My Portfolio
By Mike
On 01, Jun 2015 | In Social | By Mike
City on YouTube
In the last six decades, cable has emerged from a luxury for the elite few into a conduit of digital television, on-demand programming and broadband internet service for millions of Americans. During the bulk of its growth in the 1980s and 90s, cable companies sought the help of local franchises – local governments – to create infrastructure in communities and expand their customer base.
Image by CCTA
Seeing the potential for public use, municipalities began requiring cable operators to set aside public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access channels. Today, most franchises charge cable operators a franchise fee, some of which may be allocated to support one or more of the three types of PEG operations at the franchising authority’s discretion.
Today, the scale of PEG access center operations varies widely, with some having multimillion-dollar budgets, but most, like the City of College Station, having a paid staff of just one or two people. With one position dedicated to video production, and its PEG channel (CSTV-19) competing with hundreds of other cable television channels available to local customers, the city decided to repurpose its content into the fastest growing platform for video consumption – YouTube.
At little to no cost, I helped College Station develop and launch its official city YouTube channel in 2009. The city has since uploaded more than 700 videos and captured more than one million views, extending its message to viewers in College Station, Texas, and beyond.