WCCA

August 19th, 7:30 AM in 310, City Hall, Worcester MA

Cable Advisory members met at City Hall, at 7:30 AM, to approve a final draft of their recommendations regarding the city’s PEG channels. WCCA was present. WCCA TV 13 is the Public Access channel (P of the PEG Channels).

The Cable Advisory members voted to approve a document that was not available at the meeting. I was told the document was emailed to the cable advisory members in advance.

Earlier, the City’s government channel /cable division director had informed me that she emailed a draft to the Chair of the committee last week. WCCA had requested a copy of the draft in advance but it was not made available.

There was a motion to vote on the document that was emailed to the committee. The Chair asked if there should be any corrections. There was no further discussion and the vote was to approve the document. The committee members were asked to sign another document, which appeared to be some sort of confirmation pertaining to the vote. There then was a motion to adjourn.

I asked, for the record, for a copy of the final document that was approved and the Chair said he would email a copy to me.

Whereas WCCA and the E&G channels rest in the balance of the Cable Advisory Committees recommendations, and whereas I could possibly offer important insight, I also asked, for the record, why I was not given the opportunity to review in advance the document before the committee voted on it. WCCA TV was told the City Solicitor’s office instructed the Chair not to send out copies until the final version was out.

WCCA TV will update you, upon receiving a final version of the document.

Interesting fact about Mayor Konnie Luke's discovery of a long-lost portrait of former mayor Francis A. Harrington at the Worcester City Hall clock tower: She found it while taping her WCCA TV 13 program, "Coffee with Konnie", with our staff member, Bill Hamilton! Congratulations, Mayor Lukes! What a find! View the Telegram link

Public Access TV is building community

Interesting fact about Mayor Konnie Luke's discovery of a long-lost portrait of former mayor Francis A. Harrington at the Worcester City Hall clock tower: She found it while taping her WCCA TV 13 program, "Coffee with Konnie", with our staff member, Bill Hamilton! Congratulations, Mayor Lukes! What a find! View the <a href="http://www.telegram.com/article/20080815/NEWS/808150391/1011/FEATURES">Telegram link</a>

Public Access TV is building community

Most people are aware, economic development includes more than event attendance. The attention given to nurturing and building an audience and a cultural community plays an important role which will ultimately produce economic spin off.

It is important to note that, on an annual basis, WCCA presents numerous music concerts and performing arts shows of various genres, programs that showcase artist, and other cultural institutions, and youth media programming, and educational events. Each week you are bound to find new TV shows on WCCA , featuring discussions with authors, craftspersons, poets, and promoting cultural events throughout the city, are all accompanied by in depth news coverage, in numerous languages, each going beyond the 60 second sound bite found in most commercial news segments.

The above reflects WCCA's proactive role in nurturing and inspiring artist and future artist, cutlural enthusiast and temps audience curiosity. Whereas the video content presented on WCCA TV is created by volunteers, video artist, writers, each show is a unique cultural event in itself. This is all only a small part of what WCCA accomplishes in its daily operation as it has for the past 22 and half years. WCCA volunteers and staff are building community and contributing to economic development through electronic media everyday.

The daily cultural events on WCCA TV are presented to over 55,000 cable subscribers in addition to hundreds of web subscribers each week.

At another level, WCCA averages about three open house ( in-house) cultural events per year. In 2006, WCCA celebrated it's twentieth birthday. We recorded an average of about 2100 attended these events over the last five years. This number does not include our television production classes and special workshops, volunteer projects and outreach activities off site, in addition to about an average of 60 persons per day foot traffic into our facility who participate in the creative process of television and community media production.

Public Access is important for a city, reaching into the homes of audiences contributing to not only a free flow of information and fresh ideas, it adds tangible vibrancy to Worcester's downtown core in a unique and inclusive way. WCCA TV is vitally important for Worcester and it's economic development.

FROM buisnessandmedia.org

Jeff Poor reports:

FCC Commissioner: Return of Fairness Doctrine Could Control Web Content
McDowell warns reinstated powers could play in net neutrality debate, lead to government requiring balance on Web sites.

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

Read the rest of the story here

From the Miro blog:

Last Thursday night, protesters projected human rights images including: monks being arrested, olympic rings turning into handcuffs, and so on, onto the side of the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan. Video of this event was uploaded to YouTube, and has since been removed at the request of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The video is a crystal clear case of fair use —it’s 100% legal and non-infringing— and the IOC has absolutely no right to force the video out of view.

We often recommend archive.org as a video-hosting site that's unlikely to bow to illegitimate pressure, but in the end it's hard to say just where you could host a video with no fear of a takedown.

I have been wanting to write down this blog for some time. But I kept getting sidetracked by routine habits I have at home (i.e., playing video games, walking around, self-talk, surfing the Internet, etc.). Well, here it is and I'm sorry for the delay.

