Boston Area Media Reform Group
2/22/07 Minutes
In Attendance:
John Donovan, Matthew Landry, Eric Bourassa, Bill August, David I. Frenkel, Lee
Mintz, Jessica Jones, Rebecca Tabasky, John Kasbohm
Moderator: John Donovan
Minutes: Matthew Landry
John started the meeting by asking the group to introduce themselves. We all talk a little
bit about who we are and what we are interested in learning/doing.
John asked us to state what we would need or like from this meeting. Bill started the
conversation by saying he was interested in media ownership diversity issues, FCC
issues, local cable franchising issues and we began a longer conversation about why local
franchising is currently at risk. Bill gave some history to what franchising agreements
are and why the Massachusetts state model is quite good. The federal legal framework
provides that a certain percentage of gross revenue, not to exceed 5%, goes back to the
municipality. Massachusetts legal framework requires that franchise fee goes too cable
and I-net related programs.
Lee asked about the 1996 telecommunications act and we talked about how while that
basically preserved the local franchising model of the 1984 Cable Act, it did introduce a
seemingly innocuous clause prohibiting cities from unreasonable denials of new
franchises which Verizon and other phone companies are now using to challenge the
cable franchising process.
Lee noted that, based on his discussions with the Menino Administration in Boston,
municipalities like Boston and existing franchise owners like Comcast have taken this
seemingly small statutory change to represent nothing short of an absolute termination of
any plausible possibility of denying renewal to an existing franchise holder. The
Comcast franchise in Boston is up for renewal, but the Menino Administration has thus
far (informally) taken the position that absolutely nothing that might be said or done by
anyone could in any way call into question the otherwise inevitable Comcast renewal.
Bill mentioned that the FCC has voted new regulations in December but they haven't
been released to the public. We should all be keeping an eye on those regulations when
they are released. They may in fact remove local control from municipalities in terms of
negotiating franchise agreements.
Eric talked about the federal level briefly in terms of what the FCC is doing and the
Congressional legislation that failed in 2006. At the State level, Both Eric and Bill
seemed to agree that we have a definite chance to defeat this proposed legislation in
committee but that we are fighting supporters of the legislation that are working hard to
line up endorsements in the media and State House. They have already gotten
endorsements from newspapers in Lowell, Lawrence, and ???
Verizon is spending huge amounts of money on advertising and lobbying, but they
consider this preferable to going community-by-community under the present regime.
Someone pointed out that Verizon could simply (and quickly!) get into any community
they wanted to by simply copying the existing cable franchise, and whiting out the cable
company’s name and substituting Verizon in its place. But in many communities this
would require them to terms that they seem very opposed to accepting, such as:
(1) meeting full build-out terms, and not simply cherry-picking affluent areas;
(2) meeting existing PEG channel allocations and interconnection terms;
(3) providing up to 5% of gross revenues for PEG operating costs and/or other cablerelated
expenses, plus additional monies for I-Nets and other capital expenses.
(4) Other community-specific requirements as determined by each municipality.
The timeline for this bill is sometime this year, not sure when.
Bill August explains how many Verizon bills do not eliminate license fees but modify
them so that 5% goes to the municipality and no more than 1% goes to PEG. Bill talks
about the reasons why this bill is bad for Massachusetts, and shows the synopsis that is
available at www.massaccess.org
The group then talked about what we can do, what we should do. Many good ideas were
suggested, including:
• Bill August urged everyone to meet with his or her state representative and
senator. Eric supports this idea saying that meetings are the most valuable,
followed by phone calls, followed by letters. Verizon has people patrolling the
halls 24/7, and we need to counteract their face-time with real voters talking about
real impacts.
• Collecting the data which disproves Verizon’s argument that competition will
lead to lower rates. We can do this with Massachusetts communities which have
2 or 3 wireline competitors (Comcast, RCN, and/or Verizon), but we should also
look to states like Texas and Florida that have already passed statewide
franchising. What has happened to rates in those communities?
• Talk to folks that have developed good models for state-level franchising and/or
Network Neutrality, such as PennPIRG, NYPIRG, California
• Get your city or town government to pass resolutions opposing state franchising.
Quincy has done this.
• Conduct local educational forums and cablecast them, as Stoneham did in early
February.
• Write op-eds to your local newspapers, or better yet, work with the staff of your
access center to arrange a meeting with the local editors and get them to publicly
oppose the legislation.
• Create and bicycle public service announcements that oppose the legislation
• Support the Public Policy fund of MassAccess. John handed out some
information from MassAccess.org.
