welcome welcome very much to conversations where it's a personal pleasure to welcome to the program george darley and this just tony is well and deservedly called the father of public access and george stoney welcome very much to conversations thank you i want to correct you yes i'm often called the father of public access actually there were many of us who had a hand in conceiving and developing public access i was only i just happened to be there at the same time i'm glad that you're not loaded with hubris this over but i do the do what is it that you are the godfather of it but you are one of the major movers in terms of development of public access and i congratulate documentary work and you're now at new york university of course but if you could share your own background for the audience please well i've kind of stumbled into filmmaking in one thousand nine hundred and forty six i've been a journalist and then a colleague of mine from the university of north carolina nick reed was asked to start a small film unit at the university of georgia to help state governments use film to educate the public with this a bit us one hundred and forty six ok coming around of the war yeah and i had knew nothing about film had written for the farm security administration and he had contracts to make films for farmers and so he thought i could do that or i said when i got the noise think about film he said don't worry about that i spent the war years at the national film board of canada you had nicked it oh yeah i'm sorry i was there and so i'm going to bring some of those people down to work with us i could of had a better group of national f a big concept the challenge for change was that the government was interested in what the people thought about the government's programs ok yeah and they wanted to hear from the people and they wanted to give th distances the fact that they all one of those american signals to come over as well as true and so we found that in many places they had twelve channel cable systems but we're only using about three or four of the channels  said what about using the other channels for local dissemination and so we set up little studios in the basement of these remote little places and started putting out the challenge for change duty sometimes they weren't that was a way of controlling the indian to see right right and then came a chance to say that's right and eleven day i got a call from mike saying i can't come into work today  who is enforcing the rules on everybody oh dear and so that's united right right right i yeah i don't think we're going to get anywhere and if we don't i need a crew down here right and i said well the rest of your brothers and sisters  video yet and they they were blocking the international bridge yeah they could demonstrate right ok and so for several hours we got that big demonstration until the r c m p arrested enough of them so they had to call it all  was that while we had a professional crew mike was telling us what to shoot yes the people with it yes we were this is no neutral thing we were the voice of those india right ok and so we took it back to montreal pushed through the labs and then the the indian film crew came in and they helped edit it just put it in the same thing and without too much selection but just putting it into it and to time order you know was brought back to the island ok mike said we desperately need it because they either display going up people who got arrested st so the people who ride to got arrested nd didn't fight as hard as they did right right so they showed it ten times around the island just in and double system whole about three hours of it and that helped to pull with tribe together and then i said but what about the police they need to see it oh oh what do you mean this is they're going to say that i said what use is it if the people who are on the other side yes don't see it and get some feedback from you know now it's interesting that both sides were disappointed in what they saw that's significantly what happened then was that we cut off the forty minute film and it was shown right across the country it was shown on television with local indian so this was not strange with them but the challenge for change showed me the value of video over film because then with film we had to use professional crew right but i saw that for community years there was an example yes that is in using the video yes though remember at that time it was half and it was very cumbersome and the editing you know they never understood commands to use when we were when we were getting people to buy all these of these videotapes for community use and we kept objecting because they didn't do certain  things that the professional software did well they said but why do you want to do that right is for birthday parties at four weddings etc finally a delegation from japan came over to see be at n y u ok and i found those men had never broadcasting yes and he said even now that idea is not one that fits comfortably in japan but i should think maybe it yeah i can see where it is it's a unique kind of thing and it was a thing that didn't fit to comfortably even we should say the idea of public access in a certain sense is in its own innocence unique to cable because there were some laws trying to be passed or some principles trying to be explored expounded by people in the past about how know in the in the broadcast mode they didn't they weren't able to in a certain sense in the legal frame of reference and understanding able to get that successfully established within the united states economy either well it was interesting it wasn't until ca and when we were talking here this would have been in the late sixty's when that was st coming out so we're talking sixty years about thirty year period right that there's been a lot of change will go out and said trysting better at n y u where i teach yes almost all of my students have had some experience with access in high school or in their own community i keep getting letters from my old friends who have retired to moderate tied to gets it gets to be easier and easier but it has been we said before you came along we've got this you know we had the electoral electricity invented one hundred years ago and we got the the transistor about fifty years ago or something like that and we had this technological development and it was when they came with the cable who is worth to share with some of the audience that the bandwidth limitations of broadcasting in the markets in new york is limited by how many channels you can carry and that had certain commercial and certain kinds of end you have to keep those straight so they don't mess each other signal up and so with but there's a limited amount that you can do in that but when they came with the cable in the