Given the ubiquity and mundanity of online video today, it might be difficult to imagine the novelty and value of empowering community members to create their own local television programming. Yet this week we’ll meet at PhillyCAM with Antoine Haywood, Annenberg PhD Candidate and former PhillyCAM member, to discuss the history, ethos, and politics of — and the possibilities for — public access television, as well as the the community studio’s potential to serve as a local media hub.
Field Trip, 2:15 to 4:15pm: PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead
7th St, between Market + Chestnut, with Antoine Haywood, Executive Director Gretjen Clausing and other collaborators
Reading Response: MaTaeya, Isabelle, Anna, Kaitlynn — please post to our Reading Response Slide Deck by noon
To Read / Watch for Today:
- Let’s start by considering the history of television in Philadelphia. Read Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic, “Television,” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia (2014) [~25min].
- How has local commercial television succeeded or failed in serving its communities? Read Matt Delmont, “Making Philadelphia for ‘WFIL-adelphia’: Television, Housing, and Defensive Localism in Postwar Philadelphia,” Journal of Urban History 38:1 (2012) [~45min].
- What about television created both by and for local communities? How does it serve as an educational, civic, and activist medium? Read Antoine Haywood, “Community Access Television: ‘More than a Soundbite,’” The Objective (November 28, 2023) [~10min] and watch “Antoine Haywood: Telling the Stories of Community Media Makers,” Annenberg School for Communication (September 20, 2023) . Check out his “Telling Our Stories” portrait project, too; an analog component is on display at PhillyCAM.
- Explore PhillyCAM’s website, and watch some programs! Check out the Scribe Video Center and the Termite TV Collective, too! [~10min]
Supplemental Resources:
- Patricia Aufderheide, Antoine Haywood, and Mariana Sanchez, “Report from the Field: Local Community Media Flourishes on Cable in a Crisisschol,” The Daily Yonder (September 10, 2020).
- BBC’s Community Programmes Unit: Jo Henderson, “Let the People Speak – The Community Programmes Unit, 1972-2002,” Critical Studies in Television 17:1 (2022); “People Make Television,” Raven Row (January – March, 2023); “Community Cable Television in the 1970s,” Raven Row (March 13, 2023) [podcast]; “Public Access Television, the Community Programme Unit and the BBC: Panel 1,” Raven Row (March 25, 2023) [podcast]; “Public Access Television, the Community Programme Unit and the BBC: Panel 2,” Raven Row (March 25, 2023) [podcast].
- Dan Berger, Peter Funke, and Todd Woflson, “Communications Networks, Movements and the Neoliberal City: The Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia,” Transforming Anthropology 19:2 (October 2011).
- Summer Blake and Antoine Haywood, “Talking Community Media with Antoine Haywood,” PhillyCAM (2018) .
- Deidre Boyle, Subject to Change: Guerilla Television Revisited (Oxford University Press, 1997).
- Ana Canepa, ed., Art-Rite 7 (1974).
- Leah Churner, “Un-TV” (2011).
- Matthew Dewey, “Anyone Can Do YouTube, But Not Everyone Can Do Public Access: Urban Politics, Production Tools, and a Communications Infrastructure to Call Home,” Television & New Media 22:7 (2020).
- Antoine Haywood and Victor Pickard, “Public Access Television Channels Are an Untapped Resource for Building Local Journalism,” NiemanLab (November 10, 2021).
- More on Philly TV History: W3XPF; W3XPF; Farnsworth at the Franklin Institute; Farnsworth video; Farnsworth video.
- Andrew Ó Baoill and Savatore Scifo, “Fragility and Empowerment: Community Television in the Digital Era,” International Journal of Communication 16 (2022).
- Public Access TV.
- Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman, “Television Delivers People” (1973) .