Maybe if they all got together and did a protest at Sea-Tac against the TSA uploading nude pix of them and patting down 13 yo body-image-conscious girls, they might get funding.

Or they could keep doing conventional methods.

I'm guessing the TSA thing would make more of a difference to SCAN getting funded.

That said, if libraries had digital cams in their meeting rooms it would be easier to film this stuff.

with youtube and numerous other sites to which you can upload videos for free, I fail to see why my tax dollars should go to supporting this service in times when essential things like healthcare and police services are being cut....I hope they lose the 100k too, there are better uses for that money. 20 years ago you could argue that the public needed access to the airwaves, free speech and all that but these days we have a magical thing called the internet (and the seattle channel should be on youtube as well, another waste)

What about Goddess Kring??!!

@3:

I would pay money to NOT see her on TV...

@4 oh come on, she's a Seattle icon. You can always not watch her.

@3 -- The good news is that if you go to her website, you can pay $15/month to get access to all of her nude photos and videos. I would loooooove to know how many of those memberships she has sold.

Public Access needs to die before conservatives catch wind of it and hold it up as an example of wasteful spending. $100K is pennies to the billions and billions that are spent on wasteful defense spending, but it's still useless, mainly serving the public as unintentional comedy.

I'm confused, where is the money going? By federal law, the municipality cannot take the money and use it for other purposes. It has to go for PUG broadcasting.

Matt, I wish you'd covered the meeting with the school district family support workers too.

I've been living in Seattle for ten years. Why hasn't anyone told me about SCAN previously? Oh, right.

@8 -- No, the city's Department of Information Technology apparently discovered a wonderful little loophole wherein they can take money formerly earmarked for public access and put it towards expanding the city's email capacity.

@9 -- That was exactly what SCAN said, yeah.

@10 -- Looks like Riya had it covered! But if you guys know of any press conferences coming up that you want us to cover, you can always send in a tip. Chances are we already know, but it never hurts to try.

Well if you drop your most popular program, Mike Hunt TV, what do you expect to have happen?

Unlike SCAN, Seattle Channel has actual programming that people occasionally watch. I agree with high_and_bi that in the Youtube age something like SCAN makes no sense whatsoever. Groups that make good use of SCAN can easily adapt whatever benefits SCAN offers them into online versions, since anyone can use Youtube for free at the libraries if they don't have Web access at home.

You could probably reduce SCAN's funding to $50,000--full-time salary for a single person to handle incoming and outgoing mail and e-mail, manage a Web site or two, and upload new videos online. They can do that out of their home, or from a library.

I am pretty sure kids can find their porn on the internet now. No need for them to stay up till 2am suffering though nonsense religious programing and poorly formed political and sports commentary.

Hey, that suggestion to eliminate the Seattle Channel is a good one! We should do that, and give Ferguson 10% of the cost savings as a reward for his suggestion. Then we should tell the outgoing Seattle Channel staff that they can have 10% of the cost savings from any other city jobs they can suggest eliminating. And so on...

#7

So get a job at Lockheed, buy a Flip camera from Amazon, and post "radical" vids anonymously.

Get with the '10s dwink-a-doodle.

The sooner they get rid of this ridiculous boondoggle, the sooner the egregious taxes and fees that the city pours into Scumcast will cease. It's bad enough that the idiots on this city's cable control board (or whatever elitist label they stick on it) granted a MONOPOLY to a bunch of scheming, slimy jerks like Scumcast! Then they tacked millions of dollars of taxes on their bills to finance absolute garbage like this "public access" channel.

Burn SCAN to the ground, salt the earth where it stood and refund the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars I have poured down that rathole.

SCAN ia the only place in Seattle that runs shows like DemocracyNow and Tom Hartmann. The local coverage of current events that Pirate TV and other programs provides is invaluable. Some of the shows like Queens Kitchen, Hootenany and Richard Lee made this channel extremly valuable for advancing the creativity and knowledge of all of the community.

I grew up in California in a medium size valley city that does not have a service like this. Imagine people living in individual macmansions houses, commuting long distances,with latch- key children and people so tired by the end of the day that they do not connect with their community.

A TV service like this is invaluable for keeping individuals informed and connected to their community. When you do not have a service like this then narrow and unconnected thinking results. People are not encouraged to learn about the portions of their community that are outside of their comfort zone. They may turn to FOX Noise or right wing talk radio to form their opinions about people instead of their neighbors.

SCAN is the difference between the diversity of thought that is Seattle and the lack of diversity of thought that exists in Yakima or other parts of Eastern Washington where their media choices are limited.

@12 They are on some very very shaky ground. You can't just take money. You can piggyback things if they're also used for video return like building a full IP network instead of a pure video one between buildings, but email would be very dubious.

@18 There are no monopoly cable franchises. That would be against federal law. Any company is free to come in and apply for a franchise. However, I'm not going to dispute your assessment of PEG programming.

What ever happened to Richard Lee? You lose the franchise player, the franchise goes down the tubes with him.

It is evident by the questions you asked at the press conference "what are franchise fees," that you were not knowledgeable about PEG's, independent media, free speech, and localized programming amongst other things. But the beauty of free speech is the ability and right to have an opinion even if it is uninformed.