Cable Access Network TV Needs Support

Chicago Defender
Published June 15, 2004
Editorial

If you want to hear what Chicago says, tune in to Channel 19 or Channel 21 of Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

And if you want to continue seeing access television, the equivalent of free-wheeling town hall meetings and communications, join us in supporting a City Council ordinance that will ensure continued broadcasting by the people's TV. That includes channels 19 and 21 and three noncommercial cable channels - 27, 36 and 42.

CAN TV is threatened, and its broadcasts of vital interest programming and meetings to the community are at risk. As people's TV, it should not become a casualty to tightened purse strings.

What's threatened is presentation of some of the finest community broadcasting in the nation.

From CAN TV's Channel 21 programming in behalf of the Black Nurses Association, which focuses on education and recruitment, to its presentation of the African-American Family Association's work, which focuses on counseling and parent improvement, continuation of CAN TV is under a cloud.

CAN TV19 broadcasts of "The Media Connection" bring features such as "From Slavery to Freedom" and "Discovering the African Identity." They're indispensable and should be continued.

Indispensable too, is the group of channels that enable ordinary people to broadcast their messages, not just wealthy people who own television franchises.

The only founder of City Council's original cable committee who's still in office, Alderman Bernard Stone, helped to create the system which enabled access network broadcasts to begin in 1980. He says the system is the only way church groups, service organizations and scores of helpful educational and community groups cab broadcast without investing in a TV station.

He's right, and we call for public support for his ordinance, and we call on City Council's progressive members to lead the Council to accept Alderman Stone's solution to the funding problem.

CAN TV is funded by three franchised cable providers. Each pays fees to CAN TV to meet its $2 million budget - money that funds what Stone says are operations from basement studios at very low-rent levels of comfort. The ordinance he proposes would allocate a portion of the city's $12 million to $15 million it gets in fees from the three big franchises to support CAN TV's budget.

That kind of stable arrangement is needed in the volatile cable market as a long-term solution that will safeguard the city's invaluable public access centers. Some 80 percent of the nation's people's networks are funded in that way.

Doing so would be the excellent approach to guaranteeing that the voice of Chicago's average citizen remains heard.

"It's completely unrestricted," Stone said this weekend as Friday's Council finance committee meeting to consider the ordinance approaches. If it's approved, the ordinance will go to the full City Council for a vote on June 23.

It's said Mayor Richard Daley opposes the funding plan. But we're hoping His Honor will take notice of public action such as contact from hundreds of civic, educational and community organizations that's, going on this week.

Petitions with thousands of signatures have reached the mayor, and we urge that the public continues sending its message to him to support public access TV.

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