If you have ever taken a class on U.S. History and our government, then you should know the First Amendment of the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, the government cannot establish an official religion and require U.S. citizens to abide by it. The First Amendment also allows everyone to practice their own faith, as long as it is not used by any state--including a state university, college, or school districts--to make converstions and denigrate other faiths. That is the point that Matthew LaClair has been making while he was still a high school student in Kearny, N.J.

It wasn't easy for him, as most of his home town turned against him as soon as it was revealed that he had secretly recorded his history teacher, David Paszkiewicz (pronounced pass-KEV-ich), promoting his personal religious and creationist beliefs during class.

For more information on this latest event in the history of the church/state seperation debate, check out the links below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/nyregion/18kearny.html

This article was one of the first of many that made the controversy in Keany, NJ public. This link also features the recordings made by LaClair during Paszkiewicz's class, which prove that the U.S. history teacher has been proselytizing during class. (Note: It may be hard for you to hear them due to some background noise.)

http://www.telegram.com/article/20080713/NEWS/807130407/1116

In this article, Worcester humanists hear of LaClair's experience with trying to get the local school board to take action against Paszkiewicz and how his hometown ended up supporting Paszkiewicz due to his popularity.

http://www.aclu-nj.org/news/aclusupportsstudentchallen.htm#

This link shows that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supports LaClair's challenge to the preaching teacher.

http://www.aclu.org/students/34399res20080314.html

This is a scholarship essay for the ACLU written by LaClair which discusses his experience in defending civil liberties during his high school years.

LaClair also made headlines earlier this year by pointing out flaws in a textbook on the U.S. Government. For more information, be sure to read the blog I have written on the topic, which is titled How to Spot Errors and Bias in a Textbook by a High School Student.

Since this country has civil liberties, how many people actually care about them? Is it because they are backing away from situations where they can stand up for those liberties? How strong is our concern for the very liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution? Is it our fate to forget that they even exist?

If we want to keep our civil liberties, I say we follow Matthew LaClair's example. As an American, I am proud to have those rights. In order to stand up for our civil liberties, we must not let fear hold us back. If we continue to be afraid to defend those very rights, we might end up losing them. That is the price we could all end up paying for not showing more concern for the liberties that have been guaranteed by our country for more than two centuries.

• Teen Central

Last night, Aug.5,2008, WCCA joined others attending the Cable Advisory Meeting.
T&G's Nick Kotsopoulus also was and wrote about it.
link to T&G

The meeting was one of the better ones. There was much good debate, as any healthy public meeting would include.

The committee came to decisions regarding what they will recommend to the city Manager among such items covered was the distribution of PEG funding
including a capital grant and franchise fees. The current formula 60-20-20 was recommended for both capital and franchise funding allocations. This was the same as in the past contract. The question is the government channel and the educational channel combined may have a surplus of over a million dollars balance remaining from the last contract. WCCA argued that under the current formula the 40 percent split between the city and educational channel is much more than needed. WCCA has been the only entity to demonstrate quantitative need for increased funding and certainly facilitates a much large aspect of the community. Unless the city manager see his way to increasing WCCA's share of the franchise revenue and capital, given the short term of the contract, it is highly possible the current level of services WCCA provides to the citizens of Worcester will be negatively impacted. The best thing to come out of the meeting, we felt, was the committee's recommended definition for "local programming": as any video production involving a person who is a citizen, student or employed in the city of Worcester. More to come.
Thanks for your suppport everyone. Stay tuned...

Charter Communications is one of the organizations that Congress wants to answer questions about tracking your internet use.

A congressional committee wants the nation's largest telecommunications and Internet companies to explain whether they target online advertising based on consumers' search queries and Web surfing habits.
...
"It's important for Internet users and American consumers in general to understand what information is being collected about them and how it's being used,"
...
"Privacy is a cornerstone of freedom," Markey said in a statement. "Online users have a right to explicitly know when their broadband provider is tracking their activity and collecting potentially sensitive and personal information."

Read the story Lawmakers demand info on Web tracking practices
A second story Legislators Seek Info on User-Tracking Software

WCCA will be cablecasting the biopic "The Refusal" about Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian beheaded for refusing to fight for the Nazis.

"The Refusal" will be cablecast:

• Friday, Aug. 22 at 9:30pm

• Sat., Aug. 23 at 10am and 12 midnight
• Sun., Aug 24 at 7:30pm
• Mon., Aug. 25 at 11:30am

Telegram's Nick Kotsopoulos writes about contract delays affecting WCCA TV.

