SAVE PUBLIC ACCESS TV
Cliff Jacobs
Why Community Television is Still Relevant
The Borough of Queens is the most ethnically diverse community in the United States. There are close to two hundred languages and dialects spoken in the Queens. Travel from neighborhood to neighborhood and you can hear Italian, Urdu, Russian, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Cantonese, Hindi, Portuguese and Tagalog (Filipino). Even with the channel diversity of cable television, you can not find programs in many of the languages that are spoken by the residents of this Borough. When these diverse communities need information concerning voter registration, free healthcare screenings, and immigration reform the only place where they can find information in their own language is on the community channels. If the multilingual programs that are cablecast on our channels were to disappear many of our viewers would be at a disadvantage. 
Mainstream television can not cater to the needs of such a diverse community. QPTV's independent producers create programs for our multi cultural community. Without these multilingual programs, many of our viewers would be devoid of a lifeline to their community. For twenty five years QPTV has provided the opportunity for the residents of Queens to collectively break bread with one another through the medium of community television by providing training in television production and by cablecasting community produced programs. We hope to continue doing so for another twenty five years because "Queens still has a lot to say."