Can I ask you a question? 9/24

I spent the time in the studio today creating a survey for the NPO's (non profit organizations) that I had gotten the list for from the Gratiot Chamber of Commerce last week. Pretty much, what we want to do is find out how much they use the Gratiot studio (if at all) and also find out if they're interested in using our services. Though it was a rather small questionnaire, we ar ehoping to find out how much the studio really is used (as there are no accurate logs of usage from the past, as the woman who was there before did not follow the same procedures as we do in Mt. Pleasant), and also find out how much the studio could possibly be used if people knew about the availability. This also will help us decide what hours/how many to have the Gratiot studio open, which is important to make sure that resources are not being under-used or wasted. we did get some bad news over the weekend though- Lori somehow got a detached retina, and had to have some emergency surgery, and so she will be out for at least 2 weeks. Hopefully after that time, she will be able to return and take over with running the Gratiot studio, because that would be a really cool arrangement if we can get it to work out.

9/21/2007

The first hour and a half, TJ and I worked on editing the video for the Pere Marquette District Library Grand Opening in Clare. Let me tell you, not only am I learning how to do the editing, we made it hilarious. Actually, we made two different versions of the video, because one was the promo-use version and the other was the humor version. We had the "ceremonial bearded lady" and the "attack of the birds" all included with some fancy text. Work isn't all fun and games here, but sometimes we get a kick of out what we're doing, which is excellent because it makes coming to work so much more fun than any other job I've had. Learning doesn't seem like such work. Jan liked both versions of the video, and although we can't play the humor version on TV, just out of respect for the nature of the ceremony, we are keeping it around the studio. Maybe I'll save the file(s) somewhere as proof that I'm actually able to learn and work the program.

Lori came to the station today and to celebrate the official addition to our group, we went out to get pizza for lunch. I love lunch, especially pizza, and so we got to walk down the street a little ways to one of the downtown pizza places. We're excited aout having Lori here to work with us, because I guess she has a PhD in broadcast arts. This means that she will be able to take interns herself, which is an exciting improvement to our Gratiot situation. With the ability to have interns at the Gratiot studio- in downtown Alma- this will open up a lot of opportunities to Alma students who may not have the means to travel to Mt. Pleasant frequently for an internship. This is very lucky for everyone really. After lunch we went to the Gratiot studio for a few hours to do some more cleaning and refurbishing of the studio. It's really makng progress down there- last time I went, TJ and I set up the lighting system. This time we were starting to set up the master control station for the video shoots, but we found that most of the equipment is really old and bad, and so we will be ordering more for that. We got about half of the equipment set up though, and so that's good progress considering the situation it was in before.

Also very lucky- I was given a key to the station today! I'm very excited about this, because it means that I've been given responsibility and I'm valued enough to have access to the station even when others may not be here yet! WOO HOO! And, this way when my parents come up to visit on Saturday I'll be able to give them a tour of the studio even though we're not open on the weekends...!

9/17 & 9/19

These few days are kind of a planning period where we're trying to get all of our upcoming projects in order. TJ (the official tech guy here) and I played around with some Final Cut Pro editing stuff just to get me familiarized with the program. I've also been watching some videos on lynda.com to get a better idea on how to run the programs we've got- I had to get the subscription for ART232 and found that it's turning out to be helpful in the rest of my life as well- I think I'm really making progress with the program. Granted, I haven't made anything yet but at least I'm feeling comfortable editing other random videos.

I've also been put in charge of gathering all the little supplies and literature to put together the promo to get people more involved. We've been slowly finding and compiling the materials- we've got a red file folder and some good ideas anyway. There's just so much to do all at once so it seems like it's taking forever to get anything done. We did, however, find a woman to run the Gratiot access center- Jan did some calling around and we found Lori. This is a good thing, because we sure did need someone to run the place down there a few days a week.

