One of the things that’s interested me since I entered public media in the fall of 2004 was the relationship between public media today and public media as originally intended under the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. I’ve wondered, are we still the institution we were meant to be? If not, is that good or bad?
Sparking more of this thinking today was a video linked by Gerd Leonhard. It was produced by Denver OpenMedia and explains the TV and mass media landscape of today and looks at how distribution, content and democracy are linked via mass media. It also focuses on Public Access television, a distinctly different style of television from public broadcasting, but one that shares at least some DNA with pubcasting’s origins.
It’s a great 30 minute introduction to understanding media — public or commercial. Highly recommended, mostly because it puts the economic model of historic TV into clear relief.
NOTE: The video is after the “read more” link because it auto-starts and I didn’t want to place it on my home page directly.
http://www.denveropenmedia.org/flowplayer/FlowPlayer.swf?config=%7Bembedded%3Atrue%2CbufferLength%3A5%2CfullScreenScriptURL%3A%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecivicpixel%2Ecom%2Fbib%2Ejs%27%2Cloop%3Afalse%2CautoPlay%3Atrue%2CvideoFile%3A%27OpeningAccess%2Eflv%27%2CbaseURL%3A%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edenveropenmedia%2Eorg%2Fstreams%2F50%2Fc4%27%7DAs we look further into the 21st century, how should we in pubcasting change in our attempts to be meaningful to our communities? Can we return to the intentions of the 1967 PBA now? Or is that model no longer needed?
Does your public TV station fulfill or skate by the intentions of the 1967 PBA? Should PBS stations take over the mantle of Public Access TV as part of a strategy to foster the community media revolution?
Gravity Medium 