CHANGING CHANNELS: TAKING CHANNEL 54 TO THE NEXT LEVEL
For eight years now Akaku has been the only Public Access station in the nation that allowed viewers to program a community television channel. The way it worked is that viewers could access our current archive of programs via our website and select an individual program to run on Experimental TV Channel 54 during any open time slot up to a week in advance. This experiment in community TV was hugely successful as hundreds if not thousands of people took advantage of the opportunity over the years.
In the last year or so, however, we have seen a small group of individuals start to dominate programming on Channel 54 by "gaming the system". What this means is that a few producers have figured out ways to play their own programs over and over again taking up most of the available slots for viewer requests. This has not helped the diversity of our programming nor has it served our original goal of allowing everyone to playback a program they would like to see by making an appointment with their television set.
In addition we have seen a sea change in the way people use and access video. Video On Demand is available on the Internet via computer and many sites exist for people to post and share their video. People are now able to view almost anything they want when they want on their own computer at home. This begs the question as to why we would need to keep a channel in place that forces every cable subscriber to watch a program selected by what has become a small group of self-interested individuals.
These two factors - channel abuse by a few and changes in video technology have prompted Akaku to re-evaluate how we program this channel. Consequently, we are taking steps to re-invent a new identity for the channel through innovations that will take community media on Maui to a new and exciting level.
We have suspended Video By Request on Channel 54 for the time being. We have not ruled out bringing some version of Video By Request back, but we are exploring ways to make most, if not all content available to view online in the privacy of your own home.
We are looking at some dynamic changes to the channel which may involve replays of popular programs you can vote for; interactive live webcams in various Maui Nui locations; cablecasts of live and almost live international, national, state and local events; new hyper local content and a daily local news program featuring citizen correspondents with stories submitted by people like you.
During this transition to the new Channel 54, we will continue to bring you "Democracy Now" and other special programs whenever we receive sufficient demand from you to do so. We will be giving you more live programming, more relevant programming, more on-air promotion and PSA's, encore presentations and we will program more up to date and timely submissions.
Finally, we want to hear from you because after all these are your channels. Please feel free to use this website or email us to tell us what you think.
