As I was working on my blog post about the DPUC and Sound View Community Media (SVCM), I called around to many people to get opinions about SVCM and the DPUC draft decision. Most of my friends were highly critical of SVCM. They described the group as an unresponsive clique of insiders who were not interested in transparency or outreach.

However, one person suggested that if I feel so strongly about community media, perhaps I should become the new designee of the First Selectman of Woodbridge and attend SVCM’s board of director’s meeting, which happened this morning.

Knowing the long, adversarial relationship between people at Sound View and people involved with community media in Woodbridge, I was concerned about what the reaction would be to my presence or how productive the meeting would be.

I left extra time to get to their studios since I hadn’t been there before and I wasn’t sure how much traffic I would encounter. I arrived early and was greeted by Thomas Castelot, President of SVCM. Soon afterwards, David Zieff, a C.P.A. for the firm Friedberg,Smith, & Co., P.C. showed up. One of the first orders of business was Mr. Zieff presenting the Independent Auditor’s Report.

He joked, asking where the camera was. Fred Fawcett who is on the board of SVCM arrived and joined in the discussion about broadcasting the board meeting. Later on, I also expressed my desire that board meetings be televised. Dianne Auger, who serves as Chair of the board, Joe Lodato, who is the board’s secretary and Frank Borres also showed up. There was no designee from any of the other towns.

The discussion of the Independent Auditor’s Report was fairly quick. In 2007, SCVM had a small shortfall, mostly attributed to depreciation of equipment. The shortfall was larger in 2008 and this too was mostly attributed to depreciation of equipment. Yet at the same time, SVCM continues to upgrade its equipment, thereby avoiding the deferred maintenance issues that so many groups run into.

After the discussion of the Finances, several other topics were discussed. H.B. 6604 was brought up. SVCM and cable operators are in opposition to the bill and they do not believe the bill is going anywhere. One of the issues is that cable access committees have been having difficulties filling seats on their boards, and the bill would open things up for employees of cable companies to sit on the community access committees. This sounds a little too much like having the fox guard the henhouse.

Another aspect of the bill would require new cable companies to offer the same or better access and video quality than what currently exists. The cable companies seem to believe that comparisons between the different companies cannot be judged that way. The method that AT&T uses for Channel 99 where subscribers select from a submenu the town government, public or educational channels is different from how Cablevision provides the service with each channel being different. People could argue that either method is better.

There was also a discussion about Cablevisions effort to move to statewide franchising and what this could do to cable access committees. Will cable access committees change substantially as a result of these changes in franchising? Did these changes in franchising play a role in the way the DPUC approached its decision? What happens as more cable companies come into Connecticut?

After the comments about the DPUC decision, I asked for a chance to introduce myself and talk a little bit about the concerns I was hearing. I spoke about my commitment to community media and my hopes that we could get past some of the historic enmity and move towards what is best for community media for all of us.

In the President’s report, Tom had spoke about feeling vindicated by the DPUC’s draft decision. I commented that the vindication sounded a lot like the vindication a schoolboy feels when being called into the principal’s office for not doing well in school. The student might feel vindicated by not being suspended, but we should be looking for much more. Community media is too important to be merely avoiding suspension.

Some of the discussion around the budget was about money spent on legal costs as well as on hiring a lobbyist. I noted that my wife works both as a registered lobbyist and as a community organizer and in my opinion, what SVCM needs is not a lobbyist but more community organizing.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well my little diatribe as received. One person commented that it reminded them of the enthusiasm of the early days of SVCM and hoped we might be able to return to those days. We proceeded on to an interesting and lively discussion.

Fred Fawcett spoke about wishing that the Amity Board of Education meetings could be available to subscribers in Orange as well as in Woodbridge, since Orange is part of the Amity school district, and the recent board meeting discussing the presentation of ‘Rent’ by the Amity Theatre Department apparently generated a heated board meeting.

Frank Borres also spoke about regionalization and expressed concern that Woodbridge has an active designee and there was no designee from the Bridgeport Mayor’s office at the meeting. I expressed a similar concern as well as a hope that Woodbridge and Bridgeport could find ways to collaborate with community media as opposed to it devolving into urban versus suburban conflict.

Hopefully, some of the other towns can also be convinced to send designees to the next meeting. Beyond that, I expressed a hope that as we find ways of moving past previous antagonism, we might find ways for people from different communities to work together. As an example, I would love to see an education program produced as a joint effort by high school students from Woodbridge and Bridgeport.

SVCM expressed a desire to get copies of programs from Woodbridge that they could rebroadcast and or make available on demand on their website. It was explained to me that much of the conflict has been over control and ownership. SVCM maintained they didn’t want any ownership of the content, only the rights to retransmit it. This seems reasonable to me. My suggestion is that towns should make their video content available to SVCM and anyone else that wants it under a creative comments license. Now, I need to come back to the folks in Woodbridge and see what their side of this part of the story is.

After the meeting, I was given a tour of the SVCM facilities and talked a little bit about what is involved in putting on a show. With the number of people with their own video equipment these days, it appears very easy for anyone to set up a show on community access and I would hope a lot of videobloggers might look into this as a means of expanding their audience.

Specifically, for Sound View, you need to commit to 13 episodes, and you need to have at least four prepared ahead of time. This will give them the ability to repeat episodes if for some reason you run into difficulties getting an episode produced during the run of your show. The episodes can be delivered as DVDs which they then transfer to their server.

One idea that I’ve talked about one this blog before is the idea of a locally oriented news show based on hyperlocal citizen journalism and the blogs. It appears as if such a show might be fairly easy to produce.

If you want to use the Sound View equipment, you need to go through training. They essentially have two levels of training. The first is to use their equipment for videography and editing. It is a four-week class with much of the focus on using the editing system. Upon completing that it is possible to take additional one on one classes to learn to use their higher end equipment, including a small studio.

They also have a studio class for people wanting to use their large studio which is used for live productions. Currently Sound View has five or six shows produced live each week. This requires a team of six to nine people. SVCM requires that a team that will work together be trained together. This is in part because they’ve found people are unlikely to volunteer for other people’s shows, so you need to build a solid team to do the show.

I discussed methods of trying to promote more cooperation between producers. For example, setting up a mailing list or a Ning page for producers to communicate beyond the walls of the studio. The idea was well received and goes on my todo pile, along with several other ideas that I have.

As the media landscape changes, I believe that community media, particularly in the form of PEG channels becomes more and more important. If I can find a way to make community access programming much more successful here in Region 2 and in Connecticut, I’ll give it my best.