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.