I've been spending some time working on a Public access television show. So before you start thinking "Wayne's World," here's the first 10 minutes of the debut episode of VTblogosphereTV.
It will be showing on Onion River Community Access (ORCA) Media. ORCA is channel 15 in central VT and the times the first VTblogosphereTV show will air are Monday, July 7 at 9 PM, Tuesday July 8 at 2AM and noon, and Saturday, July 12 at 1PM. I got real lucky and landed John Odum, publisher of Green Mountain Daily as the first guest.
Below are some reasons why I think the progressive blogosphere needs to expand and migrate to public access television....
1. Public access Television is just sitting there waiting.
You may have noticed that public access television often features the community calender and wingnut religious programming produced outside of the local service area. When these PEG (Public, Educational, Governmental) stations began, there was great hope that they would democratize media. The problem is the service areas were often fragmented and there was no social infrastructure. As an example, ORCAMedia's service area is not even contiguous-- it is basically an island of towns around Montpelier, and another island around Randolph. Very tough to build community based media given the odd carve up of the VT's 24 PEG's by the cable companies. I'm interested in hearing how PEGs work in other states.
But guess what-- the progressive blogosphere could provide the infrastructure needed to create more media democracy. And if public access TV as it stands now is an underutilized resource, the advocates for PEGs don't have much of an argument to get more stations, if they can't fill the few they have now with content. When fiber optic hits, the number of stations up for grabs will be substantial. So you want HBO17 or more public access channels?
2.The blogosphere has come of age. I don't know if the blogosphere has passed puberty, but I dont think the only way to measure its expansion is to measure the increase in hits to blogs. Another measure is how the talent of the blogosphere migrates to other media. The rise of the rightwing cable TV punditry was basically facilitated by right wing talk radio. The morons on the radio became the morons on the TV, and corporate interests moved the culture of yelling to cable TV lock stock and barrel. Corporate interests will not find homes for progressive bloggers doing quality commentary, analysis, and real live journalism. We will have to build it ourselves.
3.More voices drown out the pundits
The blogosphere spends a lot of it efforts decrying the insulting absurd hateful rhetoric that often comes out of the cable yap-world. That is time well spent, but also getting our voices in the cable-yap world would help democratize media. Emailing FOX News about O'Reilly's racist rantings is one thing; directly refuting his nonsense on TV is an entirely different animal. Think about it-- Glenn Beck has a show and you dont?
4.TV watchers may not be hep to the blogosphere
While we discuss everything from FISA to the 2008 elections, there is a parrallel discussion going on on TV that has completely different premises and parameters. Many people watching TV go to TV station websites to get their news and only understand the blogosphere as it has been defined to them by the corporate media. Getting on public access TV and defining ourselves for that audience would do much to democratize the media.
5.The new dynamic is local left/corporate right
People will come to associate local opinion with the blogosphere and rightist kookiness with corporate cable news. I beieve this dynamic is already happening in VT, and Democracy Now!! on public access helps that connection. But that is a national show and more local progressive shows would greatly democratize the media. The stuff coming out the national corporate press will seem even more alien with more countering local voices.
Okay thats only a sampling of all the great reasons why the progressive blogosphere needs to expand to public access TV. I know these aren't new ideas, and some PEGs are doing a great job delivering the goods-- this is just a little contribution. Such a migration could do for TV what the blogosphere did for journalism.
My fantasy would be a loose national public access network of local bloggers, maybe modeled around the fifty state blog network. We could share content across public access channels and crank out quality content. If anyone knows about inroads already made along these lines I'd love to hear about it.
previous similar post at Green Mountain Daily