Re: Religious Entities

[Tony Vigue]

Hi Terri,

Typically the station policy will have a clause that states that all productions submitted to the station must be produced or sponsored by a resident of the Town. This is acceptable because your funding comes through the Town and other towns who do not contribute should go to their own access channel for assistance. The only exception would be a program sponsorship in which  the sponsor agrees to have their contact info in the credits of the program. This requirement usually prevents hate speech from being submitted. As for religious services, once you open the door as a public access center, you can’t exclude others as long as they follow your policy. A policy that says “no outside programming” would seriously limit your service to the community.   Typically there is no charge for sponsored programs, just the requirement that a resident be the sponsor with their contact info available at the station and/or on the credits. 

Here is a link to the forms page at SPC-TV, feel free to copy for your own purpose but be aware that any changes to your policy manual should probably be approved by your committee. 

http://www.southportland.org/departments/spc-tv/spctv-forms/

Any questions, please get back to me. 

Tony

On Dec 29, 2017, at 10:20 AM, bctv...@gmail.com wrote:

Berwick, Maine has one church in town which now submits video for BCTV to post on Sunday mornings at 10AM.  We have a request from a resident to post their church services.  The church they attend is outside of Berwick and the Committee feels this might open the door to many other requests from residents who are members of churces in NH or in ME.  

I have looked at other public access stations policies and see nothing where this might be addressed.  How do you handle these submissions?  What wording do we need in our policies that allow us to regulate what is placed on our local public access station?

Thanks for the feedback,

Terri Wright, Coordinator

Berwick Community TV