In their “Planning for Stronger Local Democracy” field guide, the National League of Cities lauds community access television stations as one of the most important assets for a local government. To ensure that your municipality is able to retain this essential asset for generations to come, review and internalize the lessons of some of the best resources from across the Knowledge Network that relate to CATV initiatives:

• Read through “Highland Park Public Access Television Center” to learn how the city of Highland Park organized with surrounding municipalities to ensure that residents would have access to public access television programming against downsizing of operations at its studio.
• “East Wake TV” walks readers through Gary McConkey’s creation of the public, education, and government channel (PEG), for the town of Knightdale, North Carolina.
• An example of a codified policy for maintaining a public access channel can be found in the city of Cary’s “Guidelines for Government Access Channel.”
• An example of an outline of the organizational structure of KCLV, Las Vegas’ community-access station is available in its “KCLV Organizational Structure Chart.”

For more ideas to consider for your local access programming, be sure to read through the material on the CATV topic page. If you have any more ideas that would be helpful for a community access television program to consider, please feel free to share them with us in the comment section below.

Aloha,

James Davidson

ICMA's Knowledge Network Intern

jdavidson@icma.org