Some cable companies are getting hardball in their efforts to kill or scale back PEG (Public, Education, and Government) channels. The great media reform group Free Press has launched a campaign to defend local access.

One of their first victories is the defeat of
an Arizona bill which would have cut back funding for PEG.

In San Francisco last week, I covered the big cable conference which drew over 17,000 people. Outside the opening session, there was a protest (photos) against Comcast which has been among the most aggressive companies in scaling back and even suing cities over PEG (In 2003, NOW with Bill Moyers did a story on their lawsuit against San Jose transcript and video in quicktime).

The city is in a window to renegotiate their contract with Comcast and is holding a series of public hearings for citizen input.

What the cable companies fail to see is they should view PEG as a resource at a time when there is a growing interest in citizen media (not to mention something that sets them apart from satellite).

Gavin Newsom, Leonardo di Caprio, and Al Gore

Al Gore has co-founded a channel, Current, which will largely be programmed with citizen media. I went to the launch party last Monday and took a bunch of photos and there is currently video on their webpage. And you can watch the ten finalists in their first video contest on their site as well as enter the new contest.

Sergey Brin of Google

In general the tech people seemed to get it better. Larry Page of Google announced during one of the sessions that they would soon be allowing people to upload and store video for free. Rob Glaser of Real and even the guy from Microsoft were more impressive than the cable guys (and yes, it was mostly guys). There was a good panel on original programming with people from BBC America, FX, Showtime and TVOne where they really talked about the quality of their programming and the need to stand up to congress and the FCC on indecency.

Google is also providing a more detailed verion of their Zeitgeist for regular segments on Current (which launches August 1st but is already regularly putting video online).

More photos from the cable convention (I still need to upload a lot more including some really bad photos of Kool and the Gang at the closing party).