Public Video in Arlington Massachusetts

Open Eyes Video is a proud sponsor of public video in the Town of Arlington. Over the years, we have lent equipment and donated time to help produce progamming for the entertainment, education, and enrichment of Arlington's residents. We support public access cable television in Arlington by producing programs, training volunteers, and coordinating with studio staff. We are strong advocates for community involvement in town media and communication and work with other organizations in town to help in this effort (please see our Links page).

History of ACMI

Some time around 1997, I (Glenn Koenig, the owner of Open Eyes Video) started attending meetings with a small group of interested people to discuss the future of public access television in town. At that time, Media One, the successor to Continental Cablevision, was two years into a 10 year contract with the Town of Arlington, a deal originally made with Continental. One stipulation in the contract was that the Town would provide space for a public access studio, so that Media One would not have to rent studio space from a private landlord, as its predecessors had been doing since cable TV was first introduced in Arlington, in the 1980 /1981 time frame.

The town had not decided where to host the studio, so Media One closed the studio in Arlington, put some of the assets in storage, and moved the rest into the company's local access studio in Cambridge, on Sherman Street. So, at that time, residents of Arlington who wanted to do anything with the company, including turn in a cable box for repair, pay their bill in person, or produce a public access program had to go there to do so. In addition, the studio had to be shared with local access productions for the city of Cambridge, so scheduling time became much more difficult. As a result of this, and the lack of physical presence in town, public access productions dwindled down to very few.

Although the original cable company contract back in 1980 had provided for three public access channels (the traditional P, E, & G - Public, Educational, and Governemtn), responsibility for programming on the government channel had been turned over to town government itself, which did not have a budget, nor any department to provide content for it. Partly, this was due to the new state law, unofficially known as propisition 2 1/2 (Massachusetts actually has public referendum ballot Questions, not Propositions, as they do in California). The new law forced town government to cut its budgets drastically in a very short timeframe, so new responsibilities were usually not taken on. Eventually, the original government channel, lacking any programming, had been taken over by Continental for use in carrying CSPAN. So, we were down to two channels.

At the high school, the intended origination point for the Educational Channel, things weren't much better. Although there was space for a studio, the budget for faculty and equipment upgrades was minimal, so very little programming was produced, leaving that channel to carry mostly notices, school lunch menus, etc. The equipment there was based on Betamax video machines, whereas it was U-Matic (3/4") in the public studio, so even the tapes weren't compatible between the two locations.

So, at our first few meetings, we began to discuss how to revitalize public access in Arlington. For awhile we met in the community room in the basement of the Fox Branch Library in East Arlington. Later, we met at the home of Kathy Colwell, in Arlington Heights. We knew that Cambridge and other cities nearby had negotiated contracts with their cable companies to provide funding for independent non-profit "access corporations" to manage and operate their public access studios and cable channels. But Arlington's studio had always been staffed and managed by the cable company itself, instead, starting with the first company, American Cablesystems, and later by Continental, and by then Media One.

So, the possibility of creating a non-profit organization for Arlington was discussed. But with a 10 year contract in place, it would not be until 2005 (seven or eight years hence) before it would be renegotiated by the town, providing us with an opportunity to rewrite it to support such a non-profit organization. We had our work cut out for us, but the possibility seemed a long way off!

During this time, two changes took place. One, Media One was purchased by AT&T Broadband. Two, the town settled on a location for a studio, the then abandoned Dallin branch library on Park Avenue in Arlington Heights. In 1998 and 1999, AT&T renovated the building and installed a new studio there. Although they spend many thousands of dollars doing so, when it was finally opened in early 2000, most of the original video and sound equipment was simply brought back from Sherman Street and retrieved from storage to outfit it. One employee was hired at first, joined by another later on.

So, at least we had a studio back in town, with a staff and equipment. After some communication problems at first, those of us who had been active in public access television for years and the new staff members began to work together and bring people in to start producing more programming, run workshops in production, and so on. A small not for profit organization, known as Arlington Cable Access (ACA) became active again. This had been originally created under the very first contract with American, back in 1980. However, it essentially had no actual power to make decisions about studio operations; it could only advise the cable company staff. It had a very small budget (perhaps a few thousand dollars per year) to help with publicity, awards, etc. Most of us who had been hoping to revitalize cable access TV in town were members of ACA so we reformed the board and held periodic meetings.

But soon enough, another issue arose. A second cable TV company sought a contract with the town. This was RCN, a so-called 'overbuilder' company. That meant that it would install an entire second cable network in town and compete with AT&T. Well, fair enough. However, AT&T claimed that since it had paid to install the studio, and continued to cover staff salaries and maintenance, they were not obligated to provide any public access programming to RCN for their subscribers. This meant that if an RCN subscriber came to the studio, helped to produce a program, then went home to watch it on cable TV, they would not be able to see it, since RCN was not given a 'feed' of programming from the studio. Around 2002, this started to become a significant problem, as RCN signed up more subscribers.

So, the concept of a non-profit organization to manage the studio was even more ugrently needed. After all, an independent organization could operate the studio, and provide signals to any cable company in town. There was talk that Verizon was going to go into the cable TV business soon and it was likely that Arlington would end up with at least three companies before long.

