 Hello everyone, I'm James Milan. Welcome to this special and important conversation coming to you from Studio A here at ACMI, Arlington Community Media Inc. This is an important conversation as I have had at this desk over these last few years. I am joined here today by David Gothier. David is both the Executive Director at WinCAM, our sister station in Winchester, and also an important for our conversation today, he is the President of Mass Access. So you will find out very quickly what we are going to be talking about, which is, if not an existential crisis just yet, nonetheless, a very serious issue facing all community media centers like ACMI around the state. We want to talk about that today and especially give good information about where things stand right now and where things we hope will be going. So first of all, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for having me. I really do. We really appreciate it. Appreciate being here. Let's start by just kind of saying, what is Mass Access? Sure. Who is it that Mass Access represents and reflects? And then we'll go from there. Sure. Well, I like to refer to as a advocacy agency. So Mass Access is a lot of things. Mostly it's a membership-based organization and the members of Mass Access are mostly stations like ACMI or over in Winchester, WinCAM. So community media stations around the Commonwealth can be part of Mass Access for a small fee. And what we do is a couple of things. We provide a lot of educational opportunities. So events, member events like a spring conference we just had last week and then some fall meet and greet type of events in the fall. But we also advocate legally. And when I say that, I mean that we're trying to push some state legislation that would sort of change the way that we are funded. So that's sort of been a mystery over the years and people don't really understand how a place like ACMI gets funded. They probably think, well, the town probably kicks in a lot of money to that. And to a point that's true. It's not taxpayer money that funds ACMI. It's actually cable subscriber money. So some forward-thinking people back in the 1970s thought it was a great idea that when this new technology came on board, this cable television that promised to connect everybody, they thought, well, wouldn't it be a good idea to have everyone be able to take advantage of this technology? So federal law was passed that if a cable company wants to come into the town and they use the public rights of way in order to sell their product. So they use the telephone poles and the conduits in order to run their cables. They need to give back to the municipality. So in Arlington, the cable companies, the cable providers in town are federally mandated to give up to 5% of their gross annual revenue of the money that they make in the town, right? And then the town can make a decision of if all that money goes to a place like ACMI or they keep a little bit of it and they send the rest over to the designated Access Corp. So that's a short way of describing how community media gets funded. Yeah, which is a very important thing for people to understand at the outset you and I were talking before. We have had this conversation dozens, scores hundreds of times with members, volunteers, interns, et cetera, to make it clear how it is that we offer, the kind of services that we offer. Very often for the young people that I talk to, there's that sense that, wait a minute, how can you give us access to all that stuff? Sure. And you're not asking anything other than our own education and our own experience. So you provide the answer there as we provide the answers when we get those questions that it really is this cable franchise fee that has been mandated, as you said, and has been the traditional model. However, as we both know, things have changed. Things are changing still and the bills that we want to talk about today that are up in the state legislature are meant to address that and especially the situation of our diminishing revenue. So first explain what the changes are that I'm just talking about and then what that effect has been and could be without some intercession from the legislature. Yeah, understood. So in the last five years, over 25% of cable subscribers across the Commonwealth have decided to leave cable for other options. Entertainment and news, we all understand what they are. People subscribe to streaming sources. So the difference is that as the number of cable subscriptions go down, so does the profits for the cable companies. So does the percentage that goes to a place to fund like ACMI. So as the funding for cable subscriptions go down, we're sort of looking at a nexus here because the funding is going down while the demand is going up. You know, we had a big pandemic and nobody wants to talk about it at this point. But you know, community media, especially here in Massachusetts where we have such a high amount of community media centers. It's the highest percentage of community media centers per capita in the country. And so many people in community media were able to step up during that pandemic and cover events and really keep local governments moving during that time because people couldn't get together. So we were still able to cover more municipal events. We were able to cover high school sporting events and those kinds of things when folks couldn't get into the gym to watch their kids. So the demand really went up for services while the funding is going down. So we've got a really bit of an untenable situation. So what we're trying to do with, we talk about H74 and S34. You have the title written down. Let me go ahead and say that. Before I don't screw it up. S goes with Senate. That's the Senate bill, the Senate version of the bill. And then H goes with the House. Same thing. So it's S34, H74 as you said. And the official title always just trips right off the tongue here. An Act to Modernize Funding for Community Media Programming. And actually it's a pretty good title in terms of the fact that we are looking to modernize the funding to again accompany the modernization that has happened on the