SUBJECT: Baltimore's public access TV battle with Comcast is important to every county in Maryland.
Why is it so important to all of Maryland's communities? Because if Baltimore gets a good deal with sufficient funding from Comcast this time around, as it is contract time again, this will set the precedent for the kind of a deal that every county can get for their citizens. That is why as a new volunteer with Baltimore Grassroots Media, the group at the forefront of fighting the battle of getting the citizens of Baltimore a good public access deal, I've personally decided to contribute this particular email tactic of letting a lot of top government people from all over the state know of this so that they can keep their eyes on it, confer with each other about it, and maybe also be helpfully influential in the current Baltimore battle.I've sent this message to the Governor and to many other people near the top of his administration, as well as to many people at the top of each county government. After making sure that I had selected a lot of top officials in each particular government, I then only randomly selected some other folks further down, and in various departments, inclusive of legal ones. I've also sent it to colleges and universities all over Maryland, as well as to various other people and organizations. To protect everyone's privacy, I've sent each message to myself and a blind carbon copy to each of the few email addresses that I send off each time so that they don't show (by the way, my browser limits me to sending no more than 10 at a time). Of course here in Baltimore, and starting with the Mayor and his administration, and every member of the City Counsel, the team that will either make a good or bad deal with Comcast, I've sent this to every person in charge of all the departments that I found that were listed on a Baltimore City "Executive Branch" page that I got with a goggle search. I've also sent it to many more Baltimore government people in various departments and agencies on other pages that I found in the search. What is found below is what was contained in two prior mailings of mine in the last few days. The subject-heading of the first email, and the two paragraphs of lead-in comments, was to the "Association of Maryland Nonprofit Organizations", which leads in to my first mailing to the print, TV and radio media organizations that I showed them, which speaks a lot about the contract situation between the City Council of Baltimore and the Comcast cable TV company, and contains ideas and information that everyone in every Maryland county should know about, be thinking of, and considering for their own communities. Hopefully all you folks who did get this message will pass it on to others who didn't.============================
--------Subject: A call for "HELP" to the "Association of Maryland NonprofitOrganizations"-----
---Dear Mr. Berns, and all other staff members (all 29 of you who are listed on page 5 of my 2004 "Membership Directory"). I'm John DeSantis, a member who is listed on page 160 in the "Emerging Nonprofits" section. I've sent this to each of you in separate e-mails, so that you could confer with each other on my important request for some immediate helpful action on your part for the city of Baltimore concerning public access TV with the Comcast cable company, which every single nonprofit organization has a very strong stake in. Why? Because if Baltimore city gets the "public access" TV deal that it needs, then the precedent will be set for a similar arrangement to be made between every single Maryland county and the Comcast company. I notice that there are over 3,000 nonprofit organizations in Baltimore City alone, and over 18,000 in all of the counties of Baltimore listed under the "Nonprofits By The Numbers" chart on page 2. So after reading what is below, if you all confer and come to think that it's a worthwhile cause to immediately get involved with, besides possibly doing some other things, if you simply send an e-mail to every one of your thousands of members, and maybe even to those nonprofit organizations who aren't yet members, maybe many of them will rise to the occasion and motivate some of their people to get involved in some way this week, as explained below in a copy of the exact message that I sent out yesterday (Saturday) to many media organizations in the Baltimore area. The first line below is what was in the subject heading.================
--------Subject: Everyone needs to vote the current Comcast public access TV proposal down---
-----This is a RUSH ALERT, a call to quick and decisive coordinated action: Every Baltimore citizen and every media organization needs to quickly come together and let the mayor and the City Council know that the proposed Public Access TV contract by Comcast is not in any way good enough and should be firmly rejected so that it can then be negotiated and made much better. Dear print, TV and radio media folks (I'm sending this off to many Baltimore media organizations, one by one, or placing them in "forms"where no direct media e-mail address is available): Please consider using all or parts of the various paragraphs that I have composed above and below simply as starting ideas, as rough unedited raw starting material to work with in any way that you want to. I most sincerely thank you all in advance for considering it in order to get involved. Please know that I'm an amateur at writing and that the various ideas are presented in no specific order in my rush to put this letter together. I've numbered the eleven paragraphs found below for any possible convenience to anyone. (My name, address, and home phone number is found at the end, as well as four links to some pertinent information concerning this issue.)========================
(1) Comcast will naturally gain a lot more Baltimore city customers if public access is funded because young and old people, families, non-profit and religious organizations, and businesses will want their friends, families, organizational members, and customers and potential customers to see the shows that are produced and presented, as well as sponsored. Comcast may not be thinking about or seriously considering this very important factor.
