media and technology center in downtown Troy.
What is community media? At its heart, the idea is to put communication technologies like radio, television, and the Internet into the hands of people with stories to tell and nothing to sell.
Back in 1997, when then-Mayor Mark Pattison wielded the scissors at a ribbon-cutting ceremony during WRPI’s 40th anniversary, the occasion was the complete renovation of the broadcast and production studios. When he toured the station facilities, the mayor was astonished to learn that WRPI is managed as a club, staffed by student and community volunteers, and funded collaboratively by RPI, the Student Union, and contributors to the Friends of WRPI in a three-state listening area. Pattison was impressed by the station, and even more so by the idea that it brings students and community members together in a partnership to serve the entire region.
When WRPI’s student management informed him that the City of Troy’s franchise could provide many of the same benefits on television via the Time-Warner cable system, Pattison set into motion a needs assessment and negotiation process that is just now coming to fruition, under the administration of newly-elected Mayor Harry Tutunjian.
The cable franchise renewal presents an opportunity to take valuable but underutilized assets, such as local public, educational, and government access cable television channels, and augment them with the resources necessary to create tools for civic engagement, education, and economic development. Under state and federal law, municipalities can receive funding for community media infrastructure in exchange for allowing cable companies access to public rights-of-way (such as street and sidewalks) to run their cables.
The man widely acknowledged as the “Father of Cable Access” is George Stoney, a long-time media activist, educator, and film maker. No less an authority than former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson credits Stoney with the public access provisions that have long been a part of federal cable law: “It was more than 25 years ago that George Stoney ... introduced me to the idea, and potential, of ‘community media,’ the notion that ‘mass media’ could be media created by the masses, not just corporate media used to program the masses. They were sufficiently persuasive that I made the provision of ‘community access’ cable channels a primary goal of my seven-year term as an FCC commissioner.”
Stoney will be appearing at The Arts Center in Troy tonight in a benefit for WRPI sponsored by the Arts Department as part of the iEAR presents! performance series, during a regional organizing blitz that will take Stoney to Troy, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs—cities that are trying to take advantage of their cable negotiations to build and improve non-commercial media resources.
Hundreds of communities around the country have parlayed their cable television franchises into powerful municipal communications systems by following the public interest provisions of federal cable law. They have constructed institutional networks linking public buildings with high-speed voice, video, and data connections—thereby enhancing or replacing existing connectivity, introducing new services, and cutting costs for schools and local government.
They have developed multiple public, educational, and government channels on the cable system to bring city council, planning, zoning, school board and other meetings directly into the homes of residents, along with a myriad of artistic, cultural, social services, educational, and other non-commercial programming options.
These communities have energized their economies and empowered their citizens by providing access to, and training to use, the latest information technologies.
Almost everything has changed in the cable television industry since the 1960s—technology, programming, services, regulation, ownership, and profitability. In Troy, one of the few aspects of cable that remains relatively unchanged is the franchise itself.
While the cable industry has expanded its original 30-channel television franchises into a multi-faceted universe of information technologies, in some communities the original promise of public access to the cable plant has never been realized. Historically, the public interest components of the cable franchise never have been fully exploited in Troy—in fact, they have deteriorated from neglect.
With a firm foundation provided by the cable franchise, all forms of community-based media become possible—not just enhanced television programming, but a full range of information exchange including emergency services, distance learning, low-power FM radio, wireless Internet access, media literacy training as well as technologies yet to be imagined and developed.
The cable franchise renewal provides citizens the opportunity to claim what is rightfully theirs—a robust civic network providing state-of-the-art access to the full spectrum of government, arts, education, culture and civic discourse. The contracts are no longer simply about television but about creating the social and technical infrastructure to ensure civic development in the Information Age. It’s the vision Stoney articulated in the early 1970s, now finally being realized in the Capital Region—with Troy leading the way.