• Make sure that the Governor will veto a bill if it ever reaches him. Bill talks about
his friend, David Siemus (sp?) who might be a connection to Governor Patrick.
• Lee talks about his strategic location in having both the Senate President and the
Speaker of the House representing him.
• We need to create a sheet that explains, in plain-English, the before-the-bill, afterthe-
bill picture, so that people can actually see what is it stake.
John then prompted the group to talk specifically about what they were willing to commit
to do before our next meeting on March 29th.
• David and Jessica will be writing Op-ED letters and organizing through their
public access facility and other organizations they know.
• Lee will begin thinking about a focus group to create long-term strategies, and set
up a meeting at the State House with Speaker DiMasi’s chief legislative assistant.
• Matt has a blog and will try to connect with colleges
• Matt will try to obtain information about the impacts and rates from Texas and
Florida
• We should all be contacting the members of the committee this bill has been sent
to - especially the chair, and setting up meetings with our State House reps.
• John said he would try to coordinate efforts with MassAccess, and circulate their
talking points to the whole group.
Next meeting is Thursday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. at CCTV.
who should we invite? MassAccess, MMA, MassPIRG, ACME, NECTA, Colleges?
Note: [[Lee appends the following note:
As we discussed at the general meeting on February 22nd, our most immediate challenge
is to defeat the Verizon power grab. To that end, our general group obviously needs to
reach out as widely as possible, and focus clearly on handing Verizon a total defeat.
As we also discussed, I'd like to try to pull together a strategy group, (the Boston Area
Media Reform Strategy Group) to attempt to grapple with crucial longer-term
considerations.
Inter alia, we need to examine the prospects for developing effective strategies
-- to make possible an independent progressive news and public affairs television
channel, overtly to challenge the hyper-reactionary Fox ‘News’; and the megacorporate
dominant forces that control and manipulate what presently passes for
‘news’;
-- to consider ways to fight effectively [primarily at the national level] to restore a better
version of the fairness doctrine, and to compel comprehensive free television and
radio time for qualifying candidates for public office, as a condition of licensure for
broadcasters and cable systems; and
-- to defend Net Neutrality unyieldingly and relentlessly!
I’ll be sending out further information about the new Strategy Group.]]

Overall Reaction:
It was very exciting to be in a ballroom with, literally, 3000 other people all concerned about making the media more reflective of and responsive to our communities and the people who live in them. Also very inspiring to listen to people who are both incredibly articulate and incredibly prominent (like Bill Moyers, Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Amy Goodman) discuss the importance of media reform to social progress.
Compared with the St. Louis Conference in 2005, I also came away with a sense that while the movers and shakers within the media reform movement still represent an incredible range of issues and concerns, there seemed to be a much greater sense that these various interests were trying to find and articulate a shared vision and plan. It won’t be easy, of course, but at least it felt like cohesion was a priority this time. There also seemed to be a lot more academic writers and publishers in attendance and more literature being published on this subject than a few years ago.
That said, I and many other attendees from the PEG community – and there must have been about 70-100 there, up from around a dozen two years ago – still felt some measure of disrespect from the FreePress insiders. My own impression is that their view of access is about 20 years out of date (NFLCP and Wayne’s World instead of ACM and community building) and utterly blind to the fact that, without PEG, their movement would be nearly invisible to anyone not living by the Internet and already plugged into their mailing lists. In my opinion, FreePress is too important to disregard, but they constitute another front in the ACM’s battle for recognition.
Workshops:
As at ACM Conferences, speakers rarely addressed the subjects in the catalog, but the workshops I attended were, nonetheless, excellent. With only a few exceptions, the panelists were extremely knowledgeable, articulate, and pragmatic.
I videotaped each of the workshops I attended, and this footage is available for editing or airing as desired. These workshops included:
ß The Fight Over Media Ownership, with Sydney Levy (Media Alliance), Andrew Jay Schwartzmann (Media Access Project), Joseph Torres (National Association of Hispanic Journalists), and Ryan Blethen (Seattle Times);
ß Media Monitoring as an Organizing Tool, with DeAnne Cuellar (Texas Media Empowerment Project), Amy Johnson (Media Tank), Rima Meroueh (Media Empowerment Project), Tom Schwallie (GRIID), and Jen Soriano (Youth Media Council);
ß Plenary Speech by Bernie Sanders;
ß Citizen Journalism, with Dan Gillmor (Center for Citizen Media), Chris Nolan (Spot-On.com), Chris Rabb (Afro-Netizen), and Jay Rosen (PressThink);
ß The Battle to Control America’s Media, with Josh Silver (FreePress), Pete Tridish (Prometheus Radio Project), Betty Yu (MNN), and Amy Goodman;
ß Washington 2007, with Mark Cooper (Consumer Federation of America), Gene Kimmelman (Consumers Union), Tony Riddle (ACM), and Gigi Sohn (Public Knowledge);
ß Winning Local Change, Making a National Impact, with Dee Davis (Center for Rural Strategies), Sydney Levy (Media Alliance), and Malkia Cyril (Youth Media Council).
