Educable in the beginning
In the early 1980’s a recently retired
director of Adult Education at the Greece Central School District was looking
for a new venture for his energies. Retiring early he still had a strong
interest in community involvement. He ran across information on Public Access
Television and it turned out to be a perfect fit for his interests and
abilities. In 1982 Sal Caterino, my father, and Angie Caterino, my mother, along
with John Kells, a media specialist at a local college, formed Edu-cable
corporation as a not for profit corporation as a vehicle for running public
access television. (I -- Brian Caterino – was also on the board of directors
but not in town and active in the operation at that time.) Later another
non-profit Educable Communications Corporation would succeed it. In July of
1982 Edu-cable began broadcasting on cable channel 12 (I believe there was only
one access channel then) the public access channel on the People’s Cable system.
Educable despite
difficulties and tensions with the towns in establishing and maintaining public
access had some initial successes. It became established as a presence in the
community and contributed to the public discussion of local events. Still Educable’s
ability to achieve its aims were very limited. These I think were both
financial and part of the political culture. The lack of financial support or
secure funding meant that public access was never far from a crisis. It didn’t
have the facilities or the resources to do its job fully. Neither the municipalities
educable served, nor the cable company have fulfilled their mandates to provide
funding for facilities, equipment and staff to run public access. While public
access was lauded and its aims accepted it still had to be limited and its more
radical aims co-opted if possible. Thus in this case Educable had to pay for
things that should have been provided by the cable company (or the towns). One
of the main cleavages and one that increased over time was the truly public
character of access. These revolved
around whether Educable would receive sufficient funding and be free enough
from governmental interference to run a truly community and public access
operation, In the end neither condition turned out to be fulfilled.
It was not easy to get public access going in the town
of Greece and the two other towns they first served. It took him a couple of
years to get town approval and there was definitely opposition to the idea. It
was only due to the intervention of the cable company that public access began.
In the early days of cable, the cable companies viewed PEG channels as an
asset. It distinguished them from over the air channels and attracted viewers.
People’s cable was a small company looking for an edge in the market. They told
the towns they had to allow public access to operate. Their support however did
not extend to aid with funding, facilities or equipment. At first the cable
company that served the city of Rochester (a different company at first) had
run a studio for public access. When an independent non-profit took over public
access, the cable company had to make an extensive commitment to supporting it.
The 1992 franchise agreement with the city of Rochester stipulated that cable
company provide an original grant of $175,000, renovate facilities for access, provide
equipment for the studio a remote truck and provide an additional grant of
$5000 per year for equipment.
