The State
of Our
State ‘ s
Community
Media
O
Story by Kevin Christopher, Vermont Access Network president
Photography courtesy Vermont Access Network
n October 21, 2019, Seven Days—
the Burlington area’s weekly in-
dependent newspaper—posted to
their website a two-minute video clip from
the October 7 Essex Select Board meeting.
In it, a town resident uses her time at the
microphone during the public comment
period to perform, with pre-recorded
accompaniment, a parody of a song by
rock band Jethro Tull. The lyrics had been
altered to make it a song of protest,
opposing the process by which Essex
Town and Junction governments are again
approaching a vote to merge the two
municipalities.
The clip, which is nearing 6,000 views on
YouTube, certainly captures a novel
approach to citizen participation during
what may well have been an otherwise
dry public meeting. Perhaps more novel,
though, given our nation’s current media
landscape is the existence of the full
46-minute meeting during which the
performance occurred; an unedited,
unfiltered document of democracy in
process at its most local level.
That document can be found on cable
television in the Burlington area and
online at cctv.org, a production of CCTV
Channel 17, Town Meeting Television.
For more than 35 years, they have pro-
vided coverage of municipal meetings in
a variety of Chittenden County towns, as
well as a myriad of other programming.
And they’re not alone. In total, Vermont
has 25 Community Media Centers such as
CCTV Channel 17, more per capita than
any other state. This vibrant Community
Media system is a unique public asset
that provides local information, enhances
government transparency, and connects
people to their communities.
Community Media Centers are called a
variety of other names, Public Access TV
being perhaps the most well known. In
reality, there are three distinct types of
Access Television: public, educational, and
government, or PEG. Each type of Access
serves a specific constituency and may be
unique in its programming and services;
22 of Vermont’s Community Media
Centers provide all three types of access
from the same facility. The Burlington
area, however, is large enough to support
one center each for the P, E, and G. All are
independent, non-commercial nonprofits.
Although Community Media has a much
longer history, the basic tenets were
codified by Congress in the Cable Act of
1984. Essentially, these centers exist as a
result of cable television providers’ use of
public rights-of-way. In exchange for the
privilege of using public lands to run cable
and to do business, certain public good
contributions are required of the
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