The new apartment I moved into has cable, and I’m a changed man. And although I was excited about ESPN, and basically any channel that expands my viewing options beyond Law and Order and CSI reruns, I’ve found that absolutely nothing beats channel 15—our local community access television. Peep the line-up. In the few hours I had it on while moving furniture, I watched sermons on three different religions in three different languages, two shows on paranormal activity, a kids mariachi group dance in the back of a parking lot, and one dude yell at his camera crew for a half our straight. It was the best. The CivicCenter channel (which airs city council meetings and things) is cool, and lets you get a glimpse into the political machinery at City Hall, but if you want a ground up view of San Jose, its diverse interests, beliefs, and directions, channel 15 is your looking glass.

In an era where one can communicate to the world—blogs, youtube, podcasts—there is something to be said about the local communicator. Media sharing is at its finest when it can initiate a conversation, a back and forth, but in certain mediums, like community access television, it can actually create communities by pronouncing an identity in the public space that otherwise did not exist. That is essentially what community access television has done by allowing anybody who has any inkling to share themselves with their local city to do so for 30 minutes a week. In my city of San Jose, on Channel 15, known as CreaTV, community members get to assume a public identity that they decide on, rather then what is determined by the rest of society’s expectations of them, their station in life, or even what the rest of the planet calls “normal.”

On my channel, when I watch the square dance king, the weed queen, the gospel rapper, the psychic healer, I often wonder what they are like off camera. Are any of these larger than life characters the guy dropping off the mail (I know a mailman that did a show on labor rights), the woman sitting at the bus stop, the groups of kids skating in front of city hall? Do their neighbors, co-workers know of their community access stardom? Nobody is getting paid to do these shows, so their commitment is something deeper, more personally important, and perhaps even vital in this media driven world.

My favorite is when shows have the affect of being closed-circuit. You get to be a fly on the wall to witness the conversations that occur in the unseen city—the spiritual healers, philosophers, political thinkers, and historians, that walk among us daily. Those shows are the meeting places for the like-minded, where they can talk about the urgent issues for them, and speak about it in their own terms. I saw a show on a comic books convention a while back. I didn’t really understand the terms, didn’t know the heavyweights that were interviewed, but I just dug the passion. It’s when they act like no one else but their own insular community is watching that public access feels just right.

Although I’m a new channel 15 viewer, I got introduced to public access from my friend Ed seven years ago. At the time, he was temp assembly worker, a couple years out of high school, and while he looked like any other early twenty-something, he, in his heart and mind, was a big time TV producer. He just didn’t actually produce a television show, but that didn’t stop him from drawing up comedy skits, or taking about the local music groups he thought the rest of the city should know about. Soon enough, Ed got his shot. He said that he was on his couch watching the community access channel, when a show came on which had a scene where the camera was fixed on a toilet bowl, and was airing excrement being flushed. Transfixed for a moment, he told me that was a catalysing moment. He said, “I realized that if I was literally watching shit on TV, why can’t I make a show?” He signed up, waited about a year, got his slot, and called the show “Open-World,” which is perfect.

Ed was in special education classes all through his school career. The message he, and his mother, got from most of his teachers and administrators during parent teacher conferences was that no one should expect much out of him. I remember him telling me that he spent along of class time watching movies like the Little Mermaid and smoking weed. The world didn’t see or expect much out of him, but inside, he was plotting, planning, and refusing to settle into the limited life that was laid before him.

His show, which is still on (airs on Thursdays at 11:30pm), is crazy. The ad for it says, “skits, music, news, and anything else we can fit in half an hour.” And he’s not playing—the show anthem is an old Vanilla Ice song, Ed often times wears masks of cartoon characters like He-man or Skelator when introducing segments or conducting interviews, and it is the only place on tv where you’ll a local rally be spliced with a Ninja Turtle segment. (In full disclosure, I was on the first Open-World show, where I was a cape wearing, sword carrying ghost of Christmas past, and got stabbed to death in a dual with the ghost of Christmas future. My promising acting career ended shortly after.)

But like any of the shows of channel 15, Open-World, as a production, is a story unto itself. When creating a cast, my friend, having the odd curse and blessing of being so unique he just didn’t make sense to authority figures, gathering a group of the least likely of tv stars. He composed a crew that was comprised mainly with former special ed classmates, and random people he met late night in downtown. What was amazing was how dear they held the show, and their new identity as tv producers. Indeed, most of the voice mail messages changed from just their name, to their name “of Open-World TV.” It had become their new identity, and what made them different is what made them into stars. And Open-World, like CreaTV doesn’t covet fame, it shares it. I remember a couple years back the crew made flyers they would pass around downtown with the message, “Cause you might you someone that’s on it.” Can the Saturday Night Live make such a claim? MTV Cribs? No, that is magic of the local, the irreplaceable value of proximity. And the chances of getting to know even more local celebrities is expanding, as CreaTV is opening more slots for burgeoning producers.

I’m still getting into all the Youtube, Facebook, tell the whole world type media that is becoming available and changing the communications landscape, but I really hope community access television survives and persists. It lets me know who’s really in my city, and who they really want to be known as. And for something free, that is an invaluable gift. – Raj Jayadev