The dates of Sept. 10, 12, 14:

Monday, 9/10: Pretty much we did a recap of the alliance meeting from Friday and made some decisions about the big regional meeting in November. Ft Wayne Indiana is the location, and I will be attending from Nov 8-10. This is pretty sweet, because a) I will only be missing classes 1 day of the trip, which is really good considering how hard it is to schedule a trip during the school year. I officially have a Mac3TV shirt, a desk (kind of, it's half a desk in the reception area) and we're going to get a Mac laptop set up for me to travel about with. I did get to spend about a half hour of the 3 hours I worked this morning on the phone, which doesn't sound exciting but it was all about networking for the station and just improving my phone skills. I felt rather accomplished.Homework: find a list of the nonprofit organizations (NPOs) operating within Gratiot county.

Wednesday, 9/12: Characterized by Chai tea and collecting materials to work on the new promotional campaign. This is planned to be consortium-wide and should span to include the government councils as well as NPOs and individual citizens. There's now a folder with a nice stack of information, which is good because having a stack of papers usually means progress. Still no progress on my homework wtih that list though, because between classes and Bob Evans I didn't really know where to start my search. I've got a few ideas though, and Thursday is the day set aside to really start making some progress with this matter, because this seems like it could be either really easy or really hard.

Friday, 9/14: Turns out the list of NPOs was really easy to obtain. I had asked Tracy in the mail room at Alma where she thought I could get a list, and she said maybe try the County Clerk's office. So I called down to Ithaca where the Clerk's office is, and they directed me to the Chamber of Commerce. Sure enough, I called there and asked where I could get a list, and the lady was like "well I can fax it to you if you want." However, since I don't have a fax machine on campus here I instead went downtown to pick up the list, which was 6 pages or so. I sure did feel accomplished. I gave the list to Jan when we met at the Alma studio Friday afternoon. I got to help TJ hang some lights for the studio "stage" and clean the place up a bit. It's in some serious need of renovation, even though they just recently put a lot of money into it. The place is kind of scary, with spiders and other gross things everywhere, but I guess it's way better than it was before. And with a little more work, it will be even better!


A running total of hours so far:
9/5 3 hours (9am-12pm)
9/7 11 hours (9 am-8pm)
9/10 3 hours (9am-12pm)
9/12 3 hours (9am-12pm)
9/13 1/2 hour (12:30pm-1pm)
9/14 2 hours (1:30pm-3:30pm)

22.5 hours total!

Day 2, 9/7/2007

The second day on the job and already a field trip! A trip to Grand Rapids to the meeting of the Alliance for Community Media (ACM). This was pretty darn sweet, because I got to spend a whole day hanging out with people who have been working with Public Access Media stuff for a long, long time and really know the field- a great networking opportunity for sure, and everyone was really nice and welcoming.

I think the whole point of this meeting was really a kind of AT&T bashing session, because apparently they're starting up into the cable businness now, in addition to the phone business, and they don't want to give public access channels any rights. Their denial of same treatment for PAC's and big broadcast channels is "discrimination" and violates the protective legislation. We had a lawyer at the meeting and everything; he was pretty cool and explained things clearly (and he gave out squishy stress balls and mini keychain flashlight things). Here's the outline of the violations AT&T is doing:
Pretty much, AT&T wants to take PEG (Public, Education & Government access) broadcasts and make them small and crappy quality. They don't want to give easy access to these channels, they want to charge the channels for the technology to get their signal to the AT&T station and they don't want to adhere to the 5% franchise fee + and additional 2% PEG fee (no one gets the extra 2% though because the cable companies kind of suck about it, and they're fighting even that 5%).
...Quality: Instead of the same technology big broadcast companies use to get their signals to AT&T, AT&T is telling PEG channels they have to use a T1 line to get thier signal in. If this is implemented, the picture size will be cut in about half and quality will be greatly reduced. Pretty much it will be the equivalent of You Tube quality videos put on TV, which is discrimination against the PEG channels because they have every right to the same quality programming as anyone else.
...Access: Instead of hitting "3" or "28" or "115" or whatever channel you want on your remote control to access the channel, AT&T is only granting partial access to the PEG channels. Instead of the direct access, they make it so the user has to go to the channel 99 menu, and go through multiple (like 7) menus in order to find the PAC they're looking for. Discrimination again, because why should it be so hard to get to certain channels?
...Technology: Even though legislation says that in order to use the public right of way the cable company must provide public access tv, AT&T doesn't want to pay for the technology to get the PEG channel signals to their little boxes and on the TV. They are trying to make the public access centers pay for the technology to transmit their signal, which isn't fair because they aren't making such requirements for other "bigger" broadcasts.

