Once upon a time in a democracy long, long ago and far away, 'Community Television' was in its infancy, The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Nicholas Johnson, recognized that -- according to U.S. law, "the airwaves belong to the people" , The year was 1972; cable television behemoths were about to wire the nation. The federal governmentʻs intent was to protect localism and diversity of viewpoint by requiring these companies to pay "rent" for using our public rights of way by providing Public, Educational and Government Access channels, production equipment and facilities for public use on cable systems throughout the land. The fly in the ointment, however, was that the Feds left implementation and regulation of the Public Access concept up to LFAʻs or local franchise authorities. Not every one followed this "best practice" model, but many did and in the vast majority of cases it was mainly city and county governments who granted local cable television monopolies. In a few cases, like New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Hawaii, cable regulation was assigned to a state regulatory agency. Community Television, also known as PEG Access, began to proliferate in local jurisdictions. The more successful stations were independent nonprofits established at arms length from government and financed from up to 5% of cable revenues. These stations were set up in local communities for no other purpose but to create public access to cable and provide free or low cost media skills for any and all comers. The big idea was not to benefit any one institution or special interest but to serve the general public from all walks of life including the unaffiliated, the disenfranchised, the popular as well as the unpopular, people who would otherwise not have a voice. The idea was also not just to benefit the institutional agenda of one or two schools, but to help teachers and students involved in all aspects of formal and informal education. The other main goal was not to create Government TV, but to encourage local democratic discourse by televising gavel to gavel coverage of government meetings making government more accessible to the masses. The analogy that fits best is the one of the public commons or electronic park.If television stations were buildings, each building would look pretty much the same but carry a different commercial agenda. HBO would sell you movies; MTV music; CNN news; PBS; Ken Burns and British drama. There would be a boss sitting in an office on the top floor deciding what you, the audience, would see. If you walked into any one of these buildings, including the so-called Public Television building, and wanted to get airtime for your idea, you wouldn't get past the receptionist. It is even likely that, if you pressed the issue, "security" would throw you out. Down below, between all these buildings, is the public commons, electronic "green space" if you will, the Community Access Television station. This is not a building, but a level playing field. The place where everyone, rich or poor, old or young, educated or not, can come to learn how to create media, foster ideas and showcase the diverse talent and ability vital to a living democracy. This is the "electronic park" open to all voices without censorship, a place that honors free expression and diversity of viewpoint - even points of view that may be unpopular or controversial. The one place left in a media universe dominated by corporate media that provides every one of us a free speech venue and non-discriminatory access to one anotherʻs living rooms. A place to talk, to show, to tell, to discuss, to create, to innovate, to play. The idea worked famously well in a lot of places until the Federal government under Reagan, began to deliberately ignore the principles of diversity, localism and public ownership of the airwaves embedded in the Communications Act of 1934. This abdication of the public interest has allowed five or six telecommunications giants to reap obscene profits and monopolize both the content and delivery of radio, TV, cable, telephone and now the Internet. For more than twenty years, companies like Time-Warner, Viacom, General Electric, Disney, Fox , Comcast and others have cozied up to our elected representatives and regulatory agencies and now run the table on virtually all we see, hear and read in America. With the astounding media convergence currently underway, there are billions of dollars to be made in them broadband hills. This is why AT&T, Verizon and others have joined the fray. In their TV Everywhere world, there is simply no room in the corporate view for uniquely local community media, community broadband, net neutrality, or innovative ideas that challenge the status quo. No room for the peopleʻs voice. This is why these companies have spent millions of dollars at more than 28 state legislatures to convince lawmakers to open the market, bulldoze the electronic park and replace our public commons with another government building, a state-run school or, better yet, another commercial channel. Despite this sophisticated and well-financed onslaught from industry and government, there are places where community media and PEG access centers thrive with the backing of the local population. One of these places has traditionally been Hawaii primarily because the programs are generally responsive to the needs of the local community on each island, are somewhat adequately funded, and are protected by state statute. The long term future for community television in Hawaii like every place else, however, may not be so good because for five years running the Time Warner cable monopoly hand in hand with the state cable regulatory agency, state educational establishment and other vested interests has attempted to repeal legislative protection for access and cutback on funding while adopting a divide and conquer approach. The master plan is to split up PEG access funding on the way to eliminating it entirely. This is what I call the "Sesame Street" approach to cable access. Not only is it anti-democratic, infantile