AdeleHouston
11-01-2009, 10:10 AM
Submitted to letter to editor 10.23.09
Why did the League of Women Voters and Junior Women Club choose to use Wallingford taxpayer dollars to produce their non-partisan election programs? Why did they select WGTV-20 seen by a limited audience - only Comcast Subscribers? The most likely answer is that Town Staff does nice work and they had done it this way before.
In most communities these organizations produce candidate forums and election season is the most watch season for Community Access TV. Forums can be seen on public or government or education channels. Which channel is selected depends on many factors including government subsidy, distribution options and producer goals. All candidate forums are not created equal. A summary of how forums may vary is available on the 7TownTV.org web site. here (http://www.7towntv.org/MAKEaDIFFERENCE/forumsANDformats.pdf)
In 2009 there are more reasons than taxes as to why the people’s channel WPAA Community Building TV would have been a more correct choice: The reasons are availability to viewers and production options like Live and On-demand programs.
During the last local election season, candidates discovered that Wallingford was an epi-center of ATT U-verse marketing. Due to corporate telecom – cable industry politics, volunteers at access TV centers across CT needed to respond to the disenfranchisement of their viewers because U-verse subscribers did not have community channels. In Wallingford the volunteers at WPAA did two things with the viewers in mind. They began 24 x 7 Internet streaming and they started inter-connect agreement discussions with ATT. As of May 26th 2009 WPAA Community Building TV (http://www.7towntv.org/TV_Wallingford.html) can be seen on channel 99 U-verse.
WGTV-20 is still not available on U-verse. And to get forums on the Internet now requires permission from the Mayor; and this decision would require more tax dollars to be spent for Town Staff to do this.
Subsequent to submitting this letter a private citizen not affiliated with the production posted these programs to the Internet in the spirit of informed citizenship.
Why did the League of Women Voters and Junior Women Club choose to use Wallingford taxpayer dollars to produce their non-partisan election programs? Why did they select WGTV-20 seen by a limited audience - only Comcast Subscribers? The most likely answer is that Town Staff does nice work and they had done it this way before.
In most communities these organizations produce candidate forums and election season is the most watch season for Community Access TV. Forums can be seen on public or government or education channels. Which channel is selected depends on many factors including government subsidy, distribution options and producer goals. All candidate forums are not created equal. A summary of how forums may vary is available on the 7TownTV.org web site. here (http://www.7towntv.org/MAKEaDIFFERENCE/forumsANDformats.pdf)
In 2009 there are more reasons than taxes as to why the people’s channel WPAA Community Building TV would have been a more correct choice: The reasons are availability to viewers and production options like Live and On-demand programs.
During the last local election season, candidates discovered that Wallingford was an epi-center of ATT U-verse marketing. Due to corporate telecom – cable industry politics, volunteers at access TV centers across CT needed to respond to the disenfranchisement of their viewers because U-verse subscribers did not have community channels. In Wallingford the volunteers at WPAA did two things with the viewers in mind. They began 24 x 7 Internet streaming and they started inter-connect agreement discussions with ATT. As of May 26th 2009 WPAA Community Building TV (http://www.7towntv.org/TV_Wallingford.html) can be seen on channel 99 U-verse.
WGTV-20 is still not available on U-verse. And to get forums on the Internet now requires permission from the Mayor; and this decision would require more tax dollars to be spent for Town Staff to do this.
Subsequent to submitting this letter a private citizen not affiliated with the production posted these programs to the Internet in the spirit of informed citizenship.