coaxial cable they had a great number of channels and it made it possible their words it hadn't been possible in print or in broadcasting for the idea to be that we can begin to move toward democratization and that's what the access is about it was a confluence of the things that came historically in a very happy kind of time that made concept is that people do it for themselves people speak for themselves they come in that make programs for themselves and so forth you know that is work to a limited extent i'm not saying that we don't have far more programs that we can put out an eye on our speaking the younger general yeah because so many people find that pretty gal week to week programs and so forth you know how much energy it takes years to can i don't yet we begin to see that people are putting up their own websites and doing other things like this knowing that and to us it indicates that people have a hunger to speak for themselves right to put themselves out there and we haven't found quite the formula yes networks and george gilder and other the talk about tell it computing in the computers catching up with the communications and we used to have the telling off of the telecommunications and information policy in washington to separate the two are coming together in a certain kind  but we still have if you talk about video in a certain way and we both were interested in marshall mcluhan and bucky fuller and trying to understand the implications of these media that that in a in a certain sense the cable with full video and they keep capacity to video cable has been in a certain sense of the leading edge of that and the democratic aspect of cable which was the access does have a certain sr kind of camaraderie with the democratic aspects of the internet i would like and we have a saloon this coming there could be that they could learn from us and we could learn from them and maybe a wedding of those two kinds of democratic impetuses within the human society could find their way in those two those two and it but they still haven't got streaming this still haven't got video yet in the internet although it is asian use that term the with the tech not with interest sophisticated design and lord knows we've had that in the computer industry with the moore's law and so forth but that you get more and more capability with less and less than a certain sense so that the technology is seems to be providing increased accessibility to the national and world capable citizenry all along as it as it moves ahead more or feel and the prices are coming  so that the media is becoming accessible that our fathers and grandfathers would have felt would be absolutely impossible that's only for the you know the masters of the print press and so forth but it's changing the equation in terms of communication the way people is becoming much more important again well certainly on the internet it has to be because that's all they got exactly but you know but that's going to be overcome george i think you know they're going to go through mean they're going to be video they're going to be putting video over that and i don't know i you know i  and they have a center with radio station table sation where you learn to use computers and websites and so on all in the same building ok yeah that's good and i think there's a blending of those two things and the kinds of the distant learning is becoming more and more intense in greater numbers of people who we have we had a mr to me in here the other day it him in trying to see if we can get him and he is a pioneer along with what he's lord perry walter perry in the britain they have the open university that they got their feral wilson got started and i mean you can begin to get some of the best mind let's let's talk about this business just a flop as lost as well as wilson but they found you know that unless they had people meeting every once in a while if they had that in person classes people lost interest oh well they not only lost in the yeah they did i did a large part of the whole a large part of the whole effort it's a group effort and we encourage them to use it in close circuit to take the videos out and show them to small groups so that it's a way of extending the personal connection right that's right not substitute for a personal connection right well i guess we have to understand technology all i mean with mcluhan they used to say that it's you know the technology extensions of our consciousness or of our of our central nervous system in a certain zone these are so that we want to understand what the technologies do mean we want to be able to use them to the best advantage that we can to improve the human condition than that kind of thing and that's what the course people people are people are interested in i wondered you know the cable me back to the cable industry to the access a couple of other things were characteristic of it as it's evolved and you were you know we had that slo is there is sufficiency of communication capability you don't have to lock people out or you don't have to close people out from being able to communicate is an important principle don't you think it is by the technology but very soon we find it's not true ok talk to that please look at manhattan neighborhood network god we've got four channels yes and yet where we don't have room we have four channels and there's twenty two hours a day that's right it is and there are people who want to but many more people that's a problem something and now with compression and with the digitization and with the adding new channel it seems to be in a certain sense the technology may be in a certain sense of advancing the prospect for democratization of communication that would not have been thought possible as this technology proceeds as into the future it's a it's a it's a friend of community of democratization of of the case as it develops but i think also we have to accept i think it's a fact that it's a skill that has to be learned by experience the skill of the programming and program am making up your own grams just as what you learn to construct paragraph of an essay and so often that's that's not done right i teach at n y u and i know how hard it is for people to make the transition  to the particular grammar of a video yes well it is different i mean mr mccloy used to say that the major metaphor for the organization of western society was the phonetic alphabet  with a linear construct to begins to use this analogy and it's a linear construct where people begin to associate certain linear thinking with rationality you but mr michener would stand and he would talk he would take eight pages to describe a man standing on a cliff at the seaside and he would say the sun was shining in the bird was flying in the way it was going and the reality if you