Community Radio and Television

Community radio and television is a system that provides production equipment, training, and airtime on local channels so that members of the public can produce programming and broadcast to a mass audience. It developed as an alternative to commercial and state-run broadcast media to open mass media to all citizens. Mass media is considered a key component of political communication, a type of public sphere in democratic societies where people participate in the discussion and construction of government policies. However, most traditional broadcast media are ratings driven, market oriented, and privatized, limiting the range of views presented and offering few opportunities for active and equal participation by the public. In response to these restrictions, a grassroots social movement developed that offered communities access to media technologies and broadcasting platforms in order to encourage diversity, creativity, and participation in the public discourse. Based on the concept that the airwaves belong to everyone, community radio and television (also called community access or public access) provide a vital forum for people around the world to organize, participate, and even spark social change.

The social movement for the development of community radio and television was facilitated by technological changes that made the tools of media production easier, cheaper, and more accessible. Innovations such as the development of a consumer portable video recorder, the Sony Porta-Pak (developed in 1968), meant that video production could be mobile and streamlined. The development of the videocassette in the early 1970s replaced film as a recording medium—it did not need to be processed in a lab and was easily transported. Also in the early 1970s, cable television allowed for broadcasting possibilities beyond state-run or commercial networks. By the late 1970s, small silicon chips replaced bulky, fragile, and complicated vacuum tubes to amplify and tune radio signals, and the development of FM transmitters and antennas made it easier to broadcast radio programs without interference. These new technologies served to release the tools of production to non-professionals and to level the playing field between the official sources of broadcast media and media produced by interested citizens.

The democratization of media production in North America is considered to have started with the National Film Board of Canada. The Challenge for Change program encouraged community participation in documentary filmmaking about social and environmental issues in the late 1960s. These films and later videos were shown to other members of the community and government officials to promote discussion, debate, and resolution of local issues. In the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, community media were more the province of activists and artists who were expressing themselves and communicating to others via emerging video technologies. These groups were considered to be radical, and many were based in New York City. Collectives such as Videofreex, People's Video Theater, Global Village, Top Value Television, and the Downtown Community Television Center used the latest equipment to record and produce their perspectives on local, national, and international current events and news stories. By 1981, the Paper Tiger Television Collective was established, a group that still exists today and that created television studio–based programming that many consider to be revolutionary in its style and scope.

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