Philadelphia Community Access Coalition
				Home | About | Join | Act | Contact | Search | News | Calendar

MS. TOWNSEND: Good afternoon. I'm Lauren Townsend, Executive Director of Citizens for Consumer Justice, Pennsylvania's largest consumer organization working on health and safety issues.

I'd first like to thank the Philadelphia City Council for conducting this important hearing, and today thank you for allowing me to speak among such a broad and distinguished panel of speakers.

Here we are, right on the heels of yesterday's Council hearing on the Comcast takeover of Greater Media. Comcast is becoming larger and larger, a bona fide media giant that has cornered the cable market and is making enormous profits from its Philadelphia customers.

We're here today because we deserve and have a right to a few of the stalls of the market Comcast has cornered. The franchise agreements between cable companies like Comcast and the City of Philadelphia set forth a protected entitlement of access to this medium, which is no different than our protected right to free speech on soap boxes in Love Square.

In a 1996 United States Supreme Court decision, Justice O'Connor stated that public access channels meet the definition of a public forum, that public access challenges are the video equivalent of the speaker's soap box, or the electronic parallel to the printed leaflet. They provide groups and individuals who generally have not had access to the electronic media with the opportunity to become sources of information in the electronic marketplace of ideas. In her statement, O'Connor added that public access channels are public forums, even though they operate over property to which cable operator owns title. By not implementing the franchise agreement in its entirety, the City is violating our constitution, as determined by the United States Supreme Court.

Ostensibly, Comcast and other cable companies have been willing to honor the franchise agreement in its entirety, which translates into providing us in the community with both the funding and channels, so why don't we have it? Public access, that is. There's never been any real explanation as to why the Mayor and City Council haven't made this happen. What's ludicrous about this situation is that the cost of public access, a form of community reinvestment, is a mere sneeze for the likes of Comcast, which will save 75 percent of the market of Greater Media if the Greater Media deal comes to fruition.

It's time now for members of City Council to develop remedies for citizens which include requiring the executive branch to enact the franchise agreement, as it's spelled out, accounting for 15 years of our cable bill money that was earmarked for public access and use it for its original intent, and cherishing and honoring our constitutional right to free speech. That's the right thing to do. The alternative is voter discontent and possible litigation.

I sincerely hope that this hearing will spawn real commitment and action on the part of Council. It would seem that now more than ever, with the leverage of the Comcast Greater Media deal that we should together be saying no to cable mergers, acquisitions, and monopolies until we respect our constitution and enact what should have been reality year ago.

Television, the most powerful media presence in our society today, could the answer to so many of Philadelphia's woes. Public access could be a venue for GED preparation, jobs, education, training and workplace safety. It could also air programming aimed at helping fledging small businesses with Chamber of Commerce shows on how to start and sustain a small business in Philadelphia.

Wouldn't it be a benefit to the community if there were programming on safe and sound building practices so that we could avoid crises like what we're witnessing in Wissinoming?

And, finally, wouldn't it be beneficial to the community if we could have programming with real community discourse and not just pissing contests on the building and placement of sports stadiums.

Not having public access almost seems like censorship by design. Prove to us that it's not.

COUNCILMAN ORTIZ: Thank you.

(Applause.)

COUNCILMAN ORTIZ: Whose next?

Previous (PATRICIA MCNAMARA)

Index of All Testifiers

Next (DENISE RIPLEY)