About SCC
Our Mission & Our History
Suburban Community Channels was organized to coordinate
and provide community television programming to the Ramsey/Washington cable
television system. The Ramsey/Washington Counties Suburban Cable Commission
supervises all PEG operations and its three programming departments: Suburban
Community Channels (SCC), On-Location TV 19, and Government Television
Network (GTN), plus the technical support department.
Organizationally, two divisions make up RWSCC's PEG operation:
Facilities and Operations Division, comprised of SCC and the
Technical Support departments and Production Services Division,
comprised of the On-Location TV 19 and Government Television
Network (GTN) departments.
The objective of SCC's Public Access department and its two
public access channels 14 & 15 is to empower the community
with first come, first serve, non-discriminatory access to
media. Immediate oversight of the public access operation is
provided by the RWSCC’s Public Access Committee, which
is wholly comprised of RWSCC Commissioners. The public access
department is open to the community:
Monday - Friday: 10 am to 10 pm
Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm
Mission:
Our mission is grounded in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and is accomplished by our commitment to empowering the community with the tools, knowledge and access to media.
A Brief History of SCC
Despite SCC's relative youth, documentation of its history
is somewhat incomplete. How the twelve municipalities in Ramsey County
and Washington County got together is unclear. It is believed that the
Minnesota State Cable Board established the Ramsey/Washington Cable service
territory, after which the cities and townships of the area worked out
the first joint powers agreement. From this agreement, the Ramsey/Washington
Cable Commission (RWCC) was born.
In 1982, the RWCC negotiated and signed a fifteen-year cable
franchise with the company Group W. As a condition of the franchise, Group
W created the public access facility where it still exists today.
In 1984, the RWCC advertised for board members for a non-profit
organization to manage the functions of the public access facility. This
organization was to handle complaints of users, establish policies for
producers and generally enforce the franchise agreement as it pertained
to public access. Thus, Suburban Community Channels was born consisting
of a twelve-member board of volunteers. The first Executive Director of
the RWCC, Ben Selisker, also served as the Executive Director of SCC.
After Ben passed away in the later 80s, the Commission agreed
with the request of the SCC Board to hire an Executive Director
and allow the non-profit organization to do some "police work" for
the Commission. SCC would receive complaints from RWCC subscribers and
review
them and make recommendations to the Commission. In 1990, the
RWCC hired its own Executive Director and took back management of the Commission,
leaving the review of PEG access to SCC.
In 1992, negotiations
with the
cable company brought an agreement where the Commission, not
the cable company, would provide PEG access. The Commission
worked out a contract
with SCC to handle the day-to-day operations of the access
facilities. In the later 1990s, the Commission decided that
they could run the PEG
access channels, thus SCC was absorbed by the RWCC. A PEG access
advisory board was retrained to make recommendations to the
Commission regarding
policy and procedure. In 1999, SCC's local origination function
was given a separate moniker from the public access function.
This new division was
named "On Location." This gave us three programming departments:
SCC, On Location, and GTN, plus the technical support department.
In
2006, SCC and the Tech Support department were placed under
one division supervisor.
The GTN and On Location departments were placed under another.
Special thanks to Duane Bengtson for his contributions.