Notes from these workshops will follow after I’ve had a chance to review the footage.
Northeast Region Gathering:
Approximately 70 people attended the gathering of attendees from New England and New York. The largest majority were from Massachusetts, followed by Vermont and Connecticut, and then the other states. People went around the room and introduced themselves and their areas of concern. There were a lot of people interested in getting Democracy Now on PBS, producers seeking outlets for independent media, people wanting more responsible content/coverage, people concerned about the media ownership proceeding at FCC, Video Franchising (Mass. Legislation and FCC December finding/and another NPRM re: existing franchises), and media literacy educators seeking to compare notes.
A number of people besides myself and Matt Landry were from Cambridge, including a fellow from the Unitarian Universalist Committee in Cambridge, resident Mary Christie who was looking to do more than write letters, and Alexander from the South End Press which is now housed in Central Square. These people should be invited to the next CCTV Orientation.
We were reminded that the FCC will processing applications this spring for full power radio licenses.
ACM Gathering:
About 70 people attended a caucus of attendees representing PEG stations. These included familiar leaders such as Tony Riddle, Mike Wassamer, Lauren-Glenn, Kari Peterson, Alan Bushong, Rob Brading, Tom Bishop, Karen Toering, Daniel plus many up-and-comers who were new to me but seemed very engaged.
Discussions focused mainly on:
ß State Franchising initiatives. Pennsylvania PIRG was held up as having developed decent model legislation, and folks who want a copy should contact Lauren-Glenn. Sue Buske might also have good ideas (especially in terms of damage control strategies), from her recent battles in California; ditto for Wally Bowen from North Carolina who has taken an economic development angle. Amanda Balletine, Free Press’s grassroots coordinator, was also regarded as someone who should be helpful. Potential collaborators in advocacy include: Consumers Union, UCC, Common Cause, and the Media Democracy Coalition (?). Lauren-Glenn also noted that after passage of legislation, there is the executive branch process of implementing the legislation, cautioned that this is very different process than working legislatively, and that we should seek advice from others like her who have gone through that part of the process. People talked about whether we needed to produce PSAs for our channels and for FSTV re: state franchising and the next FCC NPRM re: cable franchising. Is CCTV’s suitable for this? Alan Bushong offered to edit a script/video if someone else drafted it.
ß National Franchising. The FCC order will be out in 7-10 days. Someone said that Commissioner Adelstein said that states that had passed franchising regulations would be exempt from the order, and that he would come out for public hearings addressing the effect of the new rules on PEG access.
ß ACM Public Policy calls are done every 2 weeks, and Rob McCausland is interested in making sure that every state is represented. Contact him at the ACM if you are interested.
ß Whether FreePress “gets” and respects PEG access. All attendees were urged to complete the conference evaluations and stress the importance of access.
ß All attendees were also urged to send Sue Buske a list of speakers from this conference who should be invited to present and/or attend the ACM Conference.
Dinner with George Stoney, Sue Buske and Randy, Rob Brading, and others:
I had dinner the last night with the folks listed above. Most of the talk avoided “shop”, although it was interesting to hear George talk about his approach to making all new NYU students learn film before video so that they are forced to build separate audio and video tracks, but towards the end I did ask about how to connect the ACM to the other groups at the Conference and wondered whether those interested in social justice might be the common thread between the ACM community and others devoted to saving PBS or preserving Network Neutrality in the Internet. Sue Buske replied that she thought that the angle to take is that there will always be people who are on the wrong side of the technology divide—lacking access to computers, the Internet, technical training—and that these people would always need a community center to fill these needs.
Miscellaneous Items:
I brought home a lot of literature from the swap table and the formal information “trade show.” Two things of particular note:
ß Those who join ACME get extremely discounted prices on any videos from the Media Education Foundation. This could be valuable to video trainers.
ß Databases are increasingly being developed to track media and government. Three of the most exciting are www.SunlightFoundation.org (which has about 4 of them), www.publicintegrity.org/telecom, and www.speedmatters.org/yourspeed. Check them out.