But there was a stumbling block. The limits of the original ACA organization's power and budget had left little for it to do over the years. ACA Board members were often frustrated as their desires went unheard or even contradicted. As a result, the ACA and its members came to be regarded as little more than a group of inexperienced amateurs by various town government officials, not exactly a group that was ready to take over operating a public access studio operation that was claimed (by AT&T Broadband) to have a $500,000 annual budget! In addition, some residents feared that such a group of volunteers couldn't be trusted to make responsible decisions about what programming was allowed on the public access channels.

By late 2002, this 'chicken versus egg' dilema seemed to be going nowhere. We needed the approval of the Board of Selectmen and their appointed Cable Advisory Committee to create a new non-profit and rewrite the contracts with the cable companies to transfer control and funding of the studio out of cable company hands. But they seemed unwilling to do so without some kind of assurance that we were capable of handing the responsibility for all this in town. Without any track record to prove our capability to take this on, how would we convince them and move forward?

By early 2003, I had decided what I though was the best way to go. Start the non-profit organization that we hoped would do the job right away, instead of waiting for the blessing of the Board of Selectmen. I reserved the community room in the Robbins Library and scheduled a public meeting for mid February. I invited as many volunteers as I could think of, plus members of the Board of Selectmen, the Cable Advisory Committee, the Town Counsel, and any other town officials who I thought might be interested. I obtained a data projector and prepared a presentation on my computer, showing the time line between 2003 and 2005 when the cable contract (with what was by now Comcast) would be up. I laid out what why we needed to do this and what steps we needed to take. Julie Kuhn chipped in and we got some snacks and refreshments for the meeting.

The attitude of town officials changed somewhat. Now it was more like, "ok, let's see if you can build this to our satisfaction." So by April of 2003 we had everything ready. A small group of us met in the meeting room in the Community Safety building on Mystic street and signed the papers creating a new organization, to be known as Arlington Community Media, Incorporated. I was president, John Leone was Clerk, and Kathy Colwell was treasurer. We had three other board members at the time.

Our work was cut out for us. We had to get official non-profit status for our new organization. We had to arrange for town government officials to tour similar public access studios in neighboring towns (we had Paul Berg on our board, who was then Executive Director of public access in Newton, so we went there). We handed out flyers to get interested residents to attend Board of Selectmen meetings to show support for what we wanted to do. And we had to work closely with the Cable Advisory Committee to arrange for the necessary research, studies, and documents to present our case to Comcast in upcoming negotiations. If that wasn't done correctly, then we would not be able to obtain the full 5% of gross revenues (from cable television subscribers) to fund our organization and studio operations (a limit set by US government policy, under the FCC).

We had to figure out how to obtain insurance, obtain an employer ID number, perpare to hire an Executive Director, set up payroll, employee benefits, studio policies, initial budget projections, ongoing building maintenance, and so on. There seemed like thousands of little decisions necessary to make the entire thing ready to roll. We met twice a month in John Leone's office conference room, overlooking Mass. Ave., just to do all the work.

In the midst of all this, I realized two things, although only dimly at the time. First, by mid 2005, we were on the way for everything to go through by the time the new contract with Comcast was scheduled to be signed in October. Second, after all I had been doing, I was just not cut out for the ongoing process of running a non-profit organization as an officer and board member. I had other projects I wanted to work on so I was feeling a strain I didn't know what to do with. I had different ideas about the many minor decisions we had to make and often it was me voting one way and the other board members voting the other way. In the long run, I had to realize that my opinion on the small stuff didn't matter. Those who were on the board by then were fully capable of managing ACMI at that point and I could step down. So I resigned.

Soon after, the search for Executive Director was completed and Norm McLeod was hired. Jeff Munro, who had been on staff at the studio while it was being managed by Comcast, left their employ and was immediatelyhired by ACMI. His experience over the years in Arlington, coupled with Norm's experience from elsewhere formed the foundation for what has become an amazing team.

As I write this, it's now the Summer of 2010, five years later. ACMI has grown in to a vibrant, active, and fully functioning community media enterprise. It holds classes for middle school students all the way up to adults in the community. It carries live programs of public meetings and community events, as well as recorded programs of almost every variety, from music and talent, to health, cooking, exercise, public affairs, education, you name it. Its annual awards night has evolved from a small gathering of the faithful on folding chairs set up in the basement of the studio, with pasta and salad served on the conference room table, ... to a gala including a catered dinner held in Town Hall, with over 200 guests in formal attire, musical entertainment, cash bar, and large screen projections.

Here is one photo, taken at the awards night this year.

Award winners at the ACMI Annual Awards Dinner, June 2010
Founding President, Glenn Koenig, is at center (in hat).
Executive Director, Norm McLeod is 3rd from right (back row).
Jeff Munro is at the very right.

For more about ACMI today, including a full schedule of programs on all three channels, live streaming, and (coming soon) video on demand, see ACMI's web site.

For even more history, please see the news site Your Arlington.

Programs listed below are cablecast in the Town of Arlington only, on Comcast channels 8, 9 & 10, and on RCN channels 3, 13 & 15.

Productions and Cablecasting Schedule
(shown here for historic reference. For current schedule, please see the ACMI web site)

Home | Contact Us