The city's re-review of data that really has been done has taken exceptionally too long. The ascertainment window, the time to assess community opened in 2004 and ended when the city entered formal negotiations with Charter Communications. Whatever the city was able to negotiated for is now available within the franchise license to meet the community needs. The city council asked, through the form of a motion, for the City Manager to have a contract signed with WCCA by the end of June. Is there no teeth or follow up to such motions ?

We are not sure what parameters the consulting attorney Jim Baller, was told to work on, we are sure, however, that there are many cities that have apparently acquired better franchise conditions to support their Public Access channel and PEG Channels. Especially when looking at cities as large or larger than Worcester.

Given our experience of this so called process and holding on to good faith, even as we try to set aside the fears of many concerned that there may be a possible pre determined agenda, we hope the Manager will give due consideration to the community needs assessment which provided a quantified demonstration highlighting a community need to support for WCCA without any decrease in funding or capital.

Either this city, the City Manager and the City Council wants the people's channel, an important and empowering community resource that fosters a free flow on information and free speech, to continue to flourish or it doesn't.

Thank you Nick for fair and informational piece.

• Snow Ghost Community Show

Here are some good folks working hard to build what Worcester has had for the past 22 years and 20 months in WCCA TV 13, "The People's Channel".

Consider what they are saying in N.C. as you reflect on Worcester's great community media resources.

"Public-access television was developed to provide local and diverse content to programming on cable systems."

"For the last decade, Durham Public Access has been managed by Time Warner Cable because previous laws required them to do so. The result was that the channel did not meet the needs of the community or fulfill its potential as a true accountable, community-driven operation.Functioning like a soapbox for communities, programming ranges from local news, events and entertainment, to inspirational, youth-oriented, and educational shows. The need today is even greater with the loss of locally owned and operated television, radio and newspapers due to media conglomeration."

"There is no one model for a Public-Access Television and Community Media Center; each reflects the needs of that particular community. However, one thing is consistent - they advocate for and maintain tools for creating media, provide media services and create venues for sharing community voices and showcasing creativity. Through technology, they provide a space to communicate in ways that are not available through traditional outlets."

This sounds awfully familiar does it not? So when I speak up in support of WCCA TV I am sure our city leaders know and understand where I am coming from.

Sign Durham's petition by linking to it here: Durham
Read more here: link

WCCA TV, public access, is an important, vital part of the Creative Economy. WCCA TV facilitates a free speech platform which represents a free flow of information which any creative economy depends upon. WCCA also encourages citizen participation, civic engagement, open dialog, fresh and diverse ideas essential to creativity and an creative economy. We hope our city leaders ( councilors and administration ) are opened minded to the value of WCCA TV, as we share the following good news from MAASH.

Creative Economy

One sure fire way to show support for a creative economy in Worcester is to demonstrate real support for WCCA TV. We are still without a long term commitment from the city to continue the tremendous public service and resources we provide to benefit all of Worcester. The public access agreement expired in January of 2007, a new cable contract was signed in Spring of 2008. It will be August first tomorrow and WCCA waits, in good faith, without a long term contract, for a message that the city will encourage this creative component of Worcester's economy.

We hope the creative economy flies in Worcester.

"at&t really needs to stop Whereasing local communities and abide by the law or they might find themselves Whereased into court." Bunnie Riedel

Chuck wrote that "at&t's so-called PEG Product delivery "Agreements" and their efforts to subvert the very state franchising laws they wrote and got their legislators to pass and their governors to sign rather then actually negotiate local franchises that really served the communities."

Are Mega Giants scamming their way through a franchise process. Municipalities have an obligation to be aware of this type of activity.

Read more
"The Bottom Line".

Thanks to Bunnie for keeping our eyes open on such things.

We're proud to release version 0.0 of an include file that will make the Embedded Video Field module work with videos uploaded to the Internet Archive.

This works with Drupal 5.

Rough draft of instructions:

1. Install the emfield module on your site.
2. Download archive.inc.txt, rename it to archive.inc, and upload it to yourwebsite.com/sites/all/modules/emfield/contrib/video_cck/providers
3. Go to the "Content Types" admin screen for your site at yourwebsite.com/admin/content/types
4. "Edit" your content type and add an Embedded Video field.
5. Configure the field to work with The Internet Archive.
6. Now when you create a node of this content type, just paste in the URL of a page at archive.org in the "URL" text field. For example, http://www.archive.org/details/videojam_521
7. When you save the node, you'll see a Flash-based player with your video, as well as a link to download the mp4 version, a link back to the original page at archive.org, and whatever description was entered. (Note that you have to add your own Title.)

For questions or comments, please e-mail mike@wccatv.org.

This talk by Dr. Paul Farmer will be cablecast on WCCA TV13:

• Friday, August 1, 2008 at 9:30pm

• Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 10:00am
• Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 7:30pm