Proposal for Daily Local News and Information Programming in and about each Local Franchise Area
Good afternoon. My name is Adam Clayton Powell, III, and I am presenting this testimony as a Visiting Professor at the USC Annenberg School and as an outgrowth of my work on the Annenberg School's Local News Initiative, which began in 2002. My background in news and technology is set forth in the attached biography.
The purpose of my testimony is to propose that the city require each local cable franchise area to arrange for the production of a daily local news, information and community service television program.
One possible arrangement for such a program service is presented below but we have no doubt that other arrangements could be formulated by the city, the companies, and various local partners.
First, a word of context: At the Annenberg School, we have been examining local news and public service and thinking about ways to improve it. Some of our studies have examined television coverage of politics and government which, as the members of this committee know well, is generally given very short shrift. In fact, up until the 2003 recall campaign, coverage of state and local political campaigns, which offers one useful measurement of localism, had been declining dramatically. If the members wish, we would be pleased to present studies that document that decline in detail.
Similarly, it seems that news coverage by mainstream media in California have tended to make people feel less connected and more alienated from their communities. That is one finding of a multi-year, in depth study of eight local communities, identified by region and ethnicity, which we call the Metamorphosis Project. By contrast, that study has found that community news outlets tend to make people in Los Angeles feel more involved and more connected and to increase their sense of belonging. Again, we can supply those studies to the committee if you would like to see them.
Based on those studies, the Annenberg School decided in 2002 to create what it called a Local News Initiative or LNI. Our goal was to help identify and create new forms of local news that would help people become more knowledgeable about, more connected to, and more involved with their communities.
As a first step, the school asked me to spend a year examining best and innovative practices in the United States and around the world. My study, which covers broadcast television, radio, cable and broadband technologies, is now available in draft form.
As I was developing my study, it became increasingly clear that the most exciting and important developments around the world are at the very, very local level, what we now call micro local news, information and public affairs. Especially in large cities such as Los Angeles, there is no way for television stations to cover the many communities where people live in any sustained way.
With a regional audience of well over ten million television viewers over the age of 12, a station in Los Angeles naturally cannot spend too much time on the city of Los Angeles, which accounts for fewer than four million people, much less on a neighborhood that is a small fraction of the city. Yet we found that people are most interested in news about their own neighborhood and are most interested in becoming involved at that level
Importantly, we also found that there are places in the world where micro local communities are being covered well; at very little cost; and with substantial audiences.
With that background, my colleagues and I at the Annenberg School began to think about what might be done in Los Angeles. At the moment, we think that cable offers the most exciting platform for micro local news, information and public affairs. Moreover, we think a model could be developed that would be enormously useful for the people of each part of this city; bringing greater civic engagement for local schools, parks, cultural institutions, public safety and health clinics.
As an added bonus, a micro local news and information program could also serve the economic interest of cable operators by increasing penetration, by decreasing the expensive churn of customers disconnecting and reconnecting to cable service, and by providing new reasons for customers to use broadband.
For an illustration, we looked at the area where USC is located, the region known to franchise officials as Area K. To make this presentation clearer, a map of Area K is appended. The borders are not very even, but as you will see, it runs from I 10 at the North to Watts at the South, and from Baldwin Hills and Culver City on the East to the Harbor Freeway on the west.
Much of the area is known as South Los Angeles, which has a population of 260,000, according to the 2000 census. Watts has another 35,000. So altogether Area K has a population of approximately 300,000 people and perhaps many more. To put thaty in perspective, Area K has the same population as the city of Tampa, Florida, which is served by eight television stations, 91 radio stations and 24-hour local cable news channels in English and Spanish.
This is not entirely comparable, because Tampa is the hub of a regional television market. But it is undeniable that no Los Angeles TV station or cable channel covers the news of Area K every day as intensively as any one of those eight television stations covers the city of Tampa.
To see what kinds of stories might be covered by an Area K local news outlet, last summer we conducted a community ascertainment project with the terrific assistance of a team of five USC student interns. In the fall, more Annenberg students went into the field with video cameras to document some of the issues identified over the summer. Some of those students are with us today.
With that background, we would like to suggest that the City Council explore ways of creating a micro local news and information initiative in each franchise district. This could be done by creating or partnering with a local non-profit institution that would use some or all of the resources and some or all of the channel space now set aside for local PEG channels.
Such a model might take any one of several forms. It could be funded by the cable company, a local partner, revenues from public service advertising, foundation grants, subscriber contributions or some combination of these funding sources. But in any of its forms it would serve the people and the communities of the city and create a new model that would be studied and emulated around the world.
If the city decides that it wants to explore this option, my colleagues and I would be more than delighted to work with the city and with cable operators to design a viable plan to take advantage of this exciting opportunity.
Thank you.