[ I should have used these comments from CAN-TV’s director Barbara Popovic when excerpting this AP story yesterday. – rm ]
Cable deal may open Illinois market
Bill cleared House two weeks ago, awaits Senate OK
by Ryan Keith (AP)
State Journal-Register (IL)
06/16/07
—> “It obviously didn’t please everybody,” said Gary Mack, spokesman for the Illinois Cable Television and Communications Association. “There are elements of it that nobody’s completely happy with.”The new measure eases concerns about the loss of public access channels, known as PEGs, by protecting funding and potentially creating channels in places that don’t have them now.
PEG advocates say that’s a vast improvement over what’s happened elsewhere. “In a number of states, PEG access is dead,” said Barbara Popovic of Keep Us Connected, a coalition of cities, nonprofit groups and public access channels. “This really does give PEG access a new hope.” —>
http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/116802.asp
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Community Media Summit – 2007 (IL)
by Tropology
Association for Community Networking
06/16/07
Friday, June 15, 2007 was a very special day for community in Chicago and for Chicago community media. The Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop convened a Community Media Summit with the launch of the Benton Media Scan – What’s Going on in Community Media (pdf) a report by Fred Johnson of the University of Massachusetts, Boston with Karen Menichelli, Benton Foundation.
Julia Stasch, Chair of Mayor Daley’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide released it’s official report at the summit – the Chicago Report on Digital Excellence.
http://www.afcn.org/node/271
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Chicago Report on Digital Excellence (IL)
by Michael Maranda
Wrythings
06/16/07
The long awaited report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide was released Friday June 15th at the Community Media Summit convened by the Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop under the title The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence .
Digital Excellence is both means and end for Chicago as the City of Excellence. The Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) had a large hand in bringing this vision into the public sphere. We’ll turn a critical eye to the details of the report, as is our duty, but for now we celebrate it’s release and the vision that has been established, and we offer our deepest gratitude to Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.
http://wrythings.net/2007/06/16/chicago-report-on-digital-excellence/
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Tctv2 isn’t going away soon, says station director
by Brian Mcgillivary
Traverse City Record Eagle (MI)
06/16/07
Mike Kroes heard stories that public television station tctv2 was shutting down when he went to work for it 10 years ago. Not much has changed since then, said Kroes, the station’s director. Grand Traverse County Commissioner Larry Inman recently forecast the end of tctv2 during a county meeting. “I heard it’s not going to be around much longer, all the townships are leaving,” Inman said.
Kroes said recent predictions of tctv2’s demise, including ones he too expressed in January, are premature, despite a mass drop in financial support from area townships. Traverse City, the village of Kingsley, Garfield, Elmwood and Paradise townships are the lone local government funding sources that remain. The station’s budget has been cut by more than half, down to $110,000. “It’s just about enough for us to squeak by for a while,” he said.
Pull-out reasons cited by township offcials range from lack of interest in public access to tight budgets. “Most people don’t understand the townships fund us through the cable franchise fees (subscribers) pay so it’s easy to not fund us,” Kroes said. “The real question is if people do care, because the townships are saying they don’t.” —>
http://www.record-eagle.com/2007/jun/16tctv2.htm
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Wireless auction grabs attention from all sides
by Jessica Holzer
The Hill
06/15/07
The 700 Megahertz auction, the last large slice of prime wireless spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is likely to put on the block for years to come, is attracting the attention of Democratic and Republican heavyweights.
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and six Republican senators have written to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in the last two weeks to weigh in on the ground rules for the auction, which Congress decreed must start by Jan. 28, 2008. They see the sale as a step toward achieving universal broadband access, setting up a nationwide public safety broadband network, and raising billions for the U.S. Treasury. —>
http://thehill.com/the-executive/wireless-auction-grabs-attention-from-all-sides-2007-06-15.html
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Antitrust and Net Neutrality: Basic Equality is Not Just an Economic Issue
Antitrust Review
06/15/07
In What Can Antitrust Contribute to the Network Neutrality Debate Christopher Yoo cautions against net-neutrality regulation on the basis of economic learning developed and applied in the antitrust context… [However]
The proponents of net neutrality lose battle after battle because a neutral net is not necessarily more efficient than discriminatory network structures. In fact, when it comes to network congestion, for example, discriminating at the protocol level is likely to be more efficient and welfare enhancing. But who says that the debate about net neutrality is primarily an economic one? 1. Net neutrality is first and foremost a question about the background institutions of a just society…
In any case, Yoo’s article is well written and — within the “net neutrality is primarily an economic problem” paradigm — well argued. I just happen to question the adequacy of that paradigm.
