Public Access Television

We recently caught up with SF Commons producers Jeremiah Khaleq and Jameel Patterson, hosts of Let's Talk Sports, airing on SF Commons on Saturdays at 11AM (Channel 29 on SF Comcast and Astound cable and livestream).

What's your show?
Let's Talk Sports. It'sa bunch of people coming together to debate relevant topics in the sports world.

Calling all public access television producers, past and present!  Please help us to create a robust archive of diverse community access content produced in San Francisco. We'll be digitizing and making accessible a collection of content, and we want to include your work so this important history isn't lost and is accessible for years to come.

By Karwanna Dyson, AmeriCorps Vista Project Manager 

BAVC recently conducted a study on how accessible information is to residents of underserved communities in San Francisco. The study was comprised of an information "scavenger hunt," in which participants searched the Internet for vital information such as:

By Matt Sussman, Marketing & Development Associate 

You've asked for them and now they're here! Starting January 1st, 2012, SF Commons will offer more accessible evening and weekend program hours for producers. Edit suites, equipment checkout, ingest stations, and our other tools and services will be made available more when you need them, on evenings and weekends. In addition to this, we will have more Saturday workshops and community events. Check out our new program hours below:

Starting January 1st, 2012
Tuesdays and Wednesday, Noon - 7pm
Thursdays and Fridays, Noon - 8pm
Open every first Saturday of the month, 9am - 3pm
Closed on Mondays.

A few years ago, large corporate media conglomerates lobbied state and federal legislators to fix the laws so that community media access centers like BAVC can only use franchise fee funding for capital -- buildings, equipment, and the like.  But that's had the affect that the corporations intended, causing many centers to close their doors entirely, and for those that managed to survive, causing them to lay off staff and downsize, eliminate training programs and other critical forms of access for those who need it most.  It can be likened to building huge beautiful technology-packed public libraries and public schools, but locking the doors so no one can get in.  And this needs to change.  

Our colleagues at CreaTV San Jose have issued a “CALL FOR ENTRIES” for its second annual signature event honoring excellence in video production. SF Commons producers are encouraged to submit their work. The details and application form can be found here on CreaTV's web site.

Videomakers of all ages in the nine Bay Area counties plus Santa Cruz County are invited to submit videos to CreaTV San Jose for competition in one or more of nine categories:

1. Business

2.Non–profit

3.Student

4.Citizen Journalist

5. Educator

6.Filmmaker

7.CreaTV San Jose TV Series

8.Bay Area Community Access TV Series

9.The CreaTiVe Excellence Awards

This week in D.C., several of our colleagues from public, educational, and government (PEG) TV stations across the country who are members of our national community media organization, the Alliance for Community Media, held a Capital Hill Day training and series of meetings with legislators who have the power to set regulations governing PEG and community media.  The ACM partnered with the New America Foundation, Free Press, Prometheus Radio Project, Media and Democracy Coalition and others to offer a day-long training on public policy issues that impact community media on Oct. 11, 2011.

SF Commons and the San Francisco Veteran Affairs Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Center have partnered up to develop a mental health recovery-oriented digital storytelling workshop. Through a sequence of workshops, veterans will be offered an opportunity to learn the process and tools of digital storytelling and media production to share their experiences and find a voice in the local community.  In the process, veterans will learn media technology skills essential to active participation in their community and in our democracy, including ethical storytelling and journalistic practice, video production and postproduction, Internet and cable television distribution methods, and live television production.

Bay Area Video Coalition and SF Commons public access television is searching for new PSAs to air in between our programming. Thursday, September 22 & September 29, 2011 we will be hosting two 4-hour PSA development workshops from 12:00 - 4:00 p.m. where your organization can come to BAVC and shoot a 30-60 second PSA. You can prepare a script that describes your organization's mission statement and we will film and edit your project or you can organize a collage of photographs with voiceovers, text or music that describes what services your non-profit provides.