Public Access Television
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an “amateurish” endeavor (McQuail 107-08). McQuail elucidates that group identity
rests upon the work of other professionals. And, after 50 hours of interviews, I
realized that access producers beheve themselves to be a group of “identifiable
professionals.” Mass media groups as access producers can be considered “esoteric,”
those with a specialized knowledge of culture within a community (Djupedal 73).
Such knowledge is kept by “guardians” who influence the wider esoteric knowledge
of a particular group. Since access producers are a group which has control over
their messages and the media channel which transmits them, they can be assumed
to have their own group conventions, customs, and unwritten rules. This group is a
legitimate object of study for a folklorist. Media researchers have based similar
concepts such as “media institution,” media organization, and mass communicator
upon the “folk” definition cited earlier.
My personal interviews revealed that many producers reflect the characteristics
listed above when presenting their programs. Further scrutiny showed that producers
take different approaches in presenting their stories. After examining their program
styles and formats, I found some common inclinations among these producers
with regard to the story types and personal motivations they used in their programs.
After further sifting through the interviews, I fashioned three distinct categories
which clarifies producers’ story styles and personal presentations: ego promoters,
message/issue practitioners, and story/ entertainment providers.
In creating these categories, I referred to Schenda’s observations concerning
mass media’s role in the maintenance of old and the creation of new folklore genres
(Degh 1). Particularly, I applied how the media are used to promote consumption
and how individuals (access producers) take media instruments into their own
hands to maintain, reconstruct, create, and transform traditional storytelling
practices. There have been studies conducted that examined how professional
communicators and folk (audience members) consume media in certain social
contexts (23-4). A traditional context of media consumption is monetary reward in
which producers sell their stories in the marketplace, and folk consume the
advertising of those story sponsors. In this particular case, public access producers
are nonprofessionals not selling stories and audiences are not exposed to advertising.
In order to get their folk to consume access programs, and using collaboration with
access channel staff and volunteers, producers design many stories (folklore) about
the community in which they reside that local cable television consumers can
identify with and relate to.
As a group, access producers could be further separated in two narrower types:
individuals associated with identifiable groups such as organized religious and
sectarian organizations and non-affiliated individuals from the local community.
These individuals can be further separated into those who are issue-oriented and
those who use the access facility for utilitarian purposes such as vocational or
amusement.