How to start the New Year right - Support Marin Community Media!

HELP MARIN GET AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY MEDIA CENTER!

Listen to Peter Franck, Chairman of Media Action Marin, discuss the issues surrounding the COMCAST cable franchise renewal in Marin, in an interview with Regina Carey, co-chair of the Social Justice Center of Marin. Special thanks to Jim Geraghty and everyone at the Marin Peace and Justice Coalition for the audio.

A community media center would allow the people of Marin to control and broadcast their own TV programs over cable’s PEG channels (Public, Education and Government).

Right now, Marin’s only public access channel (26) is owned and operated by Comcast. It took a torturous, two-year campaign just to get the multiple award-winning Democracy Now! program onto Ch 26, and the program is currently in danger of being cancelled.

Early last year Comcast arbitrarily dropped FM from the cable system after 19 years of un-interrupted service, and only brought it back (in an inadequate and limited way) after massive public pressure.

A report commissioned by the Marin Telecommunications Agency (MTA) found that Comcast violated numerous provisions in Marin’s current cable franchise agreement, specifically regarding community media:

• “Comcast appears to be in violation of the Franchise concerning a number of parameters related to the provision of community programming.”
• “Comcast appears to be providing commercial programming over Channel 26, in violation of the ‘non-commercial purposes’ indicated in the franchise.”

This critical communication resource belongs to the people of Marin, not a remote corporation!

NEXT MTA MEETING: After six years of negotiations, the MTA will unveil the proposed ten-year cable franchise agreement with Comcast at their next meeting on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:00-8:00pm at the Larkspur Town Hall, 400 Magnolia, Larkspur, CA.

Please Come and Support Community Media: Tell the MTA that you support the creation of a non-profit, independent community media center, and that the MTA must insist on some key provisions in this agreement, before allowing Comcast to continue using our streets for its cables. Any new franchise agreement must include:

• Designated Access Provider (DAP) Clause: This will let the people of Marin run their own Community Media Center and their own Public, Education and Government (PEG) channels.
• Capital Expense: The new community media center must be adequately funded for new and upgraded equipment and facilities over the life of the agreement.
• Operational Expense: A media center must have enough money to keep runnning. This can be provided by a viewer choice fee (less than $1 a month) on cable bills.
• FM Service over cable must be guaranteed: In many parts of Marin, cable is the only way people can hear FM.

About Media Action Marin: www.mediaactionmarin.org. We support homegrown, community-based media for non-commercial and social development purposes. Help us help you. Email info@mediaactionmarin.org

Comments

[Josh Wilson]

Well, this seems like a story worthy of sober journalistic investigation, regardless of one's partisan take on the issue.

It is exactly the kind of story at Newsdesk.org we want to cover. It has such choice elements -- civic participation, the accountability of governmental and quasi-governmental institutions ... readers gobble that stuff up.

It might not be as flashy an item as the latest about Madonna's child-rearing habits, but never doubt there's a wide, deep and longterm interest among readers in this stuff.

Sadly, for all the dismay folks have about our news media, for all the mobilization going on to "reform" media, there just doesn't seem to be funding for the practice of journalism as a public service. Plenty of money for conferences and lobbying. Plenty of money for firebrand editorializing, to "balance the debate."

But money for actually producing good journalism in a noncommercial context? Funding for honest reporting you can trust? When hell freezes over!

Well, give us a grant and we'll cover the MTA story, and more -- soberly, in a hard-news style, for readers of all political persuasions.

Josh W.
http://newsdesk.org/