Your own TV show? Anywhere but Philadelphia

[SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer 2/19, AUTHOR: Diane Mastrull]
Federal law entitles each of the greater Philadelphia area's 336 cable-wired municipalities to at least one channel run by and for the people. But as increasingly polished, community-programmed cable stations have proliferated elsewhere, the Philadelphia region has been asleep on the sofa, its citizens still largely unaware that they could be laying claim to their own channels. Those 336 local governments get more than $35 million a year in franchise fees, chiefly from the behemoth provider Comcast. They could use the money to help their residents set up and operate public access channels, but they don't have to. So the fees -- $10 million annually to Philadelphia alone -- typically are absorbed into general budgets. The $50,000 that flows to the small Montgomery County community of Narberth represents "one police officer or foreman of the highway department," said Borough Manager Bill Martin. Spending it on public access would "create a void someplace else."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/13905937.htm

* Two decades later, promised public-access TV channels in Philadelphia still dark
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/13905958.htm