Good article in the Illinois Times on some of the serious challenges public access is being confronted with these days. There are those who say access has had its day, is an outdated model of communication, YouTube is replacing it, etc..etc… (points raised in this PBS report on Public Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age). Never mind the crux of the issue is replacing non-commercial, public spheres of communication with privately owned and controlled ones (which is what sites like Google Video and YouTube are). Access to communication is never outdated, and the right to do it should include via what is currently the predominate means of media in our society and that is, like it or not, television.

But anecdotal evidence — and in the non-Nielsen-ized world of cable access, that’s the only kind available — suggests that Just Two Guys is one of Access 4’s “hit” shows. Anderson and Roderick’s blog (just-two-guys.blogspot.com) gets up to 100 hits per day, and the hosts find themselves getting recognized by everyone from the stocker at Lowe’s hardware to the cashier at the thrift store where they buy the coolly retro jackets they wear on their show. They’ve even been profiled by the State Journal-Register.

As their show has grown, though, Anderson has noticed that the resources available to do Just Two Guys seem to have declined. The full-time director who helped them fulfill their artistic visions, whether it meant filming outside the studio or adding a laugh-track, has been transferred away. Another director got laid off; neither position has been replaced. With only part-time staff working at the studio, shooting times have become harder to schedule, and editing help has dwindled. “I think the model they’re moving toward is just a space to do the show and the cameras and nothing else,” Anderson says.

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Nationwide, public access television is becoming ever less publicly accessible. In parts of Indiana and Michigan, cable providers like Comcast are closing studios and permanently pulling the plug; in Chicago, behemoth provider AT&T is introducing the spiffy new service U-verse, offering a tantalizing array of bells and whistles while exiling all public access programming to broadcast Siberia.

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To understand why PEGs are disappearing, you must first get a grasp on why they exist. Contrary to popular belief, such channels weren’t invented just to give fringe voices like The Shooting Sport host Tom Shafer a home.

The concept of PEG programming dates back decades to the birth of broadcasting, when Congress recognized that the airwaves are public property. Just as the far left end of the radio dial is reserved for non-commercial and community radio (like our WQNA 88.3 FM), so too is a certain segment of the television band dedicated to publicly-accessible free use. In Springfield, for example, the municipal channel has long been used to provide training courses for the fire department. Even now, a training course required for firefighters is shown on channel 18 every Monday at 9 a.m. and 1 and 7 p.m., so that each shift can watch. Channel 18 also broadcasts city council committee meetings, programs promoting tourism and historical information, and special events like the mayor’s inauguration.

With cable television, the public property is even more “real” or concrete than with radio: the wires that bring commercial channels like ESPN and QVC into our homes are laid in the public right-of-way along our city streets. In exchange for providing this privilege to cable companies, municipalities typically demand certain perks, such as free cable service for schools, libraries and fire stations (there are about 80 such “drops” in Springfield), along with a few spots on the dial for PEG programming. Because municipalities have such different needs, franchise agreements specifying exactly what a cable company should provide have traditionally been negotiated on a city-by-city basis.

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Does anybody care? It’s impossible to tell, since PEG channels, by definition, don’t sell advertising and aren’t included in Nielsen surveys. But Erik Mollberg, chair of the Alliance for Community Media in Indiana, has a survey by the local Comcast franchise to prove the appeal of the PEG channel he helps manage, Access Fort Wayne. The survey asked subscribers which channel they would be willing to delete, and only 1 percent of respondents were willing to lose a PEG channel.

“They’re not going to watch it all the time,” he admits, “but by God, they want to watch the city council meeting and our international hockey team.”

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“To me, it’s almost a higher purpose,” Crowdson says. “Maybe not with every show, but with a lot of them, you really get the sense you’re helping the community out. It’s not just business; it’s a community.”

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