Optimistic About Access TV in Medford
– Joseph Viglione
At the City Council meeting of January 18, 2011 I submitted a public record’s request to the Keeper of the Records at City Hall. The request to Edward P. Finn centered on the report by Judge Jackson-Thompson and the audit by Melanson Heath & Co, PC. This is an excellent strategy for the City Council to consider when it comes to obtaining information from the Mayor’s office on all sorts of topics, be it handicap access for the Field of Dreams, why there was a no-bid contract offered to Waste Management, why Comcast is the sole cable provider when surrounding communities have choices and other topics that are helpful to the residents of this great city.
There were many key points in my speech that I wanted to get across to the residents – fairness, open access in an election season and how the sister stations in surrounding communities have the respect and admiration that the Medford station has failed to achieve. We need to have some Medford pride and a community media center is the arena where many projects for the benefit of this city can be spearheaded. the Chevalier Theater, the Royall House, the Medford Historical Society, the Chamber of Commerce, the Human Rights Commission, so many aspects of Medford life improve with an open and transparent access television station.
Taking the high road isn’t easy when a station that claims it embraces the First Amendment would rather tear down the messenger rather than work towards a spirit of cooperation. The Mayor needs to take a hard look at what transpired in 2009 and 2010 – after the evaluation and audit – and make a judgment on the situation. Councilor Robert Penta feels – justifiably – that if the Mayor spent over twenty-thousand dollars to evaluate the station and audit the books, with one of the most respected jurists not only in the Commonwealth…but in the history of the Commonwealth…then the report compiled by that respected jurist should have great weight. Ignoring the report of Judge Jackson-Thompson – not addressing it – is illogical and disrespectful to the constituents.
It’s an election year. Many in the community are fully aware of the problem, allegations of whisper campaigns initiated by the access station and more negative activities that aren’t helpful in the facilitation of access TV programming.
The TV station failed to show up at the Judge’s evaluation hearings of October 29, 2008 and November 15, 2008. They should not be rewarded for hiding their collective heads in the sand. The TV 3 president, Frank Pilleri, and its operations manager, Daniel Sarno, showed up at City Hall to complain about the resident filing a public record’s request. Didn’t they say they embraced the “First Amendment”? To constantly follow an access TV activist around, one respected in multiple communities – and a member at four stations – is not logical. How does the station fixating and obsessing on one producer help access in Medford?
I asked the City Council to compare TV 3 Medford to surrounding communities. To see how SCAT in Somerville, Arlington Studio, WinCAM, StonehamTV, CCTV Cambridge, WCAT Winthrop, WCAT Wakefield, MATV Malden – see how there are no serious criticisms of those stations – and how those media centers improve life in their respective cities and towns.
It was disappointing, but certainly not surprising, to find the TV 3 President and the operations manager shooting verbal arrows at me. Once again it was a great opportunity for Mr. Sarno and Mr. Pilleri to address our concerns about the relentless advertising of a pastry shop and two restaurants, the repeats of old programming and imported programming, and the fact that the majority of the shows on TV 3 are produced by the Board of directors, station manager or their friends.
They didn’t touch those questions. They called me “delusional” (it appears to be their favorite word), all but came out and called Judge Jackson-Thompson a liar and failed to, once again, tell our community why there were no debates for the 2009 elections. The “best defense is a good offense” approach by Mr. Pilleri has worn thin. The community is not impressed and we respectfully request Mr. Pilleri take a good, hard look in his mirror and realize that by resigning he would make the best decision for access TV in Medford than all his previous decisions combined. And for himself. It’s time Frank had a vacation from TV 3. He could enjoy the time off and the community would have an opportunity to prove to Frank if he was the better president. Right now we have nothing to compare his work to and with nothing to compare it to the fact lingers that the current Board of directors is lacking in almost every aspect.
It’s 2011, an election year. It’s time to open the airwaves of TV 3.
Joe Viglione is a veteran of access TV dating back to 1979. He was awarded “Producer Of The Year” for 2010 in the town of Winchester. His program, Visual Radio, airs in New York City and in New England on multiple cable systems. On Tuesday, January 18, 2010, Mr. Viglione spoke to the City Council of Medford in regards to the 2011 election, fairness and open access.