(2) City Counsel members who do not vote to make Comcast pay each and every year for a strong public access presence will steadily have their non-support of the community highlighted, loud and clear, to the community of people who's votes they need at each election period -- as well as to the media. The few thousand dollars of Comcast contributions that any Council members may get in order to back their non-support (or very meager support) could prove to be very costly in the end: as far as votes by citizens are concerned.
(3) A city the size and stature of Baltimore should not be treated in this denigrating, non-caring, and selfish way; especially because of the enormous amount of money that Comcast makes off of its citizens each year -- your constituents! You are the elected folks who can do either the right or the wrong thing for our city.
(4) Public Access TV is a very fair and very respectful UNITING social factor in these few very important ways (among many others): every person, rich or poor, every small or large non-profit organization, every religious organization, every race and ethnic group, every nationality, and so on, are all treated the same concerning everything that has to do with their dealings with public access TV and the people who work within it.
(5) A properly funded public access TV channel, with adequate facilities, staff, training, and equipment (not as our current unfunded public access channel that is without a staff or decent equipment), will offer great benefit to our youth in giving them an ongoing and non-stop creative and constructive outlet and will help reduce crime, among many other positive things for our city, like, just for example: allowing them to showcase their many different talents in sports and entertainment; allowing them to express their views on talk shows that they or others create around every important social, political, educational, and economic subject. Adults and businesses can sponsor and provide rewards of all types to winners in all kinds of contests(sports, educational, entertainment, debate, etc.)
(6) Everyone in our Baltimore community, somehow organized by the media, should brainstorm together and come up with a long sample list of the very many and various kinds of shows that can be produced once we have a real and well funded public access staff and facilities -- and especially for the youth of our city, inclusive of, and adequate to, all of their different age groups. We should also bring this idea up to the City Council members.
(7) With the wonderful "Baltimore Believe" idea in mind, I was inspired to write this after reading the "Planned TV deal raises concern" article in the Maryland section of THE SUN newspaper on September 8th. Why? Because we should all believe in this battle that the public access advocates from Baltimore Grassroots Media are conducting on behalf of all of us, and wholeheartedly support their quest for the proper funding of public access TV because it absolutely includes every citizen and every institution and organization: schools, small and large non-profit groups and charities, religious organizations, businesses, social justice movements, youth and senior citizen organizations, entertainers, artists, poets, actors, writers, and so on. Everyone, no matter what their ideas, reasons, or production formats, would be able to produce video tapes of shows to air on public access TV if they ever wanted to-- once in a while or regularly.
(8) The very crucial and important "Public Access / Comcast City Council hearing" is scheduled for Wednesday, October 13th at City Hall. Everyone should rally to the occasion and, in many ways, let all of Baltimore's government leaders know how we want them to vote on this issue and/or the kind of financial deal that they should make with the Comcast cable TV company in order to strongly support funding public access TV --all-inclusive of the studio spaces and the equipment that everyone would be able to use in making their tapes, along with the necessary training classes that would teach us all how to do everything necessary.
(9) As many citizens and organizations as possible, as well as media people, should attend the rally that is scheduled to be outside of City Hall at 4:00 P.M., an hour before the hearing, in order to make our united presence and voice seen and heard, loud and crystal clear. This rally is organized by BGM, the Baltimore Grassroots Media organization (which my wife, Bonnie Hurwitz, and I are very new volunteers with), whose volunteer members, as well as people and organizations who support what they are fighting for, will be speaking at the hearing.
(10) We should all be strongly united, even those of us who would never actually create a show to put on the air, and "Believe" that an important city like Baltimore should not continue to be without sufficient funds and facilities necessary for providing this very important service and system for all of its citizens and organizations to use and communicate through. We should hope and expect, and even demand, loud and clear, that our leaders will negotiate a deal with Comcast where they have to ante up sufficiently, year in and year out, since they make big money from our citizens every year.
(11) Finally: Thanks for reading and absorbing it all. I did my humble best (four informative links are found below). But hopefully others, as well as those who are much more knowledgeable than me concerning this whole public access subject, and who know how to skillfully deal with politicians, as well as being more skillful in writing and presenting ideas, will add many more ideas and subjects for everyone to both consider and draw from, to use as ammunition to express ourselves when we get involved in whatever ways each of us do.
Most sincerely,
John DeSantis
1113 Scotts Hill Drive
Baltimore, MD 21208
(410) 484-1987
-------City’s Proposed Cable Contract Lacks Public Access TV Provisions:http://baltimorechronicle.com/090904BradCarlton.shtml
Baltimore Grassroots Media:http://www.baltimoregrassrootsmedia.org
Baltimore Public Access Media News Wire: http://baltimorepublicaccessnewswire.blogspot.com
Baltimore Public Access Television Channel 5 Volunteer Website:http://www.bpatv.org/bcpa_tv.html
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