When Community Media Access Partnership Executive Director Kathy Bisbee gave an annual report to the San Benito County Board of Supervisors last week, she stressed how much work the agency has been doing with local juveniles.
“We are not a youth organization,” she said. “We work with adults and youth.”
But she said that was a direction the local community wanted the agency to go.
“How community media centers look in each community is really different,” she said. “In Santa Cruz, it is very focused on free speech. We have that focus as well, but we have more people interested in working with youth than coming in and making their own shows.”
Still, Bisbee later last week also talked about future options for CMAP such as merging with the Santa Cruz or Monterey County-based public access organizations due to potential financial difficulties.
As for youth, she highlighted some of the projects CMAP has worked on in Hollister in the last year, many of them fueled by grant funding. They included a Martin Luther King Day of Service, a video project conducted with the students at Panoche Valley School and the creation of the Hollister Youth Media Council, an after-school program.
“People wanted activities for youth that are more positive,” she said. “The youth definitely tell us that as well – they want to be doing things.”
Bisbee said the nonprofit worked with more than 600 youth in the region, with some getting extensively involved with the program.
She referred to one student who was “a little bit of a tough kid.” She said he had been involved with drugs and alcohol, had family members involved in illegal activities and said he had no hopes of going to college.
“Our team really worked with him beyond media and technology,” Bisbee said. “They helped him to become a leader.”
They helped him get his driver license. Now 20, he attends Gavilan College, where he is studying media arts.
Beyond the youth
Beyond the youth programs, CMAP provides training for any resident in the community who wants to learn about media and technology. Classes include such topics as using a camera, editing software and handling lighting. Once residents are trained they can reserve equipment to use in the field or in the studio.
Bisbee said one of the most successful shows has been “Going Green,” hosted by architect David Huboi. The segment features Huboi talking with guests about green business solutions. It is sponsored by the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Bureau Green Committee.
The local CMAP channels include 17, which airs community meetings live and in repeat; 18, which provides pieces from and about Gavilan College; 19, which includes pieces from local school districts and the county offices of education; and 20, which is the public access channel where residents can create their own content to air. “Going Green” airs on the channel.
Bisbee said the nonprofit is hoping to expand viewership to even more households in San Benito County when it moves from its current headquarters at Gavilan College to a new facility at Christopher High School in Gilroy. She said she will be signing a contract with the Gilroy Unified School District in the coming weeks that will allow for construction at the campus to include connecting CMAP with Charter and AT&T U-Verse. San Benito residents with AT&T U-Verse do not currently receive the channels. She said the goal is to have access to AT&T customers by the end of the year.
In addition to the cable channels, residents can view content online at www.cmap.tv, where government meetings are streamed live and then repeated. The online viewership of meetings has increased.
Bisbee said CMAP has started to feel the impacts of legislation passed in 2006, the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, which changes the way fees are collected from cable companies to support community media centers.
“These laws reduced their obligation to pay for their use of the public right-of-way,” she said in a press release. “This has reduced funds available to fund our operations as we have for the past decades.”
She said one of the options is a merger of CMAP with Community Television of Santa Cruz and potentially Access Monterey Peninsula.
“New solutions are called for, and a regional merger, along with fee-based services, grants and donations, and creating efficiencies, may pose an answer to some of these new challenges,” she wrote.
Other sources of funding for CMAP include charges for fee-based services and contracts with local schools or nonprofits to conduct video projects, donations and grants.
