Once upon a time BD (as in “before digital”), almost all of our local television stations produced their own programming. Over-the-air broadcasting has changed over the years, with competing cable, satellite, and other video vehicles offering even more programming choices.

Unfortunately, the number of locally originated and focused programs have diminished. Now most of the more than 1,500 traditional local TV stations (using over-the-air transmitters vs. cable) only do enough pubic affairs programming to keep themselves legal — and sometimes do next to none at all. Most of today's local television programming is delivered via cable.

With the legal understanding that it's the general public that owns the airwaves, each broadcaster must produce some community-related shows and put forth “a good faith effort” to serve the television programming needs of the community in order to keep an FCC license to operate. Local newscasts fulfill some of this commitment. Perhaps you've seen other public affairs programs late at night or early on a weekend morning. These generally consist of community issues forums, talk shows, children's programs, religious shows, or local news. But coming up with your own unique show idea and then getting your program on a traditional television station has always been all but impossible.

Cable has changed network television, and now it's doing the same for local broadcasting, offering new opportunities for both those who create programming and those who watch it. With more than 500 cable channels available and more subscribers than ever, the explosive growth of cable television has meant more opportunities for video content creators. This is especially true for creators of local programs who are allowed access to local cable TV stations.

Cable companies have begun living up to the provisions of the Telecommunications Act, which, through cable franchise agreements, lets cities and towns require cable operators to provide local public access channels for unrestricted use by citizens, school districts, and municipalities. These broadcast avenues offer independent video producers exciting new outlets for broadcasting their programs to the local and regional community.

The cable industry took over television in the 1970s, using cable on telephone poles to deliver better picture and sound quality while increasing the number of viewing choices. In the process, cable reinvented the medium of television. If you've been alive on the planet in the past 30 years, cable television has affected your life. Today there are almost 8,000 cable companies in the United States, with annual revenues of $69 billion. Now, of the more than 110 million households with a television, 66 percent get their shows via cable, according to the National Cable Television Association. And with the emergence of digital cable, high-definition cable, interactive cable, DVRs, and local cable programming, continued growth is assured.

To win a contract to serve a local community, cable companies like Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, and Adelphia sign a franchise agreement that mandates they provide the local community with nonprofit public access channels. These channels feature video of local government and civic meetings, regional cultural and arts events, classes from community colleges, special interest and religious shows, as well as political freedom-of-speech-type programs from the radical left and right. Different cable companies adhere to different standards based on the communities they serve. There can be some way-out and avant-garde programs on local public access cable, but X-rated programs are forbidden. Let's look at some examples of cable access programs and how local content creators are broadcasting today.

Public, educational, and government access programming (also called PEG cable) is democracy in action. Anyone can learn video production through training offered by a local PEG station and then help create programs there. Or you can produce your own shows following the station's guidelines and submit them independently. Either way, you should consider taking advantage of this often-underutilized avenue for broadcasting your work or message. There are as many kinds of PEG stations as there are cable operators. Some offer total public access and are staffed almost entirely by volunteers. Others take funding from cable fees and produce TV programming inhouse as a department of city government.

The P in PEG stands for public, since one of the missions of PEG cable is to provide public access. One organization that fulfills this mission well is AMP, a nonprofit media production and broadcast organization producing and broadcasting public access programming from a modern Community Media Center near Monterey, Calif. Formerly known as Access Monterey Peninsula, AMP has five full-time employees and 30 volunteers. The organization has five different channels on the air 24/7, fed from a Synergy Broadcast server. AMP produces and airs 2,000 to 3,000 local and regional programs per year.

Like many PEG cable stations, AMP uses standard DV cameras like Canon's GL1 and XL-1 and a JVC DV camera, but these days the station is also doing more direct-to-hard disk recording. In fact, it does almost all HD direct-to-server recording now, using Panasonic DMR-HS2 and JVC HM-HDS1 hard disk recorders. These units are perfect for the kind of long-format recording AMP does in covering government and school meetings and events.

When it comes to video postproduction, CG, switching, and editing, AMP has professional tools. “We use the NewTek VT[4] as our studio switcher,” says Paul Congo, AMP's executive director. “The Video Toaster [VT] system allows us to have the same graphics and DVE effects, bluescreen, etc., as large broadcast operations in a facility that is funded only by local cable franchise revenues in a small city. The computer screen interface of the VT also facilitates a single user to do the work of multiple users — ideal for community TV or any facility in a small market.”