The ACM tried to file a motion against AT&T for this discrimination, to try and make sure they get the same treatment as other channels. AT&T isn't actually making any TV yet though, and so they said that since it hasn't happend yet there is no actual harm, and therefore no suit (even though all of their plans indicate that there will be harm when they implement services). They also said that the ACM doesn't count as a concerned or affected source, and so essentially said that each municipality has to file suit. This is bad because AT&T is a huge company with a lot of money, and each individual municipality doesn't have the means to fight the way they're doing business. It's a dirty maneuver, but tha'ts how things are going, and so the goal is to get some of the cities in Oakland County to start this up- Southfield, Bloomfield and Novi were mentioned as possibilities because of their location and relation with AT&T. We'll see what happens as this unfolds, but it's interesting to see things really happening.

The first day, 9/5/2007

So here's my little drawing that explains what I learned today in preparation for the meeting on Friday and also just for the general understanding of public access tv.

1) Public access tv is very important to communities because it is the only venue in which any ordinary person can put their ideas/voice on tv and be heard. There really are no other public venues that provide people with the opportunities that public access tv does.

2) In the diagram I've drawn, the area boxed off in red is the public right-of-way area that exists within communities. This 18ft space is the 10 feet from the middle to the edge of the road, and the first 8 feet of your property. This is where utilities such as telephone and electrical poles go. Utilities have to pay fees to the local governments to use this public space. The same *should* be true for cable companies, as they put their cables in this space and use the public area much like a utility. However, instead of paying utility fees, they are supposed to pay a "franchise" fee to the local goverment in return for the use of this space.

3) Even though the cable companies- in our area here it's Charter- are supposed to pay the franchise fee to local governments they don't always do so. It's kind of a situation where the government won't get the money unless they fight for it, and when it comes to very small local goverments such as the townships around here, they sometimes are unsure of whether or not to demand this money from the big scary cable company. However, the current cap of what governments can recieve from the cable company is 5% of the revenue acquired from that community. Thinking about this, if you have a community of even 100 cable subscribers paying $40/month... the cable company is making 4000 a month, and 5% of that is 200/month. This comes to be $2400/year a township could be collecting from the cable company in return for the use of that public space- something that the public is entitled to, really.

4) Mac3TV, which is the Mid Michigan Area Cable Consortium (my internship) is made up of 11 townships and 3 counties. The job of Mac3TV is to provide the venue through which people of member communities can come, learn the equipment, make their own tv shows and have them air. We have 3 different locations, one in Clare, Mt. Pleasant and the Gratiot studio in Alma. Membership in this consortium is important to both Mac3TV and to the local communities, though there are still many who have not yet joined and really should for their own benefit. The second job the consortium has is to "fight" for the rights of member communities against the big bad cable company, providing information and assistance to each member community. In exchange for membership, Mac3TV is given 2 of the 5% franchise fee from each community that is a member. This money is used to fund the studios, providing equipment, staff (though many/most are part-time, volunteers, or in my case interns).

5) One reason some communities have not become members is they are reluctant to demand their 5% from the cable companies. The reasoning behind this is that they think the cable company may raise rates for their subscribers if they demand this fee, which is not true. The cable company has a prorated fee that does not vary from area to area depending on whether or not they have to pay the franchise fee there. So essentially, these areas are missing out on free money for their township, which is too bad because who couldn't use a little extra money? Plus, they would have more power if they were to join the consortium because there is always power in numbers, and their community members would have the added opportunity to use the tv media to express themselves.

6) The other thing that is required of cable companies for using that public space is to designate a public access channel. This means that if you have a cable company, you have to leave a space for the people to use your service for themselves. The thing with public access channels is that if you have enough programming throughout the day to fill 85% of the schedule, the cable company has to give you another channel to use as well, to make sure there is enough capacity to fill the demand for the service. Mac3TV is right at this point where they need another channel and so this is in discussion as per getting the 2nd channel.

Seems like this is a lot of stuff to have learned in one day; maybe it isn't but I felt like I'dalready learned a lot in such a short time. And this is only the most basic information even!