No-one does it like us

This is a general statement on community television and why it is needed. The bigs can take it away, at will. They will. The four are the big three acronyms, tci, tw and am-west plus our little babies, the bells. Those cuddlies that care so about our towns and villages in America.

They can do what they will and we will survive in some form. Of that I am certain. It may seem I fear or worry a lot about the bigs, but I don't really. I don't expect much from the big corporations, but I have been pleasantly surprised in the past and am ready again to reason with them. As we say about a member of a minority group that is maligned, but whom we admire, "some of them are my best friends."

The point is, we who do volunteer tv have become like a pesky relative. We are a pain but we won't go away. We just wanna play. Record the lives of the people in our little villages. The photographer, Stan Chilson, has hours of people coming down stairs in Franklin and Wrentham. He is our father and mother. He shows us how and what. How to save stuff and what to save. No-one can take that away from us, because it is so unimportant to most folks that they wouldn't bother even to notice what is being done. The fourth of July parade, the local junior prom, the first day of school in Dover in 1995. Piddly stuff. Let'em do it. We can bulk out, erase, their tapes and run something else that seems good and so on.

Frankly it doesn't matter what the big corporations do to local studios. We will survive, because only we can do what we do. No-one else would give a damn. Especially the bigs who gotta sell soap to survive. Little local stuff won't sell much Budweiser or Folger's. Or Proctor and Gambles. So it is ignored. If it don't sell, screw it. I saw a football game out of the back door of the school the other day, as I took a break from setting up for the special town meeting in Dover. The bodies crunched every few minutes and you heard a smack of shoulder pads hitting. There were the red and blacks and the blue and whites. I wasn't sure which was Dover-Sherborn. It may have been a junior varsity match. It wasn't being taped but from several hundred feet away I looked and it really was a pretty sight. We shoulda taped it, but our equipment was strung out to do a three camera shoot of our local carnival, our very own sideshow, village theatre, a town meeting.

Walter Attridge, our newest selectmen, that night chewed me out good and rightly so for the lousy sound quality of recent selectmen's meetings. I though he was looking for me before the meeting to thank me and us for the wonderful work we do, but forget that. I put my hand on his shoulder as he announced to me he was looking to talk to me, but I quickly realized I was in for a roast. I took my hand away fast. He gave it to me good and I deserved it. Our sound quality has been bad, but what the hell. We are in there pitching.

Anyways I watched the football game from far away. It had rained hard until early afternoon and then the sun came out. It was brisk and beautiful out. The high school children walking around were bright in their rags. Why do they look like that when their parents are so rich? It was a sight and got me to thinking how lucky I was to be on the scene. We should have taped it. But you can say that about so much of what happens in our villages west of Boston in the year of 1996.

No-one else can do it like us or would want to.

We are the village voice of the nineties. The newspapers are lousy generally. They change reporters every six months and the poor youngsters who work for the papers don't know diddly. Then they leave and another inexperienced person starts the whole thing over again.

What we do is perfectly priceless.

We are a public voice. That voice is transmitted, as is our right over the public airwaves which these days are not that public. 'Cause we gave them away to the bigs, or the politicos did, and we watched them do it. Don't know why.

Thought and meaning are to be controlled from New York and Atlanta and of course from that standby, Hollywood. Dangerous but so it is. They will tell us what to think and do about the big issues, abortion, homosexuality, race and ethnic relations, how to picture and deal with the old people. The tv will tell us how to view foreign policy and the news. Remember that the Jim Lehrer show is brought to us by the supermarket to the world, the wonderful folks at ADL, Archer Daniels Midland, who just now are paying a big fine of a hundred million dollars for something bad they did. They sponsor what passes for public tv. You have to give them credit, the news hour show, because they reported on the fine on the show and Jim did it with a straight though pained face. What a country we live in. Quite wonderful really. Funny too.

But don't you think we need some free voice like local tv to tell it like it is, 'cause the big networks can't really? They are too busy counting the money and fighting for oligopolistic position to notice the quiet beauty of a Memorial Parade in Dover or a Fourth of July parade Peter Stretelsky did in Needham for Continental tv in 1994.

Our job is really already completed. Fifteen years in Canton to learn our trade of how to tell the village what it looks like. Some fewer years in Dover in which we showed the citizens some pictures of their place. And now of course we get yelled at for one thing or another and we deserve it and I smile 'cause they just take it for granted that we will do their football or soccer match on the tv so some father can gawk at his daughter and dream she will make the soccer team in the college of her choice that she has just applied for as a high school senior.

