Even though public access will be your most viable avenue, you may find limited opportunities in government and educational access.

Government access is just that--information and programming concerning civic affairs. Most of the content deals with local government meetings. And people are tuning in.

"A 1992 survey in our area indicated that 30 percent of local cable subscribers were watching government access television," says Hap Haasch, Cable Administrator for the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan. "This stuff is very important to our viewers. We don't dare screw up our coverage of city council meetings or school board meetings. If we do, the phone starts ringing off the hook."

Educational access is used by those organizations wishing to provide access of a strictly educational nature. You will find many community colleges and continuing education programs making use of this kind of access. Educational access stations often air telecourses as part of continuing education programs. Some public schools produce shows that benefit high-school students as well.

Opportunities for you to produce in these two arenas are not as common for one important reason. Many government and education stations are local origination channels. That means that those who oversee these channels also decide what gets put on the air. They are also responsible for much of the production, as well. As such, they will more than likely have an in-house production staff.

"The educational community wouldn't participate unless they could be assured of a certain level of production quality," says Ann Flynn, Executive Director of the Tampa Educational Cable Consortium, better known as the Education Channel, in Tampa, Florida. "We allow volunteers to produce and occasionally write scripts. But the actual shooting and editing falls to our paid staff."

Flynn adds that the Education Channel is not typical of all educational access centers throughout the country. "We strive to be a PBS clone," she says. That means they go beyond the telecourses and air a wide variety of educational programs.

More advanced videomakers can take advantage of this situation, however. "We work with five or six contract producers who we pay to develop programs for our center," Flynn said. "I would say that those kinds of opportunities are available to all video producers."

The same goes for government access. "The real inroad to broadcasting on government access is the contract work," Haasch says.

The sky's the limit when you decide what kind of a show to produce. A quick glance at a monthly program schedule for MATA reveals sports talk shows, live religious call-in shows, job hunting forums, and senior citizen programming, just to name a few.

"We have a couple of producers who put on a really wild weekly show," Toering says. "They ask viewers to call in and report any news they know about. When the caller is through, they try to guess the caller's age. That's the extent of it."

Whatever you decide to produce, remember the ethical responsibilities that come with such freedom of expression. Most access centers will not censor any programming as long as it doesn't violate the law. But don't think that you can stir up a hornet's nest of controversy and then hide behind the shield of the access center. They tend to refer complaints about programming to the producers responsible. In other words, you will take the heat.

Public access may not be half-time-at-the-Super Bowl television, but it is television. And as such, it has the power to influence people. That power is available to you, whoever you may be. If you understand that power and use it responsibly, public access television may just prove to be the production opportunity of your dreams.