International community media conference rolls into Monterey.

Wayne’s World it’s not. July 6 through July 9, the Alliance for Community Media is hosting an international conference and trade show for producers of Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) access television—the broadcast medium once commonly referred to as simply cable access television.

Highlights of this year’s conference, expected to draw nearly 500 attendees to the Monterey Marriott Hotel, include the Hometown Video Festival and a talk by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.

Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a daily, independent news program that airs on more than 300 stations in North America. Her talk begins at 7:30pm on July 7 in the Monterey Conference Center. At the event, Goodman will also sign copies of her book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, co-written with her brother David Goodman, which was chosen by independent bookstores as the number one political title of the 2004 election season.

The Hometown Video Festival’s awards ceremony will be held July 8 at 6pm in the Conference Center. The festival promotes community media and local cable programs that are first distributed on PEG access cable television channels. The Osio Theaters will screen selected award winners throughout the course of the conference.

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Fred Coen, the chair of the conference’s local planning committee, says organizers chose Monterey because of the city’s model approach to PEG television.

“We’re very pleased to be hosting it,” says Coen, who is also the vice chair of Access Monterey Peninsula. “Other than just being a great destination for a conference, [the conference organizers] were interested in taking a look at some of the things we’re doing with PEG access as a city. We were one of the first communities to leverage an institutional network for these purposes.”

Monterey’s local PEG television is administered by Access Monterey Peninsula (AMP), a nonprofit organization funded by local communities including the city of Monterey, the city of Marina, and the county of Monterey to provide television broadcast and production services to public, educational and government organizations.

In general, PEG television access provides channels on the cable network for public, education, and government programming. The cable company provides the channels at no cost to compensate for access to public space upon which to run cable throughout the community. In other words, PEG access television is what we as a community get in exchange for letting the cable companies use our space.

“It’s a unique medium for independent producers to show their work,” says Peri Basseri, a local video producer who has produced programming for PEG channels. “Typical television media is more advertiser driven and community television is an opportunity for people to get their work for people to see. It’s like nothing else that exists. And community media centers are much more than just television now—they’re also Web, streaming media, on-demand…”

The best of this PEG access programming will be featured during the Hometown Video Festival.

“The Video Festival has been a tradition with the Alliance for many, many years,” Coen says. “But this is the first time we’ve ever been able to show the award-winning programs concurrently with the festival.”

Local cable’s largest video festival, the Hometown awards honor winners in 45 different categories with titles such as “Cultural and International Perspectives,” “Democracy in Action,” “Empowerment,” and “Making A Difference,” as well as more standard categories such as “Children’s Programs,” “Entertainment Talk Show,” “Original Teleplay,” and “Sports Entertainment.”

“Local television channels can’t do everything and be everywhere,” says Basseri, who also serves as the Hometown Video Festival’s Monterey coordinator. “They show a lot of pre-produced, syndicated television shows. Community television is about programming that affects you in your community.”

For more information and a full conference schedule visit the Alliance for Community Media Web site at www.alliancecm.org.