http://www.antitrustreview.com/archives/1008
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[ Friends of PEG access TV have appreciated Matt Stoller’s attention to our advocacy issues on his blog MyDD.com – despite the fact that MyDD is decidedly partisan, while PEG access advocacy most emphatically is not. Here’s news that Matt and co-MyDD blogger Chris Bowers are leaving MyDD to form a new blog, seemingly ‘beyond partisanship.’ Stay tuned! – rm ]
The Best Days Of My Life
by Chris Bowers
MyDD.com
06/15/07
—> So, why am I moving on? I hinted at the reason in yesterday’s post, Expanding Beyond Just Partisanship. As much as I have enjoyed writing about politics and elections from a partisan Democratic viewpoint, my political background is in the social justice movement and decidedly on the left. I want to write about more than just elections and political infrastructure, and I want to explicitly work toward building a progressive governing majority…
Also, I want to do much more extended writing on single campaigns, ala Googlebomb the Elections, Use It Or Lose It, or The Inflated Clinton Poll Theory, and join in discussions with a wider variety of individuals and organizations in the progressive movement. Structurally speaking, that means moving somewhat away from the rapid, chronologically backward scrolling format of traditional blogs. —>
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/6/14/135910/597
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MediaRights.org Launches New Column on Public Media and Social Action Online
by Katy Chevigny, Executive Director of Arts Engine
06/15/07
Welcome to Upstream! This is the first of what will be a monthly column on MediaRights.org. In response to the rapid changes occurring in online media distribution, we at Arts Engine decided it was both timely and vital to provide our take on the field with an eye toward social impact. Upstream will not only keep abreast of what’s new in online video, it will discuss how online media is shaping dialogue and triggering action.
We feel that Upstream is a natural extension of our role in the field over the last several years. In 2001, long before “google” became a verb and MySpace was barely a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s wallet, Arts Engine launched the first annual Media That Matters Film Festival, a cutting edge online showcase of independent shorts that explored issues like anorexia and the environmental impact of Silicon Valley in eight minutes or less. While the dotcom boom of the nineties had come and gone, in its place had emerged a shared feeling, especially in the nonprofit and public media sectors, that the web had the power to connect people, to invigorate social justice movements, to provide a platform for voices of dissent and to distribute independent media.
It was in this spirit that Arts Engine launched MediaRights.org in 2000 and, a year later, the Media That Matters Film Festival. Our goal was then and remains today to reduce the gap between content creators and audiences and to harness the potential of the web to present independent media in the context of education and action. In the past six years our little online festival has grown into a yearlong program of screenings and DVD distribution, but the website remains its core. The instant gratification of streaming video and the ability to connect a visitor to a myriad of resources has made Media That Matters, and projects like it, such compelling online destinations. —>
http://www.mediarights.org/news/2007/06/15/upstream_mediarightsorg_launches_new_column_on_public_media_and_social_action_online
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How To Understand Media In Web 3.0
How to Split An Atom
06/16/07
Welcome to the weekend, where news is not really news and idle speculation rules How To Split An Atom. Once again, we are wandering down the rabbit hole and taking a look at how the world will be changed by what I loosely call Web 3.0. In today’s edition, we look at Media. Specifically, how we will get our daily dose of entertainment in the new web. Before we start, as always let me define what Web 3.0 is. The short version, which is hopefully not pilfered by O’Rielly is –
Definition: Highly specialized information silos, moderated by a cult of personality, validated by the community, and put into context with the inclusion of meta-data through widgets.
Now, lets take a look at the future of media in these terms. —>
http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/how-to-understand-media-in-web-30/
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compiled by Rob McCausland
Dir., Information & Organizing Services
Alliance for Community Media
202-393-2650
http://ourchannels.org
Clippings for PEG Access Television 