Mega-cable company Comcast has signed a 10 year renewal contract with the City of Holyoke. For the first time in decades, the contract is favorable to the citizens of our city. The negotiations were led by Mayor Alex Morse and a group of members who have helped to advise him on matters pertaining to Public Access Programming. Notably, Al Williams from Northampton Community Television has been instrumental in steering the advisory committee in “all things Public Access”. The three arms of cable access programming are commonly referred to as “PEG”. Public, Education, Government. Holyoke has had television channels for education and government programming but until now, has never had the “Public” channel. Along with this dedicated channel, Comcast will fund the building of a state of the art media center that will be available to all residents of Holyoke – who have a desire to create content – and that can be watched on TV sets of any Comcast cable subscriber in the city. A percentage of the Gross Annual Revenue of all Holyoke Cable subscribers will be directed toward the operating budget of the access station. There are other important benefits that this new contract will bring; all of the details can be seen on the City of Holyoke’s website. In addition to the work and effort of the mayor and the advisory committee members, the citizens of Holyoke are to be thanked for their effort. There were two ascertainment hearings and others submitted statements regarding cable TV and public access for Holyoke. Thanks to advisory committee member Michael Hines and Holyoke Public Schools Channel 12 (The E in PEG) for the great footage of the announcement.

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“Video, Video” is the thirteenth episode of SWITCH, an arts program created by artists in Western Massachusetts and the NYC area. This episode is all about Public Access Television, and one of it’s advocates is Jaime Davidovich. Mr Davidovich is an intermedia artist and an organizer of art on television. In this episode, he talks with the producers of Switch about the infancy of Public Access Television in SOHO/NYC in the mid 1970’s. The Creative Director of SWITCH is Jessica Higgins, the Producer is Denis Luzuriaga. Special thanks to Artist Organized Art for facilitating the rendezvous with Jaime. 720p download available here: http://vimeo.com/44069075

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