and regressive, it is state-run television at its very worst designed to centralize all communication in a corporate framework. It is not about "community" or "access" anymore but about the letters, P, E, and G. Under this revisionist regulatory scheme, if the "P" or "public" side continues to exist at all, it will only be allowed to function begrudgingly as an unwanted stepchild. This is not a good development in a healthy democracy. To better understand what is really going on, letʻs take a look at the history of how we got here. In June of 1997, a report was prepared for the Cable Regulatory Authority of the State of Hawaii. (DCCA) It was entitled, DISPUTES OVER PEG RESOURCES: Splitting the Baby is NOT the Solution. The State of Hawaii by and large heeded that advice and its "integrated model" independent Community Television operations, notably in Oahu and on Maui worked hard for years to become recognized as some of the best PEG Access stations in the nation. This success was due in part to the fact that Hawaii PEGʻs adopted and put into effect a “best practice” integrated PEG model whereby independent nonprofits, created for this specific purpose in each county, provided channel space, unbiased gavel to gavel meeting coverage, nondiscriminatory access and low cost media training to local, state and native governments, private and public educational entities and a diverse and varied public. In short, Community Television in Hawaii has been empowering the local voices of each island community without censorship, editorial or state control for more than fifteen years. By 2005, PEG Access on Maui became a victim of its own success. Private land development interests that did not like some of the messages being broadcast on these free speech venues conducted a sophisticated raid on PEG access coffers and combined with state educational agencies and the stateʻs monopoly cable provider, Time Warner, to launch a privately financed lobbying campaign to split PEG funds into thirds. The end result was 25% of PEG funding for Mauiʻs Community Television independent non-profit (Akaku) was re-allocated to state educational institutions in perpetuity without any accountability to the public. On Oahu, a similar development took place whereby 25% of the Oahu Access providerʻs (Olelo) funds were diverted to state education and caps were placed on franchise fees by Decision and Order of the state. The diminishment of these local democratic media outlets was hardly a local phenomenon. In the past three years, in state after state, from California to Texas to Michigan to Florida, sophisticated lobbying campaigns spearheaded by telecom and cable giants; Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon succeeded in de-funding vital community media access centers causing many to close up shop. They did this while the FCC, federal, state and local regulatory bodies either aided and abetted this taking of the peoplesʻ voice or simply ignored Federal Communications Law by looking the other way. Back in Hawaii, incumbent monopoly telecom, Time Warner and state authorities have used secret back room franchise renewal proceedings, obscure rulemakings, technical barriers, stealth lobbying tactics, antagonistic regulation and the use of the State Procurement Code and other means to control and marginalize the existing independent and effective public access organizations and divert funds back to the state. The thoroughly discredited “Split the Baby” rubric is back in force with government bureaucrats, state agencies, The University of Hawaii, the Department of Education and other vested interests hard at work to split the cable access baby into itʻs lettered components, P, E and G which could result in the dilution if not outright demise of the Public Access sector in Hawaii. At the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis presented by freepress, I had the opportunity to discuss this very issue with Nicholas Johnson and George Stoney, the architects of PEG Access policy at the FCC in 1972. Back then, Nick Johnson was FCC Chairman and George Stoney was working with Red Burns at the National Film Board of Canada and starting up the Alternate Media Center at New York University. They saw the big cable monopolies coming and knew that marketplace forces would be likely to always be deficient in meeting the communications needs of local communities. They concluded correctly that government intervention in the market was necessary to preserve the democratic ideals of diversity and localism in media in order to safeguard the greater public good in a mass media age. They envisioned Community Television (PEG Access) as an important social mechanism by which cable companies would pay "rent" for using public rights of way. Their vision was to democratize the dominant mass communications medium of our time by making possible policy and infrastructure to foster true, local participatory media. Both men told me that using the term "PEG Access" was their biggest "mistake" because over time a misconception came about in some jurisdictions that “P,” “E ” and “G” ought to be separated financially. They assured me that this was never the intent. The letters in “P,” “E” and “G” symbolized constituencies served (Public, Education, Government) and were not conceptualized as funding categories to be split. We should have just called it "Community Television," they said, "because it is really about all of us". Be that as it may, some areas with a huge subscriber base (i.e. New York City) have split “P,” “E” and “G” successfully because the dollars are there to do it. In most places around the country, like Hawaiiʻs neighbor islands, they simply are not. The reality is that smaller jurisdictions would be devastated by such a funding scheme resulting in the diminishment if not outright destruction of the resource. Why? Because the economy of scale to support three stations (P, E and G) including studios and facilities as opposed to one PEG access station does not exist. It would result in the antithesis of "community" television pitting