Last Saturday Bologna was the location for the first national meeting of http://telestreet.it, a putative network of neighborhood television broadcasters, and refractory communications and cultural workers more generally.
Context
The state monopoly of television broadcasting in Italy was brought to an end by a constitutional court decision in 1976. A private television sector developed as a result in a highly unregulated environment, allowing the emergence of Berlusconi's Finivest as the dominant player. Notionally private players were limited to operating in the local sphere - ostensibly out of a fear that otherwise private concentrations of media power would emerge - threatening the spirit of Article 21 of the constitution that aspires towards a plurality of sources of information. These companies broadcast often without authorisation or allocation of spectrum. The limitation to local activity was evaded by means of the interconnection of multiple 'local' operations. In short order, Berlusconi's Finivest took over the other two market actors. Efforts by some local prosecutors to block Berlusconi's broadcasts from 1984 were halted by the Craxi (Socialist Party) government who introduced a decree to legitimise the transmissions and authorize their continuation. Ultimately in 1990 the Mamme law was passed that permitted private parties to own up to three national networks - whitewashing Berlusconi's position.
Of course while business activity in this terrain was treated with kid gloves, the high costs of television production combined with the expense of the equipment required for broadcast effectively precluded the type of amateur and 'pirate' initiatives that proliferated in radio. In the meantime the accessibility and cost of the technology has declined precipitously so as to come within the budgets of organized collectivities and even individual consumers.
Berlusconi's stranglehold over the mass-media has been pivotal to his stranglehold over Italian political life , and this situation has been accentuated acutely over the last year, where having formed a government he quickly set to work purging the state broadcasting company, RAI, of opponents, installing yes-men and effectively extending his control over the population's audio-visual interface from 50% to about 90%. The new head of RAI, Antonio Baldasarre, addressed the post-fascist Allianza Nazionale conference during the summer promising to correct the left-wing bias (!) displayed over the years on the national network:
"The old RAI represented only one culture and not others....... Often, they didn't tell real history, but told fables, offered one-sided interpretations."
Birth of Telestreet
Disturbed at Berlusconi's hegemony over the mediascape and cognizant of the affordability of rudimentary broadcast equipment, a gang of older intellectuals and spritely younger types fused to launch Italy's first local television, Orfeotv; they began broadcasting in a tiny district of Bologna, with a radius of just over a hundred meters, on the 21 june 2002.
Orfeo broadcasts using cheap equipment widely available in electronics retailers. The kit is composed of :
An antenna
Basic transmitter
Money to pay the person who installs the antenna
The initiative is motivated by a series of factors. The first is to contest the commercial domination of the airwaves, founded on the false premise that limitations are necessary to prevent interference in other broadcasts. Telstrada suggest groups occupy channels that are not in use in their areas, which are plentiful as commercial operations typically broadcast across two frequencies so as to maximise coverage, but as they rely on some level of line of sight, wide swathes of the ether are left unoccupied.
At time of writing there are ten telestreets in operation in cities such as Florence, Padua and Trieste.
Telefabrica
The economic crisis of the Fiat empire has dominated Italian politics in recent months, thousands of people are losing their jobs and the economies of whole localities destroyed. The impact of the factory closures will be especially ferocious in the South where there industry is scarce and little or no labour mobility.