The author of this piece asks us to compare TV3 Medford to surrounding access stations as to “how those media centers improve life in their respective cities and towns” but neglects to mention MCC’s winning of the “Making a Difference” award our station won under Dawn Natalia’s leadership. This was a national award which TV3 Medford won over all other Public access stations in the country; not just in the surrounding communities and is given to the station that most positively improves life for their community. This was accomplshed during the very same period the retired judge was evaluating us for without fact checking on the “charges” brought against us (like not discovering that the City held NO parade for which we were criticized for not showing). It was also the same period for which our station won a Best in the Nation award for our funding level range); so while the city was paying $5,000 plus to evaluate TV3 Medford, The Alliance for Community Media (a national organization), a “jury of our peers”, was also evaluating us and found us to be top-notch. Whose evaluation does the reader find to be more credible?
I stand by my statement. The ACM is not a Massachusetts entity. The surrounding stations are thriving while Medford is not. The constant use of an old award from two years ago is a clear attempt not to answer the question – how does MCC TV 3 help Medford residents? Comparing the station to Somerville, Winchester, Malden, Arlington etc. is very fair, because this is the real world. Our world. The ACM is something Comcast subscribers have little or no knowledge about or interest in.
It should be mentioned that Mr. Deluca is a long-time member of the Board of Directors of TV 3. The Alliance For Community Media is now well aware of the problems in Medford, and it should be noted that the ACM doesn’t pay the Medford franchise fee, Medford residents do. Mr. Deluca is also aware that the “Making a Difference” award was in a category that – allegedly – few TV stations choose to apply for. Slick editing by Ms. Natalia does not a good TV station make, though it could impress judges. The evaluation this reader finds more credible is the highly respected Judge Jackson-Thompson who appeared at City Hall and did her work. The ACM was not aware of the litany of complaints and, perhaps most telling, these awards cost money. A station has to pay up to $575.00 to join the ACM. That’s Comcast subscriber monies. It is in the ACM’s best interest to “award” a station for that close to six hundred dollars. It’s a business relationship and they have to keep those businesses happy. It is far different from a local producer generating over 100 hours of programming and obtaining an award on merit. A local producer award is also more valuable when one realizes that along with that hard work and honest effort some individuals send out “anonymous” e mails to slam a volunteer in another city or fling the mud just to hurt access television, not help it.
Mr. Deluca’s obligation to this community, as a Board member of MCC, is to facilitate programming. Medford residents are interested in the Green Line, not an ACM award. Medford residents are interested in the lives of cats and dogs at Kitty Connection, not the ACM, which is not their world. Mr. Deluca has an obligation to compare the vibrant memberships, the vibrant educational tools at sister stations, and note the deficiency here. Does the ACM award help teach Medford residents access TV? They can only blame this messenger for their lack of membership for so long before people look at the years where I produced at TV 3 – 1995-2002, and see that there were no classes then, no membership drives then, no members able to use the TV 3 van if they weren’t on the Board of Directors. So when residents look at the lack of training at TV 3 over the past 25 years, and compare it to the training at other stations, we get a very clear picture that Mr. Deluca wants awards while the residents want proper training, proper equipment, proper access TV, and results, not excuses. All due respect to Art, but his essay above is another excuse designed not to answer important questions asked by people funding “his” TV station.
1)My obligation as a board member is NOT “to facilitate programming” as is stated above, but rather to see that the corporation is able to function and provide it’s MEMBERS with the ability to do so should they so choose. Tv3 should be thought of more along the lines of Knox Photo, who would develop the pictures their customers took. TV3 is here for individuals to learn how to use the equipment, then use that equipment to make whatever program they choose to make. The subscriber has no more right to say what is made or not made by our members than they have to say how the City Council spends their paycheck (what clothes they buy, where they go on vacation etc) – paying money to fund the station does NOT give them the right to dictate what the station does. Just as the worker who pays taxes to social security has no right to say how the person who receives SSI spends the money received from SSI.
2)MCC has a legally binding contract with the City of Medford. Our obligation is to fulfill that contract. It is up to the issuing authority to determine if that contract is being met. The time for the public to comment on this is during the renewal period. A public meeting is then scheduled by the City to discuss ALL aspects of the cable contract, Comcast, TV3, TV15, TV16 etc. As with all government processes, only comments made during that time period will be taken into consideration by the issuing authority. Comments made outside of that period are not officially considered. People should watch for this meeting and comment at that time if they actually want to be heard & make a difference; be a part of the process.
