Viglione: TV3 Should be Held Accountable

– Joe Viglione

Back in 1979 I hosted my first access TV show in Davis Square at the old Warner Studio on Day St., adjacent to the Somerville Theater. A good friend of mine was the Executive Director of a station out in the Gardener area of Massachusetts around 1974, a good ten years before P/E/G Access – public, educational and governmental access really came into vogue around 1984, though, as Wikipedia notes, it arrived around 1969:

“Public, educational, and government access television, (also PEG-TV, PEG channel, PEGA, Local-access television) refers to three different cable television narrowcasting and specialty channels. Public-access television was created in the United States between 1969 and 1971 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and has since been mandated under the Cable Communications Act of 1984, which is codified under 47 USC § 531.”

On July 18, 2013 I received a surprise phone call from Hawaii on my access show, Visual Radio Live, taped and aired from the Winchester Community Access and Media (WinCAM) studio the next town over from Medford. The caller was Charles Laquidara, radio pioneer who hosted The Big Mattress on WBCN for 25 years or so. Also on the program was pioneering Medford access TV sports host John Byers (known to listeners of WEEI 93.7 FM and 98.5 The Sport’s Hub as John From Medford). Byers was on Medford’s access TV station in the early days when it was located at Medford High School.

In Medford in July of 2013 the only real access you can find on your TV is if you catch Visual Radio on Verizon’s contiguous channels (from Stoneham or Malden’s TV stations) or on Comcast’s Video On Demand Channel 1. Channel 3 in Medford has had color bars and an awful sound on its cablecasts. Now most cities or towns in transition still keep the consumer in mind first and foremost. In Stoneham when they were building the studio in a church, now owned by the non-profit StonehamTV, the station still taught computer skills, lessons in camera techniques, how to set up a tripod, how to edit at home, keeping access TV alive and flourishing. The town of Winthrop also purchased a building – an old Christian Science church – and renovated it for WCAT, a wonderful station that is real community and which also flourishes. I’ve taped football and hockey for Winthrop as well as my show Visual Radio with notable guests like Jay & The Americans, Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke and other notable guests in-studio, with Paul Rodgers of Bad Company and Queen phoning in along with blues genius John Mayall. That’s the fun and informative aspect of my show, though the hockey and football – along with Medford’s Kitty Connection making the trek to Winthrop – being real community programming (and fun and informative as well).

Medford should have had its own building long ago. We had a beautiful studio on 40 Canal Street in West Medford, but the corporation operating the station somehow decided to move on – with no place to go. So there was no studio in Medford from sometime in 2003 to the summer of 2005, and mostly old programming being run out of a VHS deck at Medford City Hall.

While Medford was in limbo Malden Access Television, Arlington Studio, CCTV Cambridge, WinCAM in Winchester, BCAT in Burlington, all got stronger with more community efforts, more interaction with other tv stations, more information and enjoyment for the people of those cities and towns who pay a cable TV bill every month.

What City Hall Medford needs to explain to the consumer, the cable TV subscribers, is how other cities and towns have a vibrant cable TV community and why Medford has…color bars.

When Medford’s station was operating we were forced to see Al Jazeera night after night after night. That is not access TV, it is not local, and what stations who put such content on are doing is admitting they have no local shows to cablecast. On weekend after weekend Medford’s public access station was just a blank screen, nothing on the air, and when things did go on the air we had a pornographic show on at 8 PM which was created by the staffers paid from your cable TV bill. Is that fair?

Many in the community would have loved to have seen a new board of directors installed once the 40 Canal Street studio was abandoned. Behind the 40 Canal Street studio was a beautiful soundboard donated by one of the major television stations in Boston. Rather than have it delivered to the basement for a second studio it was left to the elements – the wind, the snow, the rain, till it was broken, battered and unusable. At the very least it could have been sold for parts to enhance the station’s bank account.

What happened to that soundboard is a metaphor for what has happened to our TV station. Turn on Channel 3 right now and see what your hard-earned dollars are generating for you. Nothing.

