Thank you.  Good evening everybody.

My name is Nicholas Johnson.  As you can see, I am an aging, former FCC Commissioner, selected for this occasion because of my early commitment to community access cable television in general, and Austin in particular, back in the 1960s.

My ties to Austin go back even further.  It was almost 50 years ago that my wife and I first came to Austin.  She and I both attended and graduated from the University of Texas, had our first child here, Julie, and spent our first year after law school in Houston where I clerked for federal judge John R. Brown.

Today I am honored and delighted to return, with our youngest son, Gregory, to join in this celebration of a quarter-century of community access television in Austin, Texas.

As a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, I insisted that the FCC include in its cable rules a provision for citizen access to this new medium over 25 years ago.

But because this was all before [ACAC public relations director] Jim Ellinger was born, he wanted to assure himself on my current positions.
 
He said, "Now you were once a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.  He was a great free speech advocate on the Court.  But where do you stand on free speech?"

I, of course, reassured him that I'm for it.

To which he responded, "Well, that's just great, because we'd like for you to give one."

In fact the free speech is tomorrow afternoon.  But he and [ACAC board chair] Henry Calderon also wanted me to say a few brief words this evening.

There are a great many things that could be said about the progress and leadership shown by what is today the Austin Community Access Center.

• We could talk about the fact that the Austin Center is the only one to have been designated number one in the United States not once, but twice.

• I could tell you about the number of access center directors around the country who got their start right here.

• Or the Hollywood producers, and others in the commercial side of the business, who credit the Austin center for their beginnings.

• We could describe the award-winning programs that have had a meaningful impact on the quality of life in this city; programs that have won awards and been shown on other systems around the country.

• Then there's the role that the Austin Center has played in Washington, D.C. – in the courts, Congress and at the FCC.

• Or we could bring out the surveys that show some 50,000 homes in Austin are watching access programming regularly.

The significance of jogging, and intramural programs, is the public health benefit, the contribution to personal happiness, fitness and self-fulfillment.

The same is true of access programming.

Mayor Kirk Watson put it well in his Proclamation of "Austin Community Access Center Day." He said the "Center provides a unique media forum for greater diversity of information to be shared with the entire community," and that it "serve[s] many portions of the Austin community which traditionally have been ignored by mainstream media . . .."

Many of you may have never produced a program for community access.  You may not even watch the channel very often.  So permit me to say a little bit about what I think community access is, and is not, and why it is so important to Austin.

Two hundred years ago, it is true, there were owners of mass media.  They were called publishers.  But few newspapers were more than one page, and most communities were sufficiently small that the greatest proportion of news, and the shaping of public opinion, came from conversation: after church on the village green, in town meetings, or just neighbor to neighbor.  Entertainment was provided by local musicians and story tellers.

Twenty-five years ago our public dialogue was coming to be dominated by a smaller and smaller handful of global media corporations.  It is even more true today.

Some think the media giants are doing a great job; others are concerned.  I may take sides on that one tomorrow afternoon, but not tonight.

Nor am I making the nostalgic argument that everything would be better if only we'd  go back to living the way we lived 200 years ago.  Few of us would want to make that swap.

What I am suggesting is that the reasons for the First Amendment are as valid today as they were 200 years ago.  The technology has changed, but our needs, democracy's needs, have not.

That technology is value neutral.  What Edward R. Murrow once called "lights and wires in a box" – and, today, are microchips – only do what we tell them to.

The challenge that confronts you and me – because we care about the future of our children, Austin, and America – is to configure that technology in such a way as to preserve as much democracy as possible without holding back positive technological progress.

A public dialogue – and a legal right of every citizen to participate in that dialogue – is made much more difficult, if not impossible, by today's mass media.  The cost of buying commercial television time, and professional production, is out of the reach of all but the very richest Americans and their organizations.  And yet what costs thousands, or even millions, of dollars to do commercially can be done on public access channels for a comparative pittance.

But cost is not the only impediment.  The Supreme Court has curtailed our legal rights as well.

Today the threats to our free speech, our ability to hear a range of opinions, come not only from government monopolies but from media monopolies.  And yet the Supreme Court says the First Amendment provides us no protection from the latter.  In fact, the Court says the First Amendment guarantees the owners of newspapers, broadcasting and cable facilities not only the right to express any views they choose – a right which they should have – but the constitutional right to censor all other views.  That's a right I believe they should not have.

I believe a newspaper, or broadcast station, should be able to have total control of its content only if it does not sell advertising.  So long as it offers space or time for sale, and it occupies a near-monopoly position in its market, I do not think it should be able to sell to some and silence others on the basis of the content of their commercial messages.  And yet that's the law today.

Of course, citizens can use other media: the voice telephone, the postal system, machine copiers, the Internet's e-mail, list serves and Web pages.

But when it comes to conventional mass media, community access channels are all we have; the only way a citizen of Austin has a legal right to present her views through a medium that comes into almost all homes.

• Self-governing is one of the oft-cited reasons for the First Amendment.  Access programming supports that purpose.  Much of the time, commercial mass media do not.

• There is self-actualization, self-expression, or what I call "the biological basis for the First Amendment."  Some say this is of the essence of liberty.  It certainly is of the essence of being human.  Our capacity to create and use symbols is what distinguishes us from other animal species.  We grow and develop as persons as we are permitted to think and speak our minds.  It is a value of free speech that exists even if there is no audience at all.

• Another reason in that category is sometimes called the "safety valve" function of the First Amendment.  Those who wish to silence their critics often find that the pent-up frustration they thereby create simply increases, rather than decreases, the amount of violence in the community.  It may not be pleasant to listen to the grievances of one's neighbors, but, like Churchill's description of democracy itself,  it may be far preferable to any of the available alternatives.

Go down the list of other reasons:

• The hope that something closer to "truth," at least political truth, will emerge by encouraging the widest diversity of voices in a marketplace of ideas.

• The ability of uncensored journalists and citizens alike to provide a system of checks against the abuses not only of government, but of other large and powerful institutions.

At a time when commercial television stations may sell for anything between $100 million and $1 billion – or more – the value of community access cable to Austin increases every year.

So the story of access is not the collection of "Texas brags" – as impressive as those brags may be.

The story of access is the story I have told you.  It is the narrow reed we cling to, the only remnant of the founding fathers' First Amendment intention that citizens participate in the mass media.

You in Austin have had the faith in democracy, the vision to see its future, the tenacity to hold on for 25 years.  I congratulate you on that past.

With the commitment of those of you here – with your contributions of time, money and even programs, with the encouragement you can provide to individuals and organizations that have not yet used this invaluable local resource – Austin will continue to provide the beacon that can ultimately light up America.

Happy Birthday!
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* Nicholas Johnson, a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, 1966-73, and author of How to Talk Back to Your Television Set, teaches communications law at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City.  His e-mail address is: 1035393@mcimail.com His Web page is: http://soli.inav.net/~njohnson