3) The “TV3 van” as it has been called is not, was not and has never been the property of MCC/TV3. It belongs to the City of Medford and was only leased by TV3. When the Canal St studio closed down, we returned the van to it’s legal owners (in operating order, by the way), the City of Medford. What they did with it is their business, not ours. We chose not to aquire another van due to several factors:
A) parking it would be a costly problem
B) insurance rates had increased greatly
C) The new portable equipment we bought for the station will do virtually the same thing and can easily fit in a member’s car. There simply was no longer any need to deal with a bulky van – technology had rendered it obsolete.
4) As for the ACM award, the other cities you mentioned ALSO submitted entries for the very same award that year. TV3 Medford’s entry won out over them. It was for the work done by the High School students at TV3. If Allison Goldsberry had been working for the High School then, I’m sure it would have been made by TV15 and the award won by them. Alas, TV15 was not up & running as such at that time. But obviously someone in the City saw this potential in our own “Children of Medford”, added Allsion to the staff and now TV15 is doing a fine job.
5) As for The City’s Evaluation report, the retired judge was NOT hired to investigate TV3, merely to write a report based on the information supplied to her. She was not paid to evaluate that information for accuracy, nor did she do so; rather she gave her opinion based on a hypothetical; to pit it into college classroom terms . This was not a courtroom – no one was sworn in under the penalty of perjury; none of it had any legally binding status. The judge merely gathered what was presented to her and then reported on what options were open to the Mayor to act on them, should he believe them to be true accounts (obviously he did not think there was enough “evidence” to act). At no time did she ever comment on the validity of the statements. She was contracted to provide a fixed number of hours to work on this; those hours did not include time for “fact checking”. The total number of people chiming in on TV3 (whether for, against, or neutral) were about 1/10th of one percent of the City’s population. So 99.9% of the people did not care about the issue enough to even bother to comment on it. The total active membership of any public access station (I say “active” membership because many public access channels refer to individuals who have not renewed their membership as still being members – TV3 Medford does not) is now, has been, and always will be an underwhelming minority of the population.
6) and excuse me, but you just stated that the ACM is not aware that the awards cost money; using the membership fee as your example. What? The ACM is not aware that they charge for membership? The ACM was not aware of the “litany of complaints” at that time, because you had not yet MADE that “litany” to them until after we won the award. They found those complaints credible until they learned you had been banned from TV3 (something you neglected to mention in your complaints). Once they learned of this, they no longer gave these complaints any credence; agreeing that you had not been treated unfairly or improperly. If you want the people of this fine website to know the truth; you had better start telling it; otherwise I will just have to make another episode of “Setting Things Straight” to show the proof. It will include the actual documents from the courts, your own signed agreement to stop your lies to this City about MCC and its employees, members etc.
Mr. Deluca, once again, is acting in a defensive posture rather than telling the community what TV 3 offers. He has a number of excuses that wander and are unfocused.
1)The question was asked, how many members took courses over the past 25 years, how many graduated (got certified) and how much programming was produced. Please answer the question.
2)Yes, a legally binding contract. The Judge’s Recommendations found one side not living up to its agreement. She branded it “MCC Access”, the station ridiculed the judge.
3)I have detailed knowledge of the TV 3 van as Frank Pilleri wanted me to obtain a new van for the station in 2002. The Van was primarily used by the Board and not by members. A potential station manager was not hired when he said the van would be for the members, NOT the board.
4)I stand by my comments on the ACM award. It doesn’t matter to the ratepayers who fund the station. The programming is not what this community needs.
5)The Judge indeed investigated the minutes of the meetings, the spending of monies, just as the Rumley report and the audit did. TV 3 failed all three reports. The Mayor can pull the plug at any time because he has these reports in hand.
6)The ACM fully understands how TV 3 censors and bans people.
Mr. Deluca spends his life defending the conduct of the station rather than providing Medford residents with a vibrant, productive community media center.
The proof is in the pudding. Turn on TV 3 and find programs developed by the Board of Directors or imported programming. The relevance to Medford life is highly questionable.