In these regions the loss of the factory will not only mean the desertification of the horizon for thousands of individuals and families economically, but will strip them of some of the collective power that arises from the mass-worker factory environment, in a context where power is otherwise monopolised by corrupt political and mafia networks. One of the greatest struggles against the closures is taking place in the Sicilian town at Termini Imerese. A small group of people supportive of the struggle formed Telefabrica to broadcast coverage and interviews with the workers. From the moment that the decision was made to launch the station it took one week to actually get it running. After broadcasting for three days, the Carabinieri (a paramilitary police outfit operating under its own command structure) were sent to shut them down. For breach of the broadcasting laws they will be fined. Should they reopen they will be subject to a criminal prosecution. Given the sensitive politics of the Fiat controversy, they are considering whether they should do this, perhaps with a parliamentary figure - enjoying immunity from incarceration - as the legal principal of the association, in order to challenge the law. The fact that in the context of a huge strike the station was shut down within three days (given the bureaucratic procedure required to do this, it means that proceedings must have started immediately the began to broadcast), whereas in Bologna they can operate for six months without hindrance cannot be without significance. Telefabrica do not know how many people in fact viewed their broadcasts, but pointed out that the workers certainly distinguished how they treated them in comparison with the mainstream media. The latter were chased away during actions such as street blockades whilst telefabrica was allowed to stay and film. They broadcast uncut interviews with the strikers.Apart from the costs of 'antennista' and the broadcast equipment, they budgeted 50 euros a day for transport and tapes.
The approach of telefabrica was somewhat contested by the next presentation a group called 'Spegni la tua tv' ("Turn off your Television") from rome. They have set february 2003 as the date for the launch of their station that will be in Primavalle, a working class district in the suburbs of Rome. Primavallle was developed to rehouse people evicted from the centre city district of Borgo demolished during the Mussolini Regime, and the residents brought with them a strong social fabric with a certain anarchist character. SLTT challenged the manner in which Telefabrica's activity persisted in treating workers as subjects rather than protagonists of media, and appealed instead for a reflection on the potential tactical use of tv tools by workers themselves during workplace conflicts. In addition they hope for a network without any centralized control but rather 'islands of production'.
Candida TV described the experience of Hub TV in the autonomous Euraction Hub Space that took place parallel to the European Social Forum. The TV functioned continuously for 48 hours, emitting signals at a far greater strength than those of the Telestrada projects -10 watts -, combining their terrestrial signals with streaming on the net and use off the ascii-cam to economize on bandwidth. The importance of a 'polymedia' approach was underlined, whereby producers use every means of production and distribution possible in an integrated way to maximise the diffusion of the message and 'contaminate as many areas as possible.' As they transmitted, the Expertbase's satellite connection downloaded materials from the web off the site of New Global Vision which were then fed into the broadcast loop, whilst interviews made on the premises went out over the web, giving the data movement an omnidirectional character.
Several participants spoke about NoWar TV, an ad-hoc alliance comprised of individuals from the NGO 'Emergency', the area of Media Activism and some freelancers (in every sense, cani sciolti as we say in Italy). Using a combination of the web, satellites, terrestrial channels and radio they broadcast for ten hours nationally last week against the impending war in Iraq.
Whilst the earlier sessions had a distinctly practico-technical or agitational interventionist hue to them, the discussion returned to the social plane with the presentation of OrfeoTv. Underneath the aerial, it was stressed, lay a social space of experimentation where the editorial group was permanently open and in flux, where the divisions between professionals and amateurs were eroded. A critique of the specialization of expert knowledge is addressed there through the progressive transfer of competencies from the knowledgeable to the newly inducted. No full-time personnel work in OrfeoTv, and this is a deliberate decision taken so as to ensure that all participants have a sense of belonging and possession of the station.
Practicalities
Valerio Minnella introduced the second session dedicated to illuminating the practical issues to be dealt with in getting up and running.
Licenses are currently awarded on the basis of territories that would constitute contiguous areas for broadcast, but the transmitter used never cover the entire areas. The rationale behind this allocation methodology however - positing possession of a powerful transmitter as a point of departure - is ideological in itself, favoring concentration over plurality and actors with the economic resources to make large up-front capital investments.
The first task for an aspirant telestrada is to carry out an inspection of the zone and determine if there is either (a) a free channel or (b) a 'shadow zone' where the broadcasts of the assigned licensee are not functioning.
