What is a Community Media Center?

In simple terms, a Community Media Center is a television station that is dedicated for use by the public, education and government agencies for the purpose of serving, informing and entertaining the 'local' community it serves with local programming. We chose the name - Community Media Network - because it will be 'making available' so much more than television access. It will be a network of services provided to a network of cable companies to serve all communities in our region. Read on.

The current goals of this organization are:

Give you some background in community access media
Cover the Federal Law providing for access
Define the Community Media Network
Inform you of it's proposals
Develop beneficial alliances with you & other organizations
Enlist support and help from you

Why do we need this?

We are 'locally' underserved by our media providers. We are in the geographic fringes of three major television/media markets. San Francisco, Sacramento and Fresno are all around 90 miles from Modesto. We are 'officially' in the Sacramento market. If you've lived here for any length of time, you've probably noticed that most media coverage here is limited to major incidents of floodings, killings or other 'major' events. Our potential market area of a 40 mile radius, spans 3 counties and encompasses a population of almost 1 million people.

We are 'locally' underserved by our existing local access providers. Cable Television franchises provide closed circuit cable television as an alternative and value added option to broadcast television. In some areas they are the sole source of television for viewers that cannot receive broadcast signals at all. Cable TV companies are in the business to provide these services to subscribers and to make a profit. They are not in the business to provide local access and facilities to the public. This is not a profitable venture, however, some municipalities require them to do so as a stipulation in their franchise agreement with that cable provider.

The solution is to either
'get them to serve us better'
or to 'serve ourselves'.
We prefer the latter.

For almost 20 years, citizens all across the country have been doing just that - serving themselves. They have established their own public access media centers and have served themselves and their communities. It was much more expensive to do then. Equipment was large and hard to maintain. With the new digital video technology, 'broadcast quality' television has become an affordable medium to the layman.

The best part about public access media centers are their design to serve the public via Public, Government & Educational programming (PEG). The public is diverse and can present many different types of programming or points of view on any issue. The public drives this type of access.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.