Can someone please think outside the box?

A partial casualty of the recent Hillsborough County budget cuts is our public access station, known also as Speak Up Tampa Bay or the Tampa Bay Community Network.

When I read the St Pete Times article, "Group sues as TV fund is cut" in early October I was very aggravated by the complete lack of innovation our growing government is enabling by funding some non-profits.

My commentary on the article that day:

With outlets today such as YouTube and the numerous other places to post video for free online there is no longer a need for the government to underwrite public access. Private industry has done so on its own and in a far better way.

A good topic can go a lot further on YouTube then a fixed programming schedule on subscriber based cable. Public access is a dinosaur of technology and TBCN should try to innovate rather then sue.

TBCN's take of course is that this is censorship of the community's public access. This is completely untrue however, as many of us know that the blogoshere in Tampa Bay went nuts during the recent EPC uproar and a certain YouTube video got more views then any recent TBTN broadcast.

So tell me again is the public being denied access to get a message out?

No, TBCN is just another non-profit too used to government funding and unwilling to innovate.

Did you know that if a citizen had an issue today it could take a month or more for them to get that message out via TBCN? While uploading and emailing a video on YouTube is free and instant.

Please don't give me the "put its not free" talk because I could work at WalMart less hours for pay and an employee discount to buy my own camera, then the volunteer hours TBCN would require to get my message out. Unless of course they agreed with me then it would be instant.