Philadelphia Community Access Coalition
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MR. SIFTAR: Yes. Thanks for this opportunity to set a few facts straight about cable public access. My name is Tim Siftar, I'm a business librarian, with experience in market research, so I'm here to help you with some of your research.

Billion dollar corporations make decisions based on the same data sources from which I'm about to present. I submit that the main producer of public access content in Philadelphia will be our nonprofits and government agencies. And so since pictures should speak a thousand words, I'm going to supply these four slides as my testimony and just walk through them with you. I have large copies of three of the slides.

The first slide -- I'll just talk through, and you can catch up -- speaks to first the audience, the individual viewers receiving cable public access in select Pennsylvania cities. Just to put Philadelphia to shame a little bit, we look across the state, and these are the viewers in little towns like Ghettysburg has 25,000 people watching cable public access. That's their total audience but they receive it and we know from studies that up to half to 75 percent of anyone with cable public access on their box watches it. So this is what some of our sister cities in Pennsylvania are dealing with.

We flip to the next slide and we see the market, basically, the potential producers of cable public access programming, the ones who would benefit most from getting their word to the public. And Philadelphia has a vastly underserved market. These are nonprofits and, again, government agencies, educational institutions, and, okay, Ghettysburg has 111 potential producers of cable public access content, Philadelphia has close to 4600. So we're these 4600 organizations, we've hear from several of them today. I imagine that if more knew about this opportunity, you would have heard from more.

If we flip to the next slide -- no, this is missing.

If you refer to your package, you will see that usage rates, if we compare for select cities across the country, usage rates of public access by the nonprofits in those markets is fairly. Up to 21 percent of all the nonprofits and agencies in Boulder, Colorado -- up to 21 percent of the ones that are there actually produce cable public access television. It's 13 percent in Battle Creek, Michigan. It's 26 percent in Hartford, 3 percent in Sacramento, and 9 percent in Washington, D.C. -- 9 percent of the market of potential producers are actually using cable public access television.

Let's go to the last slide. So who would that be in Philadelphia? I've said that there are close to 4500 or 4600 potential users, producers of cable public access content. You can also look at this as the demand, the people who will demand action from you to move this legislation into being.

And here we're looking at the detail slides. The first group -- these are the top 50 groupings, and the most organizations that have something to say via cable public access are the churches, temples, and shrines. And when we talk about what organizations really hold together our community, I would say that the churches bear the brunt of this responsibility and do the best job of, you know, of any. I'd say the next couple groups also, you know, bear the brunt of keeping our society together -- elementary and secondary schools, counseling service, fraternal organizations, labor organizations, social services, and thereon down the line.

I would be happy to volunteer more detail on this subject or provide research services would they be required to justify this great opportunity.

Thank you very much.

COUNCILMAN COHEN: Thank you.

(Applause.)

COUNCILMAN COHEN: Thank you all very much. Maria Bykovsky, Phyllis Gilbert, William Butcher, Charles Sherrouse, Mel Silver, Vivek Anathan, Joe Piette, Berta Joubert, Francoise Douwes, Lynn Robinson, Josh Cohen, Alec Meltzer, Nadine Patterson, Harlan Girard, Carol Finkle, John Lavin.

Now, that's the complete list. If there's anyone whose name I have not called who wishes to testify, come right within the railing and just sit on the other side, and you will have an opportunity to speak, yes. And that will be the complete list of witnesses to be heard.

(Above-named witnesses come forward.)

COUNCILMAN COHEN: Phyllis Gilbert, why don't you begin.

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