were in the world as you walked through the world you would experience all of those things that he's describing very nicely and well in a literal way you would experience all those things malta centrally all at once it's like that's the reality that we walk through as we go through the world body st and so but to take so that we're getting close to that with the extensions of this this technological capability in various kinds of you know these are all extensions of our ticky you you know sort of it is a different grammar of the sense of basic thing of you're reducing the world a three get that rd dimension well that takes that takes a certain amount of real skill again i don't think that the that we're doing a good enough job in the training do you do you think if i may do you think that we're overly let's say establishment western civilization or our systems or with that we are perhaps not not understanding enough the importance of media skills and media understanding or even just reading and being able to interpret and to create in the other media other than let's say with an overdue i don't want to use gloated words not because it's an overdue emphasis upon the phonetic alphabet or alphabetize and we don't pay attention to the to the garage to the to the filmic and video expressions of of creation and communication or i think you know with those i think that we have allowed the advertisers  and the the people who assume a short attention span to set the grammar they sure have been is it to me yet short in the short i've just got a call yesterday from t v global the big  right but they cut faster than anybody else faster than we owe heavens yes my lord but they do it because almost as though any six nd hold on anything is it's too long yeah yeah and i think that they want to get somebody from a way to say look look and listen and seal what's on the screen you see what television very often does  acting and i not so sure i know i'm a philistine and she calls me a philistine because i say i see academy award performances all the time of people who are living life you know it's like i see that all the time the person who just lost their child is really grieving where as somebody else is acting in i don't know if that's got into the sensory relations but we're getting more and more media capability of doing doing of having those kind of  if i think i want to one of the things about public access and it is the ways evolve what with government involvement as we do with the city of new york and so forth here the franchise agreement worked with the company and so forth is that is to be non commercial so this is one place where the whole communications world is based upon you know commercial and this is meant to be noncommercial that's significant in the of itself absolutely i think i'll write and perhaps i'm up in a model way for other forms of important for that reason don't you think that is i think if so yeah i do too that it could be ian advised stick to it yeah right yeah and in the end it's not just a training ground to get people right and there's also a different kind of attitude for people who are doing things that are in a certain sense not commodity is not within the context of this come out of size it's in a it's a venue for expression of the human spirit which is specifically not to modest sized i can't help thinking as technology in robotics and things move into the marketplace more and more we're going to need more venue's for expression of the human spirit which is not to modest sized in the public access is one important you know his model that we have out of history that c the could have appealed to a great number of people within our society and meet a real human need we're going to have as people perhaps become opportunities for more leisure kind of things that they can be you know letting their spirit roam into on a free voluntary basis that would be a hopeful projection of human societal development but you take your program yes your progress one of of ideas yes and it's interesting that you deal most of the time with people who have written just written books and that's well i don't really because i just take it as being the way it is we're talking a good i enjoy a conversation i think conversation is going to be one of the major forms of communication because there's a lot of the dialogue but that's a there's some things that are worked out and you know  thing you think so yeah well now there's going to be greater interactivity with the internet coming there's going to be just chat rooms they've got it in the interactivity and there can be even in cable there can be that there can be although there's a roof is a room at all of the humans that are in for lectures i don't know about me i watch i must admit i mean we're just talking out of school years and but i admit i love that brian lamb is done with that c span and is presenting using the cable i think to present some of the really great thought that has taken place  know my dog and you give them a chance to do that as you well with the c span we do it in in my mind is we should have more we should have five hundred channels or c span or let the best minds be available to us and  know although as a teacher to n y u yes i may surprise you but in addition to teaching followed almost every time i take another course myself i sit in  on the car you know you said you just done the one in japanese i do this partly to know what to advise students to take partly to learn about how other people teach i taught it to remind me of myself how hard it is to very often it's exchanges of individual exchange with the teacher will their law from it's the way that the the graduate students work with the students and very often when the teachers allow the students or require the suits to work this works all that well no no i am not sure it is i mean i guess i'm just well it's just a matter of you know i'm just happy to find in the electronic because for some reason it seems to be the humans the human communication system the electronic communication seems to be the primary media by which people are getting a sense of what we would call in a certain sense reality in a certain increasingly it's if it is right well they're very often do it out of the house to be the people that's right sure that's true that's true that's important thing and it's at the interface where you have and there was a piece if i would like to put a plug in for a book by ralph engelman he's written a very interesting book on public radio and television america the political history really very very good book and he talked some about there was a program in canada were it was early i don't was the what do you call that the challenge change but there was a particular film where they had people there were people up in the way out