technological side, right? Right. You're exactly right. And so here's my contention and our contention and the contention of the 100 co-sponsors of the bill in the legislation that the streaming companies that are out there now, your Disney Plus, your Hulu, your Amazon Prime, all of them, right? They are using the same public rights of way to sell their product, but they're not paying anything. The cable companies are still set to, they're still federally mandated to make these payments. Streaming companies have not been mandated. So what we're trying to do is update the law to go along with updates in technology. And all we're saying is that these streaming companies who are using the same public rights of way should be subject to the same laws that the cable companies are. The term cord cutting is a bit of a misnomer, right? Because it's my assertion. And I think you'd probably agree that the cord remains. If you got rid of cable, you're still connected to the internet and you're still receiving data through that same cord. Well, to me, there's not a lot of difference there. Now, obviously, the large streaming companies don't want to be on the hook for something like this, but we think it's only fair. And it's a way to modernize the law so that community media can continue to be funded here in Massachusetts. And, you know, what's good about it, too, is that it doesn't all go to community media. There's not a community media center bill. 40% of the funds that are collected would go to community media, correct. But 40% would also go directly to the municipalities that they serve. And 20% would stay with the state in order to maintain the funds and collect the funds and do all that administrative work. So it's a well thought out piece of legislation. It's well vetted. It was written by a nationally renowned Telcom lawyer. It's been through the ringer a few times. We've made sure that there are no federal preemptions for this law. And it just makes a lot of sense for us to pass at this time. And you've just said you alluded to the fact that it's been through the ringer a few times. We know that in this state, perhaps as much or more than any other one, legislation doesn't jump forward. It crawls forward. Absolutely. And that's been the case with this. I know this current session of the legislature is not seeing this bill for the first time or seeing a version of such a bill for the first time. No, this has been so many conversations have to happen. So many concerns have to be addressed, et cetera, just to get to the place that the bill stands today. So where does it stand? Well, right now it is in front of the joint committee on, and I'm going to give this my best shot here, advanced internet technology, cybersecurity and the internet or something along those lines. It's one of those. I think it has all those words in it. It's those three things. I like to call it AITIC, which that's the acronym that we use for this joint committee. So it's a group of senators. It's a group of representatives. And they are assigned a bunch of bills that they can either pass along with a favorable recommendation and would go to the next step or they politely send it to study, which is a nice way of saying, no, we're not really interested in this. So where we are right now is that in its third session, the first session we introduced it, it was actually a late filing. So we weren't expecting a whole lot in that. And most of these sessions are two-year sessions here at the Commonwealth. Last session, it got sent to study by the same, by actually two, because we file in both the House and the Senate. That's why there's two different numbers. They both got sent to study. But in the last session, the bill, especially on the House side, made a lot of progress. We had the attention of leadership, which is really important internally in order to pass legislation. And one of the biggest strategies that we have here, and I feel comfortable letting people know this, is that there's a lot of legislation out there which is trying to push mandated hybrid meetings. So that's the one good thing that maybe came out of the pandemic, is that we learned that local government can still function doing things on Zoom and that kind of thing. And that mandated hybrid meetings, as you mentioned, is a hot topic because the pandemic, as you said, one of the silver linings was the fact that access was increased for people to government meetings to all kinds of events through the intercession, again, of stations just like ours. And people found that even when it was possible for them to once again attend in person, it's more convenient, it works better, whatever the reason they want to hold on to that as an option. And that seems very broad-based in terms of the kind of support that it has. Well, you hit the nail on the head when you used the word accessibility, right? Because there are people who can't get to municipal meetings who might want to participate in local government. So why shouldn't there be accessibility for all? I completely agree with that mass access completely. I think we all completely agree with that. However, this is an unfunded mandate, right? If you're asking cities and towns to put together a bunch of equipment, and not only the equipment, but the manpower to the people power to run that equipment, there's a cost, a real bottom-on cost associated with that. So what we're trying to do with leadership is sort of pair the two and say, okay, we think we have a solution to this possible issue that we'd all like to get to this goal. If you're looking for a funding mechanism, we think we have it here. Which is great, and hopefully resonates for them as well because they are also legislators. They are government officials themselves. They understand what the impact and the value of these, of this kind of making a permanent hybrid option available for folks. Well, who doesn't want to solve two problems with one swipe, right? Right. That sounds very good. I just want to return to something that you said a little bit earlier, and that is what the role was that media access centers were able to step up and play