Public-access television

Public-access television is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable TV specialty channels. Public-access television was created in the United States between 1969 and 1971 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under Chairman Dean Burch, based on pioneering work and advocacy of George Stoney, Red Burns (Alternate Media Center), and Sidney Dean (City Club of NY).

Public-access television is often grouped with public, educational, and government access television channels, by the acronym PEG. PEG channels are typically only available on cable television systems.

Distinction from PBS

In the United States of America, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) produces public television, offering an educational television broadcasting service of professionally produced, highly curated content. It is not public-access television, and has no connection with cable-only PEG television channels. Although non-commercial educational television bears some resemblance to the E of PEG, PBS bears little resemblance to public-access television.

Public Access

Public Access is a 1993 American drama film directed by Bryan Singer in his feature film debut. Singer also wrote the screenplay with Christopher McQuarrie and Michael Feit Dougan. The film was shot in 18 days for US$250,000. It was screened at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, where it was a joint winner of the Grand Jury Prize. Critics praised the technical direction of Public Access but did not lend similar praise to the film's story and the characters.

Plot

A clean-cut drifter ends up in a small town called Brewster. Getting wind of the local public-access television cable TV station, the man decides to host his own show called Our Town, which becomes a focal point for town citizens to call in and voice their problems anonymously. However, things start to get ugly and tensions rise for the show, which begins to elevate the man's signature catchphrase "What's wrong with Brewster?" into an entirely new subject for the people of Brewster, when the town becomes embroiled in a mess it has created, driven by a man whose intentions might be far more sinister than he appears to be.

CTV Two Alberta

CTV Two Alberta is a Canadian English language entertainment, information and educational television channel in the province of Alberta. It is owned by Bell Media, and operates as a de facto owned-and-operated station of its secondary CTV Two television system.

The channel is licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as an educational programming service for Alberta, and was formerly a public broadcaster owned by the Alberta provincial government. Since becoming a private broadcaster, it has aired a mix of educational programming, along with entertainment programming more favourable to advertisers and viewers.

The channel is also designated as a "satellite-to-cable undertaking" serving the entirety of Alberta, and is therefore carried throughout the province on cable and licensed IPTV services on each service's basic tier. It is also available on both national satellite services, Bell TV and Shaw Direct. In addition, the station formerly operated two terrestrial transmitters, CJAL-TV (channel 9) in Edmonton, where the channel's main studios are located, and CIAN-TV (channel 13) in Calgary.

Access

Access may refer to: getting in

Companies and organizations

Computer software

Public

In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science, psychology, marketing, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, it has suffered in more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder.

The name "public" originates with the Latin publicus (also poplicus), from populus, and in general denotes some mass population ("the people") in association with some matter of common interest. So in political science and history, a public is a population of individuals in association with civic affairs, or affairs of office or state. In social psychology, marketing, and public relations, a public has a more situational definition.John Dewey defined (Dewey 1927) a public as a group of people who, in facing a similar problem, recognize it and organize themselves to address it. Dewey's definition of a public is thus situational: people organized about a situation. Built upon this situational definition of a public is the situational theory of publics by James E. Grunig (Grunig 1983), which talks of nonpublics (who have no problem), latent publics (who have a problem), aware publics (who recognize that they have a problem), and active publics (who do something about their problem).