Connecting Communities

Chicago: Engaging the Community

• CAN TV
• Street Level Youth Media
• Network Chicago
• Project Millennium

Big cities, rich in resources and cultural diversity, promise exciting opportunities for reinventing public media, but they also present the biggest challenges . Turf wars are more pronounced . Not-for-profit institutions are in direct competition for the same pots of money; partnership with other institutions often takes second place to extending the brand of your own institution; public broadcasters operate on a larger scale, and are often more involved in national, and even international, p roduction than they are in local programming.

Chicago (Carl Sandburg’s “city of the big shoulders”) is exceptional, as it is in most things. Its two public television stations have long-standing commitments to (respectively) formal education and local programming . Its cultural institutions – the Chicago Public Library, the A rt Institute, the Field Museum, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , the Ravinia Festival , the Steppenwo lf Theater Company, the Joffrey Ballet and the Lyric Opera – are among the most innovative in the country. Its educational institutions include some of the greatest intellectual property resources in the world (Northwestern University and the University of Chicago are obvious examples).

It also demonstrates,of course, most of the downside of urban America – an underserved poor, unequal educational opportunities , social services stretched to their limit. The list could be greatly extended,and it is,nightly, on the local news programs – a vivid reminder that public media need to extend their reach beyond the well-heeled and the technological “haves.” Chicago, as it happens,is a prime illustration of how well this may be done.

Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV) produces local programming for Chicago’s five public access cable channels. Equally important, it provides the community with the tools to produce programming for itself. Created as part of the cable franchise agreements between the city and local cable operators in 1984, it provides affordable, effective and easy-to-use means of outreach for nonprofit organizations. In the process, it preserves locally-focused public space in the increasingly crowded media landscape. Barbara Popovic, Chicago Access Corporation’s president, says the network seeks “to counter the notion that media are just about commercialism and entertainment.” More than 2,500 organizations have used CAN TV’s nonprofit services to date .

The Hotline 21 studio is one of CAN TV’s services. It gives nonprofit organizations a simple format for producing their own programs, combining the interactive features of a call-in hotline with the reach of live television. Groups taking advantage of the Hotline studio have addressed issues ranging from small business development to domestic abuse and AIDS prevention. “It is our role to make it as easy as possible for groups to connect with the public,” says Popovic.

Teen Express was one of CAN TV’s Community Partners projects. It was designed to give area teens a chance to show off their neighborhoods by using new technologies. Born out of a partnership between CAN TV and an artists’ collective based in Chicago’s near-Southwest Side Pilsen neighborhood, the program attempted to integrate the arts into Pilsen’s community life.

Kids participating in Teen Express depicted their communities through a print magazine, as well as a video program cablecast on CAN TV. Using CAN TV’s lightweight Hi-8 cameras and audio equipment, the teens documented different types of artistic expression in the community.

Street Level Youth Media is one of CAN TV’s satisfied partners . A nonprofit organization, it seeks to put the latest communications technology into the hands of urban youth . Using equipment provided by CAN TV, the group produces a quarterly 30-minute interactive television program called LifeWire, which airs on a local public access channel. Public access “ a l l ows us to make what we want,” says To ny Strait, Administrative Director of Street Level Youth Media. He admits that, because there are no restrictions on content, not all public access programs are great . But because of CAN TV, a lot of groups that wouldn’t otherwise get a chance, h ave been able to p roduce and distribute their material.” In addition to video production training, Street Level also provides neighborhood youth with Internet access and training. Each year, more than a thousand kids are involved in Street Level ’s programs, which include partnerships with organizations ranging from the Chicago Park District to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Historical Society.

Chicago’s public broadcasting stations are strong, well established, and very focused. WYCC (TV Channel 20) is licensed to the city’s community colleges. As long ago as the 1950s, it was the first college system in the U.S. to offer credit courses through television. Today, with a weekly audience of 1.5 million, they have more than 10,000 students registered to take their courses, with WYCC programming as the main resource. Window to the World Communications, on the other hand, is a community station comprising WTTW Television (Channel 11) and WFMT Radio, and has long been a major player, both in Chicago and nationally. What distinguishes it in public broadcasting is its local programming.

Network Chicago is WTTW’s statement of intent for the digital age – an enormously ambitious project focused on programming from and about Chicago. Initially, it aims to provide WTTW with three hours of local programming each night, but its longer-term objective is to build a network of local partnerships and collaborations that will enable it to program multiple channels for digital broadcasting by 2003,or whenever the digital frequencies “kick in” with a worthwhile population of viewers.