The first national U.S. communications act way back then carped on about the three or four interruptions an hour by that distracting thing, the commercial. Too many of the damn things and look at it now. Every few seconds we gonna look at a swoosh or a coke or a car ad. All those damn cars skidding in the dirt somewhere near the Grand Canyon, telling us this or that about how wonderful they are and then we go back to our show for a few minutes and then we get another thing on the tv that has nothing to do with anything. Maybe something for a headache or some insurance we can buy for the rainy day.

Whatever became of our right for commercial free or commercial light tv? We need village tv, free of control to keep everybody straight. I know some folks can get on and do angry or nasty or disrespectful things as the first amendment apparently promises but there will be people like me who will go on and say some nice things and pleasant things and traditional things, and teaching things and things from the heart where I am trying to say how much I like villages and the life they may promise us in this trying year, 1996.

The product is special. One must always keep that in mind because it does not look to be that way. It is a common thing. An intergenerational choir in Dover, a New Year's show in Foxboro, a show called Main Street in Canton or one named Our Town in Dover, produced by a Medfield resident and local police officer in Dover, Bill Jones.

No-one else can do it like us. No-one. I did my third cow show on Shady Oaks farm in West Medway. Called it "Cow Now." Jim Repetti who had been on the Planning board in Dover saw it and called to tell me he liked what I said about keeping some suburban land free for cows and farms 'cause it made economic sense. The land was taxed less than developed land and that was good because we did not have to pay more for schools and roads and stuff than we were taking in for taxes on the new suburban homes. He just called me said thanks and hung up. He expects responsible, interesting, local tv, and gets it. My show, mind you. And he just takes it for granted. All those damn hours I spent pouring over books in the Wellesley Free Library, my most favorite place in the whole world, the hours at the computer writing and the time with Geoff Hooper shooting the damn thing. And then knowing much of my work would probably get bulked out soon by someone or other. Bulked out means the local folks will erase the master tape so they can re-use it for something that is surely important. God bless them.

Our work is precious and taken for granted. As it should be, but at least we can say it, can't we? That our work is precious.

The big companies have the ownership of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, and they own the Mickey the mouse. God forbid you should copy that little fellow. Attorneys from Disney would swoop and swoosh down on you and punish you good. The whole country is in the thrall of commercial interests who now own the language, the snapple, the coke, the corn flake, the ford, the clairol, the mac, the whopper, the pentel and all that stuff.

What we are left with is a part of speech called an article, say maybe a "the," or an "an," which things could never sell anything anyways.

Why can't they leave us a little? The tiny village voice we have exercised over the years that no-one cares to notice? The so-called cable tv. Because they gotta own everything. Because greed is good and our local tv is bad. Bad for them because they can't make money off it. We are unlike the private investor who maximizes self gain. We're public investors who just give and give to an uncaring public and get nothing in return. Only when they take that away from us, just a few local citizens will notice and maybe say something. Maybe; maybe not. I can see us disappearing in Dover and not a whole lot of people missing my work on cable or the soccer or selectmen's match. With four hundred thirty-four channels to choose from among, who needs local tv?

I am realistic about that business. Imagine a whole channel devoted to philately, stamp collectors and one for those who want to know everything you ever wanted to know about soccer or food or history or stuff you can buy, or rock music, or god knows what.

What a wonderful world of choices we have. So forget this piddly thing we do. The few who care will get over it and our networks as they're called, will tittilate the public's overexercised brains some more with the special channels and the local villages and their life can go to hell and no-one will really care.

But we need villages in uncertain times and we need the pictures of villages and the words of villages as we have them now and they will take that away from us for a bunch of reasons that begin with d for dollars and c that belongs to cents.

We have it within our power to show the present and save pieces of our local past, the recent and far past of villages and towns we live in. We can videotape old pictures. Put them on tape and digitize them to last forever. That is what is at stake. Local control of our lives. That we seem willing to give to the transcontinental, trans-world corporations. Our national and local political figures have got to see somehow that we need to survive free of larger control. We don't do anything nefarious, or cruel. Mostly we praise our neighbors and describe our little home places. Some folks like me chide and get a little bit snippy. We want that to survive, or do we?

Campanis. Dover. Late October, 1996.

Tag lines. Commercial lite tv. Volunteer tv. Only we can do what we do. No-one else can do it like us or would want to. Village voice of the nineties. A public voice. I like villages. Why can't they leave us a little? Because they gutta own everything. Public investors. Local control of our lives. Free of larger control.