during the pandemic to increase access, as you said. I think what that did here in Arlington, I'm sure, in Winchester and probably all over the Commonwealth and beyond, was bring more people into an awareness of what kind of service is provided by stations such as ours. Something that they may either have been wholly ignorant of or indifferent to, suddenly they saw the relevance and the impact that that can have on their lives. Is there a way to leverage that new awareness to be able to help to move this legislation forward? I assume that you are hoping, we are hoping, we are trying to reach those members of all of our communities who have recognized, again, that value in order to, again, let their legislators know that that's the case. What else can be done if folks are watching and would like to do something? What are your suggestions, recommendations for what they can do to push this along? So I'm glad you brought that up, because there's one thing that our detractors would say and that is that community media as an industry is antiquated. We don't need that anymore. Well, I would respectfully disagree with that. We saw what happened with local print media. To the point where hyper-local coverage barely exists in print anymore. So where does one go for coverage of just their town? Most of the time, it's to the community media station. And a lot of people might say, well, I don't want to support that programming because I don't want it. Well, I would also say that it's the kind of thing that you don't really know what you have until it's gone. You may not need it now, but maybe that select board passes something that does affect you and then you need it, right? Then you want to go back and watch that meeting or your son does make that baseball team and all of a sudden you're able to not only watch it in the comfort of your living room, but share a link with your parents who live somewhere across the country and they can watch those games live too. So lives change, interests change and I think community media is something that people move in and out of in as far as need goes. But to answer your question about what people can do to help this effort, it's really pretty simple. You need to make your voice heard, right? So we've asked municipalities all over the Commonwealth to write letters of support to this joint committee and I'm sure the staff here will able to put all of that information on there so people can but write a letter. The good old fashioned letter, I mean politicians do want to hear from their constituents. They do and they will respond to that. If people are saying, you know what, ACMI is really important to me and if that went away, I would be hard pressed to keep up with what's happening in the town of Arlington. Just that much as a letter to a joint committee can make a difference. I think I love the fact that you kind of just gave a little template to people. An example of how simple such a letter can be. It shouldn't be an impediment to the writing of the letter that you're worried to do it the right, make sure you have a comprehensive view of the whole situation. No, what you need to do is simply as few words as you want, let folks know this is important to you and you support this legislation, right? Well, the other thing you could do is just simply call your local reps and senators and just say, listen, I heard about this bill that would affect the funding for community media stations. I'd like you to support it. And maybe that rep or senator has already co-signed on. We do have more than half of the 200 legislators already co-signed on these bills. So that's a pretty big undertaking in itself. But what you've done by making that phone call is put that back on the top of someone's radar, right? We all have so many different things that we're trying to concentrate on. Legislators are the same way. They have a lot of great bills out there. There are thousands of bills that they're considering. Now you've jogged that person's memory. So just by making a simple phone call, you probably won't talk to the state senator or the state rep. You might talk to someone in his or her office. But that message gets to the legislators. Yeah. And I think on something like this, volume itself matters. Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, it can be two sentences. It can be a tome. It doesn't matter. Just hearing from a certain number of people is going to really matter. Yeah. I think it's absolutely true. So if you're a resident, if you're a member of a local nonprofit who has utilized the services of community media, if you're a local legislator, a mayor, a member of any board or committee, feel free. Reach out. It doesn't hurt. And I think that's one thing that I've learned while dealing with state representatives is that they don't hear from their constituents a whole heck of a lot. So it does mean something to them when they do. Yeah, I think that that is, you know, another great point that it is not like your voice doesn't matter here. It actually does and will register. Things happen in the state house at a small enough scale still where your voice, you know, they are going to say, oh, wow, okay, this person cares about this and that's going to register, like you said. So, you know, if you're just put yourself in that situation, you're the state senator and you come by and the person in your office gives you a list of messages and you say, you know, five or six people called about this certain bill today. You know, that's going to make that legislator at least probably look it up and go, oh, yeah, I remember hearing about that. Maybe I can reach out to one of these sponsoring legislators who I work well with and see how I can get involved. Or maybe it doesn't even register until it's time to go to the floor for a vote. And then that bell goes off and they go, I remember that. And you know what, there were a lot of people in my district who wanted me to pass that. I'm going to vote yes. David, you know, when we conceived of this, the idea of having this conversation, I knew that or we all knew here at ACMI that we wanted you to be able to speak to a lot of the issues and especially to an audience of interested but perhaps under informed members of communities all over the Commonwealth. So I think that on that level, I want to just say I appreciate what you've already done. But I think that there's another constituency and I just wanted to ask you about it. And that is the constituency of our sister and brother community media stations. I wonder if you have any message that you want to pass on to them as well more specifically about our collective circumstance. Sure. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity and Katie can probably back me up here that I said this at the conference last week. I asked our... This is the Mass Access Conference. Mass Access Conference, yes. I'm assuming that everybody knows where the conference is, right? But I was asking our colleagues to just do a little bit of advocacy every day. You know, whether it's five minutes of you let somebody know within the city or town that you work in, this is how we get funded. That's enough advocacy. Or you let somebody know that, you know what? Funding for this place has gone down this percentage over the last five years. You might not... We're not trying to create this situation where I understand that this isn't life-saving work. But this is good work, right? I mean, when I came into ACMI today, I met some young people who are interning here for their working on their degrees. And that's a great opportunity for someone to be able to be in a real-world situation. I think you would also agree that there are dozens of high school students who take advantage of services that we offer. Middle school kids, too. And they go on to collegiate programs and they're contributing to the economy here in Massachusetts. There's a lot that community media offers that maybe people don't know. And they're not realizing. They look at, you know, television in its nature is a passive experience, right? You're just sort of sitting there and you get the clicker in your hand and you see what's on and you're flipping around. Community media has always been different. It's an active thing, right? So you make the... We're going to teach you how to do it. You get involved. A lot of that has changed. Membership and volunteerism is down across the board. A lot more has fallen on to staff members as far as the production of everything that folks want to see on their local channels. But there are still a lot of people who are interested in doing this work because, number one, it's interesting. It's always fun to play with technology. And number two, you're giving back. You're giving of yourself, you know? It's, you know, most of these, I would say, 70% of the Massachusetts community media stations are nonprofit organizations. We're not your typical television outlet. We don't have commercials, right? We're doing this not because we want to be rich, but because we like doing what we do and we like making a difference in people's lives. Yeah, and I do think that you're right to, again, call out community media stations. Some people are going to want to do it because of the community aspect. Some people are going to want to do it because of the media aspect or some combination of the two. But it's all important work. Yeah. And like you said, perhaps not life-saving, you know, in a dramatic sense, but certainly in much smaller ways, really contributing to the quality of life of people who come in these doors but also who live in the communities that we serve. Last thing for you. I think that people would have, at this point, the sense of the urgency of the situation right now because really, numbers like what you said, 25% of folks having not cut the cord but stopped, you know, paying their cable franchise free, that's a dramatic number. The effect on our funding is real and palpable at the moment and could get worse going forward, et cetera. So urgent situation, people understand that. What I'd like to ask you to do as a last thing is just provide a little perspective about what we're talking about in terms of are we in danger of disappearing tomorrow? Are you going to lose access to your child's games or your local government's meetings anytime soon? What are we talking about there? Well, the short answer is no. We're trying to be proactive, right? So we've seen so pretty slight reductions, I would say. A short poll of members had their percentage of funding decreases over the last couple of years, around 7% to 17%, maybe up to 20-25% of loss in their funding. That's pretty significant for a nonprofit organization. However, most of us are finding ways to maybe get some alternative revenue. We've been talking about that for close to a decade now. So some people are doing production services. Some people are selling sponsorships and those kinds of things to bring in more money. Or they're trying to cut back on expenses. So a lot of people are trying to get ahead of it and move to maybe a smaller studio or maybe have to cut back on staff. Those would be the first things that you would see happen. And those are the things that the public might not be aware of because the mission stays the same, right? So we're going to still try to do all of those things that we're supposed to be doing, but we're doing it with less and less resources every year. So short answer, no. We're not going away tomorrow. But if you're looking 5, 10 years down the road, without a change in the way that we are funded, this industry will not exist. That can't make it any clearer than that. All right, so last thing we're talking about. Senate Bill 34, House Bill 74. Again, an act to modernize funding for community media programming. Please show your support for ACMI, for WINCAM, for all of the other stations around the Commonwealth that are providing these essential services to their communities by reaching out to your legislators and letting them know that you support passage of these bills. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it, David. Thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate that. Appreciate David's time. Appreciate yours as well. I'm James Milan. Thanks so much for joining us.