A volunteer operates the video and audio control panels for the "HomelessHour" show.

AT&T Cable for the North side of Richmond, Virginia provides channel 6 as an "electronic soap box" for the citizenry to "publish their tracts."

With the loss of the "town square" to suburban sprawl, Cable Public Access or Community Radio is quite literally where you will find the 21st. century Thomas Jeffersons and Madisons.

It is amazing the kind of reaction you can get from the community. Generally it works out that the first week people are just checking you out. By the third week, the phone will often be ringing off the hook, 15 to 22 phone calls per hour.

I can tell you from experience working in commercial and noncommercial talk radio that many radio stations would KILL to get that kind of response!!

Even 50,000 watt WRVA1140AM talk show host Jerry Lund would be lucky to get 15 phone calls during a typical THREE HOUR show. That 50,000watt signal goes reliably all the way from Bermuda to Chicago.

So don't discount Cable Public Access until you have tried it! There have been issues that have resulted in the host getting feedback from people in grocery store lines for MONTHS after the show!

Cable Public Access also allows you to innovate and create content that would not be shown on regular TV, but with Cable Access, you can combine some household technology very effectively to create unique and authentic content with relatively very little effort.

As an example of one such method, Radio Free Richmond has come up with the SlideShowSeries.

The SlideShowSeries takes an MSPowerPoint Slide Show, and puts and audio track under it.

The SlideShow and the audio track are related to each other, but also can stand separately.

The advantage of this is that we can create a slideshow with pictures and graphs etc. about an issue that is covering several months. Then we resubmit the tape with a new audio track that we either made ourselves of local news, bands, PSAs etc., or bring in something unique like "Radio Nation" that local radio stations would never carry!

In this way we create a multi-leveled experience of new news, culture and ideas that people would otherwise never experience ... and our webpage and phone number are always there for anyone to look us up!

In this way we have a mailing list of 1200+ and an email list of 300.

One of our simple videos of an interview with a radio pirate brought in 200 phone calls in one week!

Contact The Virginia Center for Public Press for more information at:
804-649-WRFR
WRFR@AOL.COM
http://members.aol.com/wrfr