Output from the Video Toaster is usually sent directly to the digital server, with a backup on DVD or DV tape or a hard drive, Congo says. The nonprofit broadcasters at AMP use a fiber feed to send a playback signal to the local Comcast cable company's head end for distribution to cable viewers. The feed also allows realtime Internet streaming of content via the AMP website. Public access stations like AMP offer local citizens a vehicle to exercise their freedom of speech and keep in touch with their communities.

The E in PEG stands for education, and there are many different kinds of educational television stations in the United States. These stations may be part of cable franchisees' PEG broadcasting agreements or consist of distance learning TV from universities, community colleges, or schools. More than with any other sector in the broadcast industry, cable companies have made a major commitment to educational television programming. For example, there are more than 81,000 schools currently served by Cable in the Classroom programming, which reaches more than 43 million students every year, according to the National Cable Television Association.

Some educational cable access goes beyond just providing learning opportunities for viewers. For example, BPS-TV, an educational access channel based in Brevard County, Fla. BPS-TV, the Brevard Public Schools channel, was created by and for local students and schools, and broadcasts both over the air and on cable television.

Brevard is a large county, with Orlando to the west and Cape Canaveral and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. BPS-TV went on the air in September 2004 to serve this community and 84 schools by providing educational programming. BPS-TV is unique because it leases space at the local PBS affiliate, WBCC-TV in Cocoa, Fla. Besides office space, BPS-TV also uses WBCC's studio equipment and the transmitter of one of its digital channels (the station has four). BPS-TV can either be seen on one of the WBCC over-the-air digital channels or on the local cable TV systems (there are three different cable operators in Brevard county).

BPS-TV Station Manager Scott Carrico has been involved in educational television for most of his career. He produced the children's educational TV series Shamu TV seen on PBS and cable's Animal Planet, winning three regional Emmys in the process. When it comes to local educational television for rural areas like Brevard County, Carrico understands. “The closest TV market is Orlando [about an hour away], and although they send reporters out here every now and then, it's often to cover a ‘bad’ news story,” he says. “On our channel, we produce a monthly news program that features all of the positive things our students and teachers are doing. Within this show, each school also has the opportunity to create a short, two-minute School Update spot that talks about all of the great things happening at their school. I believe this is about as local as it gets in broadcast television.”

In addition to having access to the full facilities of a multi-million-dollar TV station, BPS-TV is also fortunate to have a ready-made pool of crew and talent. Video production is a course taught at all 14 of Brevard County's high schools.

“At four of the high schools, it's a career and technology program geared towards preparing students to enter the workforce,” Carrico says. “In the elementary schools, TV production is usually a before- or after-school activity.” The school district is also installing computer labs where both teachers and students can learn video and audio postproduction software.

When it comes to new technology, BPS-TV is looking to go wireless. “The new technology I'm most interested in is wireless video, or the ability to transmit broadcast-quality video over short distances for a reasonable amount of money,” Carrico explains. “Wireless transmission would be a huge benefit for broadcasting high school sports, for example. No need to lay cable up and down stadiums.”

And what about field production and Internet streaming? “I'm also looking at studio-in-a-box products like the Sony Anycast and NewTek TriCaster,” Carrico says.

Carrico says BPS-TV's focus on learning — for volunteers as well as viewers — underlines why PEG TV is important. “It's been said that we are in an information economy,” he says. “So knowing how to master the media tools to effectively communicate information is essential for today's young people.”

The G in PEG stands for government, and while there are many different kinds of local government cable channels, one of the most innovative is in Arizona. Tucson 12 began in 1984 as part of a franchise agreement between the City of Tucson and Cox Cable for Cox to provide channel space and funding for PEG programming. It is now a division of the city's information technology department with 11 full-time employees.

For the last 20 years, Dan Sheffer, who started as news videographer with the local NBC affiliate, has been Tucson 12's director of photography. “At our market level, the local affiliates do practically no local programming outside of local news reports,” Sheffer explains. “We feel a responsibility to show our audience what's going on in their city and community, and give them access to local stories they can't get anywhere else. As a department of the City of Tucson, it's our mission to get people information on how the government is working for them, and what issues the community is facing.”

Tucson 12 was not only one of the first cable stations of its kind, it also uses new technologies to give the city more bang for its buck, and the viewer more production value as it delivers information. With a 32'×45' studio and a multi-camera remote production truck, Tucson 12 is ready for just about anything. The majority of the station's inhouse programming is produced in the field, single-camera ENG style, and shot in DVCPRO50 following a standard production flow. The shows are edited on one of two Avid Xpress NLE systems or online using a Sony BVE-2000 and a DFS-700A switcher. All edit rooms are networked together via SDI, with the final programs mastered on DVCPRO50 tape and digitized into Tucson 12's on-air transmission server, a Leitch NX 4000, for airing.