Marizio Anslemo, a broadcasting renegade from 16 years of age, gave some advice on practices that help in evading repression by the Postal Police (who have the duty to shut down illegal transmissions). First one shouldn't broadcast according to a regular schedule. Secondly, and this was a point stressed repeatedly, it is vital to have a good quality transmitter that broadcasts only in the defined frequency. Repression often arises because substandard transmitters emit sloppily, generating interference on existing licensed broadcasters signals, incurring their wrath. Then thy complain to the police and the repressive apparatus is set in motion. For the same reason it is important to use a broadcast power proportionate to the range that you intend to cover, and to err on the side of caution.
Anselmo and Valerio argue that ultimately the law will be determined by weight of numbers, which is top say that should a telestrada be shut, two should open in its stead. Thus the law will become unsustainable. Distributed data networks meanwhile can provide a common pool of material shared by different telestrada through a searchable database. In this way broadcasts can be made more frequently and the best quality material reproduced.
Broadcasters are required to implement digital broadcast by 2006, at which point every analogue channel could facilitate four digital, but the control over these newly available bands will reside in those already in possession of spectrum.
Experiments were carried out to ascertain the best equipment for the telestrada kit. The antenna ultimately chosen costs only 20 euros. They explained that it was worth spending something more on the transmitter so as to be able to control broadcast better, switch channel easily and cover all frequencies.
Power: even very small amounts of power are sufficient for broadcasting bin a limited range. They advise using .05 -.125 watt maximum with a one watt amplifier. They say that this will allow coverage up to 4 kilometers, well in excess of that required to produce a neighborhood tv in an urban area.
Alternatives
Anselmo also pointed out that those living in an apartment building have another option for broadcasting, namely to simply plug their transmitter into the central distribution point. Apparently programmable filtering boxes are commonly used, and available, that are often used to remove access to a specific channel. It seems that these can be adapted so as to allow you to broadcast on the blocked channel instead.
Where no 'shadow zone' or free channel is available, there is another option. On the Italian network the law forbids use of channels 70 and 71 altogether. The reason of for this is their proximity to the bands used by the cell phone operators. Nonetheless with a efficient transmittter, these frequencies can be used without intruding on their space and in many parts of the country amateurs are already starting to exploit these free channels.
The actual names of the equipment used were not announced - but detail and pricing of a pre-prepared kit have subsequently been released - and the etchnical aspects were really only outlined in broad terms. Members of the telestrada team are enthusiastic about providing assistance and have a forum full of useful info and advice at http://www.telestreet.it/telestreet/forum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=3
New Global Vision
Attention shifted back to digital potentialities with Zombi_J's explanation of NGV, very similar in conception to Free_Distro, and with whom we have been collaborating. The question of video distribution online was confronted last year in the aftermath of Genoa, where there was an urgent need to widely distribtute a first cut of the footage shot by video-operators during the G8. The material was already in digital form, so a series of ftp servers were established to distribute the work in DivX format. In the interim fiber optic connnections have been proliferating in the Italian cities that allow extremely fast (800kb/p/s) transfers within the network, and NGV have established a server within one of those networks (FastWeb). In addition they exploit p2p clients such as WinMx and Kazaa and also offer to send CDs with the videos masteredto those with inadequate web access or no connection at all. Currently their archive is composed of about a hundred films weighing in around 50 gigabytes in total.
Theory!?
The final session had a more conceptual bent. Bifo underlined that the aim was not to launch a television network but rather to build another culture. Rather than seeing grassroots media as a form of ideological self-defense, he argued that we should instead go on the attack by surrounding corporate media, assailing it. Politically he advocated emphasis on the contradiction between the constitutional aspiration towards free speech through a plurality of voices and the actual effects of the Mamme law (formalising private monopoly power).
