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 the operations of the two production departments SCC and GTN.
SCC is divided into two divisions: On Location and Public Access, although we are still using
the SCC, GTN, and On Location call latters for PR purposes with the public.
SCC's Public Access divisions (Channel 15) objective is to empower the community with first come,
first serve, non-discriminatory access to media. The Channel 15 Public Access Committee is made up of community
members and provides immediate oversight of the public access operations. The public access department is open at these hours:
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 youth, documentation of its history is sketchy. How the twelve municipalities in
Ramsey County and Washingotn County got together is unclear. It is believed that the State Cable Board established
Ramsey/Washington Cable territory, after which the cities and townships 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.
