Alliance for Community Media Northeast Conference: Other Panels

In addition to facilitating a panel on Makerspaces, I attended several other presentations. I'm new to Community Media, so it was useful to attend.

The first presentation I attended was about getting cable companies to allow PEG stations to use the electronic program guide. This is something I've asked about repeated with respect to Amherst Media, because Comcast has been unwilling to do it here and the program guide only shows "Local 1" or "Educational Programming" -- and TVGuide shows nothing at all. The presenters (one of whom is the current president of the Alliance for Community Media, the national parent organization of ACM-NE) provided a solid background about the resistance of cable companies to allow this and offered many helpful suggestions. As much as 40% of television viewing happens via DVR and, if your content isn't scheduled correctly, people can't easily view your content this way. Cable companies ought to see PEG content as a huge draw for cable television: the viewership is often low, but extremely "sticky" with a very loyal following. But many cable companies resist letting PEG stations schedule their content because it helps them organize and build an audience, which will turn out during the franchising negotiations. Their suggestions were mainly to push hard for access to the program guide, make a persuasive case that it serves their interests to serve their customers well, keep pushing, and document everything.

The keynote speech was by Martha Fuentes-Bautista, a faculty member from UMass Amherst who's worked extensively with Amherst Media. Several years ago, she did an indepth study of Amherst Media's relationship to the community, Access360: Building engaged communities in a digital age. In her keynote, she spoke about the community media ecosystem and how to engage with all of the different components and stakeholders.

After lunch, I attended a presentation that I thought was going to be about fundraising and how to seek funding. Instead, it was about a particular campaign that the community foundation of Hartford ran in collaboration with a local PBS station as marketing for their 90th anniversary. It was an interesting story, but was more about marketing and branding than it was about how to look for funding. When people asked how much the campaign had costed, they refused to say, although they agreed the number was possibly more than the entire annual budget of many local public-access stations.

In the last time slot, Jim Lescault and I attended an "ask the lawyers" presentation. People raised a number of interesting questions about franchising, crafting releases for content, the new PEG enterprise fund statute, and other interesting topics. Seeing the kinds of questions people ask was as helpful to me as the answers.

The day wrapped up around 5pm -- just as traffic on the expressways peaks -- so Jim and I went over to a local barbeque place to get a sandwich and then, next door, to the tavern where they were holding the afterparty. We hooked up with a couple of people Jim knew and had a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. I also got to try a new (to me) IPA: Stony Creek Cranky. Good beer, good friends, and good conversation. A fitting end to a great day.