Andrea positioned developments in the information sphere within a broader matrix of the United State's attempts to consolidate and reproduce its economic and political power. Attacks on the 'public domain' and 'commons' should be seen as enclosures designed to undermine the productive potential of the general intellect. Wireless networks were mentioned for the first time that day and Andrea argued that dissident groups should be prepared to enter into competition with the status quo not only ideologically but also economically. Pointing to a recent study on the nature of colective production in Bologna's self-managed social centres, he stated that the productive capacity was often overlooked as a political factor. In similar vein, he lauded, and encouraged the audience to look at, Lessig's work on innovation and finished his speech with a call for the resussicitation of a grassroots digital economy. A weblog put together to chart this course can be found at http://w.skipintro.org/article.php?sid=906.
Matteo Pasquinelli from http://www.rekombinant.org proposed that a key task for the social movement was to be able to cooperate for the purposes of developing unified local media infrastructures. If cooperation is impossible in this sphere, it bodes ill for the social movement in general.
The final meeting that evening was with a former RAI journalist ousted by Berkuska regime, Santuro. Claiming that a key to Berlusconi's success was his abiulity to provide a "MacDonalds of the people's dreams" (?!), in the sense of a simple set of desirable imaginaries that could grasp the hopes of the many, he worried that the left were incapable of engaging politically on this level with a countervailing proposition. Drawing an analogy with the movement against capitalist globalisation, he suggested that this opposing concept might be that of the 'social bussiness'. I found this pretty lame. Heralding Telestrada as the most important political development in contemporary italy, he identified its significance as lying in its capacity to interrogate rather than replace the rest of the media.
Some Observations
I've never found the proposition of a neighborhood television particularly compelling. At the same time its utility as a tool to initiate discussion over media control, access and repurposing of technologies, and roles of media production and consumption cannot be doubted. The presence of four hundred people at the TPO provided adequate proof of that, and the discussion was pleasantly free of the sterility that charcterizes many political events, perhaps because of its organization around a practical proposition.
The lack of discussion about wireless technologies mystified me. The points made about the flawed premises of spectrum policy apply beyond the realm of television. Further the techniques to supersede the technical difficulties - such as Software defined radios and UWB -
were not even mentioned. Not to labour the point but one had the feeling that the day narrowly missed making a series of sensational connections between the possibility of overcoming the television monopoly and the potential to constitute alternative unowned infrastructure in general. Perhaps this derives from the availability of consumer fiber optic connectivity here skimming off the interest in wireless as a means for high speed transfer (even if only in local areas initially).
Once again the discussion about technology had a fetichistic character, echoing the acritical optimism of previous generations in scentific socialism and automation. This was particularly apparent in the panel with Bifo and Andrea from Quinte Stato. Weirdly Bifo seems to sustain both this naivgety and a sense of the emptional and cognitive estrangement characteristic of the postfordist working environment.
A consequence of Berlusconi's ascent has been that a section of the Italian media establishment, like Santoro - a former RAI journalist with a national profile - , have been marginalised or excluded. Some of those people are now regrouping to make a counter-attack. As part of this process social radicals working in the media area are going to see a lot more of them. A discussion of where we can cooperate and where we diverge is necessary; otheriwse we will find ourselves instrumentalised towards outcomes which we may not like at all, particularly if the DS were to return to power, and these people to favour, in a couple of years time. This is not to say that they should be quarantined, far from it, just that we should have a clear strategic forecast as to the consequences of our actions.
Lastly, do we want another television? Are a thousand neighborhood stations desirable? Is this just a discourse machine to be exploited for other reasons? Does anyone believe (as some of Orfeo TV have proposed) that the Telestrada can generate the type of sociality once found in the local bar or cafe? Does this discourse deepen or weaken the degree to which media visibility is made determinant in our social relations? What type of cimmunication would it enable? What type of humans would it make us? There is a lot of confusion on these points, which is a good thing as it reflects the openess of the discussion at this point, but these are questions that need to be addressed.
New Year's eve will see an hour long broadcast from outside Rebibia jail to the inmates but this will not be done over telestreet but rather using a private television channel called 'AmbienteTV' with whom Candida have collaborated previously.
Check out Megachip a media watchdog and reformist group.