“We just completed our three-year digital transition,” says Sheffer. “We started with 4:2:2 digital field acquisition handled via DVCPRO50, upgraded our editing capability, and went online with our on-air server system this past year. We currently have three Panasonic SDC-915 cameras, one SDX-900, and one DVX-100A used as field cameras. Three Ikegami HL45As, which double as studio cameras, also go out with our production truck to do live mayor and council meetings, which are recorded on DVCPRO25 for re-airing.”

The station is also preparing for HDTV. It already produces one show totally in 16:9 24p and parts of others. “We're currently researching HD options, looking closely at the Panasonic HVX200 and P2,” Sheffer says.

Editing chores are handled by an Avid Xpress NLE. “We'll be adding a new Avid Adrenaline NLE and Unity LANshare networking system this spring,” Sheffer says. For transmission, the station uses a Leitch server playout system and Pinnacle StreamFactory.

While the station is looking at HD high-tech options for the future, Sheffer says he doesn't necessarily see technology as a panacea. “Don't let the equipment get in the way,” he says. “With the rapid changes in technology, it's easy to get caught up in the hardware and software and forget these are only tools. Learn the basics of good storytelling. They stay the same regardless of the technology you're using.”

One thing is certain, Tucson 12 is not afraid of adopting new technologies. “We've been pretty active in streaming for more than two years now,” Sheffer says. “Our shop is actually under the city's IT department, which gives us a great deal of capability and support in that area. Our programming is also ingested into a Pinnacle StreamFactory for streaming, and sent to out to the IT section, which handles the rest. Since our channel is only available to cable subscribers, we felt it was crucial to pursue streaming in order to give even more citizens access to our programming.”

Tucson 12 Production Technician Gary Keckonen helps the station team produce and transmit shows. “We produce and create programming in the DVCPRO50 or 25 video format,” Keckonen says. “The signal is modulated or converted to analog, which is then transmitted as a digital signal over fiber to the cable providers' head end, where it is then converted back to analog and put into the system. This is done from both our main facility and our production truck from various points around the city.”

The station uses hard disk and digital technologies extensively in its production and transmission processes. “We're using two Leitch Nexio transmission servers with a hard drive array with the capacity of twice the hours needed for our weekly schedule,” Keckonen says. “Server one is dedicated to on-air transmission and new show ingest. Server two is for file dubbing, ingest, and a backup of server one.”

When it comes to high-quality transmission, Tucson 12 takes a back seat to no other broadcast outlet, public or for-profit. “Using a Utah Scientific router with both analog and digital capability, we're currently acquiring our programming in DVCPRO25 with embedded audio,” Keckonen says. “We constantly receive requests for dubs from city departments and citizen groups. We try to accommodate as many as we can. With the use of A/D and D/A converters, we have the ability to dub to and from VHS, DVD, Betacam, and DVCPRO.

“We also have the ability to convert video clips to streaming computer files such as Windows Media Player and RealPlayer files. As long as we have a need to use a format, and we can maintain quality, we will try to keep it in our system. Whether it's hard disk or tape-to-tape, analog or digital, we can handle it.”

The 24/7 cable station's budget of more than $1 million comes from Tucson's municipal general fund after the cable company pays its franchise fees to the city, which are approximately 5 cents per subscriber.

“Funding is a big issue now all over the country,” Sheffer says. “A state bill was recently passed in the Arizona Legislature limiting the amount of funding and channels local communities can receive in franchise agreements with telecommunications companies. As I understand, the money specifically used for capital purchases in operations such as ours may disappear completely.”

And that would be a shame, because this funding allows the station to produce almost 300 hours of original local programming per year. With shows as diverse as gavel-to-gavel coverage of mayor and city council meetings; the public safety show On Scene; and The Beat, which looks at art and music in the downtown area, Tucson 12 allows the city to communicate with the community quickly and cost effectively.

With shrinking budgets, the challenge for these PEG public access stations is how to deal with the continuing funding conundrum. Many stations are looking into obtaining grants, creating viewer memberships, and working on collaborations with other public service organizations that need broadcast access and video production services. But these stations are surviving, although some only barely. Only the future will tell what's ahead for them.

Today's PEG cable access stations are the local television stations of old now updated with the latest in digital technology, volunteerism, and cable entrepreneurship. PEG and commercial access broadcasting offer a valuable communication tool for localities, and commercial opportunity for local content creators. Be it for videographers looking at local stations as a money-making business venture, or neighborhood nonprofit organizations that couldn't get their message across without public access, these are great days for local television.