May 17 2008
The End of Cable Access TV in Northwest Indiana?
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The new law basically gave carte blanche to the cable companies to do whatever they wanted. Some of the provisions of the law include (taken from www.indyaccess.org):
- Eliminate basic cable rate regulation (yay, they can raise rates! woohoo!)
- Reduce franchise fees paid to local government (20-30% for Indianapolis) and eliminate audits (they have to pay less to operate in each town)
- Threaten the financial viability and growth of public, education and government (PEG) access TV channels (basically get rid of public access)
- Eliminate basic telephone rate regulation and enable local measured phone service (yay, they can raise these rates too! woohoo!)
- Curtail the development of municipal broadband projects, including those with corporate partnerships (say good-bye to free local Wifi provided by the city, bye Valpo Wireless)
So, what has this meant on the ground? Well, cable access television in Northwest Indiana and statewide is pretty much gone. The law does not force or even compel the cable operators to continue providing the public service of providing cable access.
Public Access broadcasts ceased in Northwest Indiana last December. Now, granted most of the stuff on cable access was crap. But it provided a valuable creative and political outputs to the communities. Now, there is practically no outlet at all. The people of Northwest Indiana have been silenced by Big Media.
It’s very clear that HB 1279 is a terrible law for the consumers of this state and Northwest Indiana most of all. It has given more monopolistic controls to the big media conglomerates and silenced local voices. Nice to know Mitch continues to be on our side!
I’m sure if the cable companies had their way, they’d get rid of C-SPAN too. It’d be great if Indiana had a Citizen Utilities Board like Illinois. You do not want to mess with those guys, they are actually looking out for consumers in Illinois. Yet another reason Northwest Indiana should succeed and join Illinois. We already get their TV, so it’s like we’re with them already. One would hope that the local PBS station, WYIN - Lakeshore PBS, steps in and provides an outlet for people wishing to get on the air.
Or maybe it’s time for cable access programming to move to the internet.
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5 Responses to “The End of Cable Access TV in Northwest Indiana?”
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People haven’t waited for Public Access to move to the internets, they started doing that a while back. Perhaps you’ve heard of YouTube.
Back in the beforetime, one of our slogans was “VT is not TV,” which meant that new video production technologies (i.e. the PortaPack) in the hands of non-traditional producers would produce something quite different from traditional television.
In large measure, we succeeded in reinventing television, but the industry never took us to its little hearts (no need to wonder why) and have been trying to stamp out PEG since the 70s.
We’re still not dead yet, not by a long shot.
Well, good. Keep the independent production spirit alive.
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