December 1, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tracy Rosenberg

(510) 684-6853 Cell

SF Public Access Producers Picket Soon-To-Be Closed SF Facility: Troubled Transition to a New Operator Under Statewide Franchising

Today at 4:00pm, community producers will gather at the former Access San Francisco facility at 1720 Market Street in San Francisco (now called SF Commons and slated for closure on December 20th) to ask San Francisco city government to protect access to the public channels.

Now operated by SF nonprofit organization The Bay Area Video Coalition under greatly reduced funding due to the 2005 DIVCA Act (Digital Imaging and Video Competition Act), and on the heels of the well-publicized loss of most of the PEG (Public, Educational and Governmental) infrastructure in the Los Angeles metropolitan area last year, the producers say that BAVC, under lax supervision from the city, is dismantling the facility and endangering local community media.

The producers state the facility is being shut down months prior to the end of the lease, with no plans to provide alternate studio space, and further, that producers who don't have independent television equipment or the resources to rent equipment and production space will no longer be able to create programming for the public channels.

Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg says "When we read the proposal for BAVC to take over the operations, we were concerned that access for the public to resources and training would be compromised, especially for lower-income producers".

Public access channels are provided by cable giants as a municipal resource in return for a monopoly franchise which provides huge profits for the franchisee (Comcast for the majority of San Francisco residents). The 2005 DIVCA Act removed the ability of local municipalities like San Francisco to negotiate cable agreements independently with the telecoms and endangered funding for PEG channel operations throughout the state of California.

The Bay Area Video Coalition, well-respected media arts nonprofit in San Francisco, bid for the city contract after the former operator said the operating budget was insufficient.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a 1.15% fee to aid PEG facilities and negotiated a one-time settlement of $375,000 from Comcast to aid operating costs for the 2010 year, providing over $500,000 in funding for the next 12 months.

The CAP Act (The Cable Preservation Act), H.R. 3745, was recently introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Tammy Baldwin to reverse the damage caused to PEG channels by the introduction of statewide cable franchising acts in 24 states across the country, including California.

(In the interests of transparency, Media Alliance discloses that we produce a 30-minute program on the SF public access station twice a month called Media News, which has aired since July of 2009. Media Alliance played no role in organizing today's action).

###