in the in the rural part i got the impression of canada and there were what they were interested in they weren't interested so much in all these fast intercuts and so what they were interested in little dialogue and even some people talking monologuing into the it but you know there were stories that they weren't these fast cuts and so forth that they were interested in and that it was in a certain sense a sense that there is room for dialogue and understanding within the media more i'm not sure we're going to do over the next weeks ahead and set it up you know we want to do that i want to do i'd like to talk to people that understand that and it's also the public television the public television system which is a very important again in terms of presenting in presenting  possibility of ideas another thing that the possibility with the access to these kind of some of these that access television represents and perhaps is not as appreciated by people in this country as much as it ought to be because we'd be prejudiced thinking that but or perhaps even used as creatively as it might be able to do by some people in other parts of the country but that the equipment now with the digitization and so forth the complicated equipment or the complex equipment that was used to have what they call production values that have been so much and they'll always be there of course but that that equipment is becoming more and more accessible with this technological development to again folks than it has and there's i would wage sense or of this creative thing it's got a great it's got a great future might have to do with economics maybe we need to have some changes in terms of economics it's been an exciting thing though and you have been nursing this along you've got a sense that up in canada and then you've been working at the alternate media center in new york city and doing i saw you you've had many contacts with people that are concerned with labor's rights and so forth and that you sent out some interns around the country it was sort of the sense like labor organizers were getting ready  top public access that's a unique thing when we talk about public access or is there a difference between public access and what is called local origination and maybe well local origination is usually that program a put on by the cable operator  but which he charges oh i see that's or he's he's got a commercial doing public access is usually run by independent nonprofit so not necessarily the cable to some very good public access president and so it was so we really need to have the public come to our defense well this is something i was thinking about not only the night of the part you know the public in the broad general sense of the mass of the people and so who some of whom might be there but you know it seems to me it might be that the concept of the democratization of communication that access represents and particularly tying it into some of those of that that responsibility in this country for major institutions ought to even if they're not involved personally in the ought to be able to in a certain sense intellectually or in a in a in a way side on to the idea that's a good idea that there should be democracy for these people to be able to say the things more than they seem to have been able to do so that the general level of support for this idea and nurturing this idea of a national scale could be spoken for by people's movement but by not only the mass of the people as  say this that if you punch are four channels and then you go into the other seventy one chat who's you'll find that our channels represent the body politic the new york city  so people should know not not not only that those people should have a place yes but that people should support the idea of access i cable television my responsible people are more than it seems to me they have i don't know  you've you've helped in a you know in a mighty way to let people be aware of and so forth with the but the universities and other places and then they should be participating more and well there are other institutions there's access facilities there is coming looming internet which is going to be a great coming around the millennium or something like that will come together the institutions of higher learning colleges and other kinds of things there should be a greater coalescing of  in a month or so to speak to the group out there and so that we we share our experiences but you see some people have the mistaken idea that public access is the people who runs the city hall are run the franchise there and they have to work out the deal with the company that's right right right ok so that at all they're using the city streets and anybody that is you see that's a pretty dangerous thing if i you think of this is a free speech right right yes we are as vulnerable as people at the city hall we ought to be able to open up these kind of institutions to other areas and bore possibly i mean i'm talking on a general  saying it's important to the reason i'm saying that is because the alliance has helped all these groups set up certain standards and stick to them in very much the same way that the american library association they have over madison avenue that's becoming pretty much a media thing i mean you know the design birds of these things and so the live the interest of the people that are interested in learning and understanding and freedom and democracy they're commonality of views that they should do they should support and a lot of those institutions that support one another the alliance also represents a lot of the people who make up the administration and so what jobs are these various items around the country now there are individuals also oh yes that are not part of those that are i see some of the d d hallock sometimes and they'd be running it often is four dollars seventy six cents for the day and everything and making exactly the point that this is a medium that is not you don't have to be intimidated by it you can be bring it in and it doesn't take these overwhelming budgets that these these people try to intimidate is coming along perhaps like the lone ranger just coming over the over the horizon to bring what might have been a little hard to see from distant past the technology seems to have been providing this and riding that whole crest if i may be and i don't care what you say he is in the very aptly recognized as the father in a very real sense along with a lot of others posse that helped bring cable television and cable access television to this country and he's  member of the board of directors of manhattan neighborhood network here in new york and i thank you really very much for coming in by air and on having me as evidence not at all your pleasure to have his perceptions we our conversation