Such a network has to be multi-platform, but WTTW’s perception is that no amount of different platforms will be much use unless they are underpinned by solid video programming. As broadband digital programming advances, Network Chicago will doubtless become increasingly multimedia-oriented,but it makes sense that the first emphasis should be on providing additional video programming for WTTW’s analog channel, and that as much as possible of that programming should explore the potential of new partnerships within the Chicago community.

WTTW is building on a corpus of existing programs. Most important is a nightly program, Chicago Tonight, that goes out at 7 p.m. and again at 10 p.m. The 30-minute program will shortly be extended to one hour. There are also a number of weekly or occasional series – Wild Chicago, Artbeat Chicago, Chicago Matters, and WTTW Presents. Some of the new partnerships are being generated by these programs. WTTW Presents, for example, offers genuine collaboration to local performing arts companies. The Hubbard Street Dance Company paid its own talent costs for a one-hour show;WTTW paid all the television production costs. WTTW got a fine show and almost 500,000 viewers from two transmissions. Hubbard Street sold out its annual subscriptions. WFMT’s expertise in classical music and the fine arts is also useful: it has long-term relationships with institutions as important as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera.

In addition to its television programming, Network Chicago will have other elements – two- or three-minute radio inserts on WFMT; Internet sites linked to its main areas of cove r a g e ; s p e c i a l ly staged events related to its programming (generally staged in conjunction with content partners); an advertiser-supported free weekly newspaper; and periodic supplements (maybe, eventually, a daily page) in one of Chicago’s principal newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times.

The crux of Network Chicago is much like Connecticut’s Mapping the Assets program – an extended series of one-on-one meetings with potential alliance partners from all parts of Chicago life, public and private, commercial and non-commercial. Cultural institutions (like the WTTW Presents collaborators) have an obvious motivation. Academic institutions are likely to be interested since their areas of expertise are complementary and they generally compete for resources in different arenas (Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, for instance, might provide valuable resources and input to public affairs programming, while gaining useful experience for its students and teachers). But the real success of these meetings will be gauged by the ability of Network Chicago to bring on board partners from the business, commercial, and government sectors of the community, where funded (as opposed to unfunded) partnership is most often to be found. What can they contribute to Network Chicago? And what can Network Chicago contribute to them? There have to be mutual advantages, and the budding relationship with the Chicago Sun-Times seems to indicate that there will be.

Network Chicago is clearly being developed on a very businesslike basis – much more businesslike than anything normally associated with public broadcasting. It may well turn out that that is the “big city way.” Certainly, it is a model that other large urban communities need to be aware of. It is notable for its complete dedication to local issues, for its recognition that it has to exist in a commercial milieu,and for its determination to embrace as many as possible of the diverse interests and communities that make up Chicago. What is unclear, at this early stage, is whether it will be able to include the extensive nonprofit interests represented by organizations like CAN TV – or whether they will have to continue to go their own independent way.

There are, of course, many other organizations in Chicago capable of being a hub, or catalyst, for community partnerships. The Field Museum of Natural History has one of the most ambitious partnering schemes of any institution in America. It is also more finely tuned to the uses of the new technologies than most. In 1998-99 it put together an alliance of 180 cultural institutions in its Project Millennium. Together, they presented exhibits, festivals, film series, broadcast programs, lectures, and children’s events in a year-long exploration of Chicago’s past,present and future. Street Level Youth Media, the storefront project that offers training and access to video production facilities and the Internet,was one contributor. So were the public broadcasters. And so were most of Chicago’s major institutions,and an impressive number of its commercial businesses as well – all encamped beneath the same umbrella, because they perceived it as contributing to the community in which they have their existence.

John McCarter, Director of the Field Museum,saw Project Millennium as a way to surmount parochial interests, and to engage diverse institutions in celebrating Chicago and its multi-faceted cultural resources. “One of the earliest goals of the project was to foster a better way for community cultural organizations to work together,” says Marion King,Communications Director for Project Millennium. Many organizations were eager to be part of the project, she explains, because of the “marketing muscle” the collaboration provided. Many smaller organizations, in particular, got publicity they never could have afforded on their own.

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Last updated: 14 July2000 rta
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