Public Access Television Stations

My research on public access television focussed primarily on two stations from the California Community Media Exchange (introduced here), Davis Media Access (DMA) and the Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM), along with a selection of their associated producers.

Davis Media Access

DMA was located in the university town of Davis, and had been in existence since the late 1980s. Its public access service was broadcast on Comcast's cable network on Channel 15.  DMA’s reason for going online was so to provide an accessible “[video] archive of the local community”, but also because there was a growing expectation in the community that these videos be available online.

Davis Media Access offices and studio

DMA's primary method for distributing its producers' videos was via the Davis Community TV (DCTV) website. This website was based on the Open Media Project (OMP), a set of Drupal tools originally developed for Denver public access television in Colorado, and later further developed by additional stations, including DMA, for their needs.

A screenshot of a DCTV page

While DMA had experimented previously with YouTube, Blip and Vimeo, they did not regard most third-party video distribution services as suitable for their needs as they had concerns over the longevity and commercial nature of these services. In addition, DMA wanted to be able to integrate their broadcast television system into their online solution: they believed this would allow them to streamline work flows and free up station staff time. The choice of OMP satisfied their desire for an integrated, permanent, non-commercial video archive of their local community. To ensure the longevity of this solution, they also used Archive.org as a backup for their videos.

The on-going development of OMP and its integration into the broadcast system was a time-consuming and complex process, and was delaying the release of the DCTV website in a form DMA felt comfortable with promoting, which meant the site was getting less traffic than desired. 

While the DCTV website had provisions for making comments on videos, none were in fact made by users, and no form of online conversation took place there.  However, DMA did not consider this an issue, as their goal was not to create an online community,  but rather to provide a searchable video archive that people could use to embed videos in their online social networks, such as on Facebook.

While DMA had their own Facebook page, they rarely used it to distribute producer videos, as they said they did not have the resources to devote to this activity, but rather used it sparingly to announced news and events at the station.

As part of my participant-observer activities at DMA, I produced an episode of their series "Street Talk", which talks to Davis residents about local issues. Previous episodes of this series were produced by local residents, including one of my informants (who also assisted on this production).  My episode concerned the then upcoming local vote on Measure D, which was about whether a special tax to fund parks and recreation in Davis should be continued. This episode was originally broadcast on Comcast channel 15 at 17:25 on Tuesday May 29 2012. The episode can be viewed on the DMA website or in higher resolution here: