An editorial in the Illinois Times in regards to some of the issues raised in the report on The Fading Promise of Public Access.

Access programming is the last locally produced and viewed programming in a world where deregulation and consolidations have removed local voices and local community identity from the air nationwide. Commercial stations only want to sell you something; Access wants to tell you something. And that’s the key difference and value. PBS is great, but it can only do so much locally as well, with only a handful of locally produced shows like Prairie Fire and Illinois Stories.

Here’s something the government and FCC knew far back in the ’20s and ’30s, and we’ve forgotten: If only commercial interests are ever allowed to reach your TV, it is commercial interests that will control all the choices made for you, about what you see and know, and commercial interests will censor or ignore anything that is counter to their bottom line, even if that information is vital to you. You won’t even know what you don’t know, if this trend continues.

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Access is host to a variety of voices that could never be heard on commercial stations. You won’t like all of them, but they deserve their space and serve a vital civic function. Free speech isn’t free if you’re charging a premium to be allowed to make it, or withholding it because it doesn’t let somebody move a few more units of sham-wow towels. The city and state should be outraged and indignant that these providers are trying to weasel out of a deal made in good faith. Demand more from your TV providers and government. Demand what was promised. Three channels out of 300 is no great sacrifice to them, but it is their civic duty and a public trust.

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