one vested interest against the other. The real tragedy of the electronic commons here is that in best practice the " E" money in PEG was never meant to augment or replace what I call, " I " or Institutional Television which can be defined as instructional or educational television (K-12 and higher) funded appropriately by state and/or local taxes. This is the crux of the disagreement over "E" funds that nearly destroyed PEG Access on Maui in 2005 where the University of Hawaii and the Department of Education succeeded in getting 33% and currently 25% of PEG funds previously allocated to the nonprofit Access Organizations. Without diminishing in any way the significance and value of both "E" and "G" programming, it is fair to say that if the funding mechanism for PEG Access disappeared tomorrow, it is likely “E” and “G” would still exist. “P” almost certainly would not. With respect to "E", the operative word is "ACCESS. " Educational ACCESS TV (As opposed to say, Educational or Instructional TV) means that any and all educators, teachers, students or clients of public, private, parochial, charter, adult or any other form of education are entitled to: Equal ACCESS to Tools - equipment, cameras, microphones, computers, studios etc. Equal ACCESS to Skills - media education, scripting, shooting, editing, directing, lighting etc. Equal Access to Ideas - media literacy, open dialogue and creative endeavor - Equal Access to Technology - meaning physical ACCESS to cable channels - the right to broadcast at the same level and technology as commercial counterparts The key difference embodied in the term "Access" is that these privileges are not the exclusive preserve of the program managers of a given institution, channel or entity but are inclusive of all comers within the "P" "E" and "G" subset of potential users. Educational Access, therefore, in its purest sense was never intended to entitle one or two specific state institutions access to cable subscribers while ignoring the responsibility to provide tools, skills and training to all educational sectors. A similar analogy applies to "Government Access" or "G" programming. Government Access was meant to provide citizens access to government, not the other way around. The thinking was that if citizens could observe the workings of government in action they would be more likely to engage more fully in a participatory democracy. "G" was never intended to be state-controlled TV or even municipally controlled TV programmed by a government entity. The best practice model is more like CSPAN where an independent non profit is charged with airing unbiased public affairs programming and unedited gavel to gavel coverage of government meetings. This is not unlike the model we see employed in a majority of access venues today. A pure "G" model in Hawaii would be inclusive of state, county, local and native government voices and would be inclusive of those who have an interest in civic issues raised in a healthy public domain. As far as the Public or "P" is concerned, the reality is that "we" are all the public. It literally is "all about us" and the fully local communities we serve. The "P" sector is the most overlooked, the most disparate and the most inchoate. This is where views from diverse and often antagonistic sources are most likely to originate. This is where the sometimes untidy, but necessary ferment of local electronic democracy occurs. This is the area where free speech tends to be the most vibrant. Precisely because it is so disorganized, unpredictable and unfunded, it is the most vulnerable and in need of the most protection. This is why I am a strong advocate of the integrated PEG Access model. As stated before, if cable franchise fees were to go away tomorrow, I am fairly certain state sponsored “E” and “G” channels will continue to exist. I am also quite certain that “P” channels would not. One of the reasons there has been so much wrangling in Hawaii and in other places about all this over the years is that it appears the stakeholders and policymakers have never really sat down to sort this all out in terms of defining these resources intelligently. Instead what we have had is a sad legacy of turf wars over limited money and resources. It is time to revisit some fundamental truths and question old assumptions. It is time to publicly and legally challenge any argument to take away or to split P, E, G funds based on First Amendment principles and Federal Communications Law; diversify our funding base by embracing and exploiting new media; make sure that public interest provisions and funding mechanisms migrate to new community broadband paradigms; build our own public broadband infrastructure; petition the federal, state and local for redress of grievances through administrative proceedings and the courts; push for a change in federal law to get a percentage of cable modem and internet fees; consider statewide revenue sharing of franchise fees among access centers to benefit rural communities; develop open, democratic and inclusive Educational Access and Government Access models; and demand that federal and state policymakers act to replace derelict telecommunications regulation with meaningful reform before we all miss the digital boat. The winds of change are blowing in Washington D.C. If we stand up, and fight in the hallways, in the meeting rooms, at our civic gatherings, in the courts, in our council chambers, state capitols, media centers and on our screens, we just might bring enough financial resources and political clout to Community Media to help close the digital divide. Whether or not the PEG Access community can join with other public media advocates fast enough to secure maximum public benefit for our local communities from cable, broadband, community radio and emerging new media technology remains to be seen. In any event, it is up to us. And for anyone who believes as I do that free speech extends into the airwaves we breathe, the air in which our greatest ideas and dreams travel, these endeavors are worthy of our best efforts. Jay April for Akaku