STOP PRIVATIZING AccessSF CHANNEL 29

2/10/05 Statement Of The
Producers and Programmers Network of San Francisco PPNSF
P.O. Box 720027 San Francisco, CA 94172
carltv214 [at] aol.com lvpsf [at] labornet.org


STOP PRIVATIZING AccessSF CHANNEL 29
FOR MUNICIPALIZATION OF COMCAST IN SF




Community, labor and public media rights are under attack. Using the pretext of "raising more money", the executive director of the Community Television Corporation CTC and his hand picked rubber stamp board of directors are using the non-profit community channel AccessSF Channel 29 to begin an advertising campaign on the channel. One of his staff was hired to raise money from foundations has instead turned into a corporate advertising salesman. While this individual makes over $30,000 a year of and has raised only a few thousand dollars from foundations, he is now spending staff time distributing advertising rate cards. He also is going to non-profit organizations and asking for $500 so they can get advertising slots on the channel.
While CTC board have refused to open up the station 7 days a week for community programmers and producers, they are offering staff time to corporations to do advertising on the station. They are using the paid staff for crewing League of Women Voters and other non-profits so they can do advertising on the channel. This is a flagrant violation of community access rules and will lead to the complete privatization of the channel.
This corporatization of community access is nothing new. Using a "lottery" system, long time regular producers are regularly thrown off their slots so producers who have never even produced a show can take their slots. The CTC executive director and his board refuse to give priority to locally produced shows and they also refuse to give priority to local produced programming. This has led to the departure of numerous San Francisco programmers who have become fed up with the anti-producer approach of the privateers. The Exec Director at the same time is allowing his "friends" to use the Avid editing system and other equipment for commercial ventures that have nothing to do with community access in San Francisco. This growing corruption at the community access channel is a direct result of the lack of checks and balances in a one man operation.
Their real plan with the membership card in fact was to get commercial advertisers to start advertising on the channel and the executive director has openly admitted that he wants to model channel 29 after KQED where corporations "underwrite" programming with advertising. He and the board have also opposed programming Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now show although tens of thousands of residents in San Francisco want to see this program and many have offered to sponsor this. The station management also refuses to stream the programming on the Internet so that people who cannot afford both cable and Internet access are able to see community access Channel 29.
At the same time the management and board have pushed out and removed the only labor representative and other independent board members. This corporatized board is part and parcel of the drive to destroy community access in San Francisco and from the point of view of PPNSF. Any discussion of cable and the city must include the privatization of community access.
PPNSF also believes that the city should municipalize the cable company. Comcast is scamming the residents of San Francisco with high rates and forcing the residents to subsidize the introduction of digital cable. The exploding rates cannot be controlled unless the city takes over the running of the cable company. While Comcast bosses say that they need to pay for all the channels and that is why the cost is over $52.00 a month they refuse to allow the users of cable to decide what channels they want and do not need. They are looting hundreds of millions from the users of cable in San Francisco. We also must oppose the plan of Mayor Newsom to stop programming the city commissions that expose how the city operates. We need a democratically run unionized cable system in San Francisco that will provide cable, telephone and internet access at low cost to all residents. In Ashland, Oregon, the municipalized cable channel which the privatize cable monopolies opposed only charges $14.00 a month.
Under the Democratic Party and Republican party's deregulation of cable, it is virtually impossible to control the choice of channels, pricing and other elements of cable unless it is municipalized under public control.
If you agree with these policies please contact PPNSF and Contact the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors


JOIN the campaign of PPNSF
To Defend Community Access &
Municipalize Comscast-Stop To Stop The Ripoffs!