The current station claims it doesn’t receive enough money to do a decent job, but that’s downright insulting. There are many, many non-profits in Medford doing more with less. Excuse after excuse doesn’t make up for the fact that there are no classes, there is no equipment being utilized to tape the Medford Chamber of Commerce or the Little League or any of the things that matter to the residents of Medford. One woman, the wife of a former board member, told the City Council that she wished her daughter could learn computer skills at a Medford Access station. What we have, though, is a station that has decided not to utilize the back rooms of the Medford Public Library or the Hyatt’s function rooms or the Senior Center to teach computers. With the station off the air the current, tiny board of directors has decided not to hold classes, not to loan out equipment, not to build up membership.

I call on every Medford resident to write to the Issuing Authority, Mayor Michael J. McGlynn, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford, MA 02155 and demand that the Mayor rescind the Agreement with the corporation that has for the past ten years not acted in a responsible manner that residents of Malden, Winchester, Stoneham, Cambridge, Arlington, Burlington, Wakefield, Winthrop, Quincy and other cities and towns can expect. Why should Medford be left out in the cold?

Now here’s where we will be ultra fair to those at Medford’s non-profit. All I’m asking residents to do is to go visit those stations I referenced above and ask them if they are EVER off the air, ask them if they have had to move five times in the past 10 years (and settle in on three different locations), ask them if they can retain membership, and ask them how their board meetings are run and how people are elected to the board of directors.

Once you compare how your neighboring cities and towns operate these stations – their stations – you then evaluate if you are happy having no access TV, seeing politicians get mocked and vilified on the air and on the internet, if you like the dozens and dozens of excuses you are hearing, attacking non-stop two Mayoral appointees, a retired Judge that is one of the most respected jurists in the Commonwealth, former board members and former members. That is not happening in other cities and towns, only here in Medford, and the big question is, why do Medford residents put up with it when we are paying at least $39,000.00 a quarter ($160,000.00 or more a year).

Another strange phenomenon in Medford that you don’t see in other cities and towns is that the bulk of the programming is from the current board of directors, the current staff and a former board member. Their mission statement is to facilitate access for others, but go to the MadeinMedford.com page and notice that the insiders – along with a Boston resident (which is a violation of their own 2013 rules) have been enjoying the benefits of the access station while the other 57,000 or more residents of this otherwise excellent city, are left out in the cold.

Why is it that Medford’s community access station is either off the air, or producing pornography, or producing shows for the board members, or insulting Mayoral appointees, or allegedly no longer welcome at two previous addresses. Or we see “our” access station in the news for an assault on a man at Medford City Hall (a staffer, a former board member and a then-current board member were listed in the police report along with the victim), or allegations of hate speech (you can read that right on Patch), or a lawsuit against the City for $55,000.00 (the station lost the suit), and even a threat to sue a woman this week mentioned in another publication.

When a City Council votes 7-0 twice against its “local access station” – a feat one former Mayor said was as powerful as a Presidential veto – when the entire City Council, including supporters of that corporation, all vote against it, yet the corporation stands its ground and refuses to listen to the residents, to the politicians, then the Mayor needs to hear it from you.

Rather than address each and every issue with a logical explanation – why the board members deserve to broadcast their programming instead of yours; why those board members can act like they don’t have to show the community the books of the “private” corporation that depends on public monies, why the board of directors doesn’t have to keep legitimate meeting minutes, and why a board of directors can vote on things that will benefit the community, only to allegedly reconvene when some board members leave so that a minority of the board can counteract what the majority voted on; rather than logically explain to people why this benefits the community (because it doesn’t), the station goes on the attack and skewers Judge Jackson-Thompson (retired), city officials, Mayoral appointees and even people who have never been a member of TV3 but who question how a non-profit can operate in such an outrageous and unfriendly way.

To bring you, cable tv subscriber, this information has come at a great personal cost to me. But ask yourself this: can the entire community that pays for something be wrong and the people taking advantage of the monies without giving us the service we pay for be right? If you believe that, let’s all pay $10.00 a month to purchase some swampland, or better yet, $100.00 each a month to have a bonfire and burn those dollar bills. Because that, my friends, would be far more productive than what we are getting for our monies while our neighboring cities and towns feel sorry for us. No one should feel sorry for us. Let’s find the courage and the strength to right this ship and hold those who have failed to provide the services we pay for accountable for their actions.