#netv — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #netv, aggregated by home.social.
-
The Station Across Town: A Lincoln Boyhood, the Federation I Did Not Watch, and the Second Half of a Television Diptych
When I was sixteen, I had a television show called Kidding Around on KOLN/KGIN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was 1981. I was a teenager hosting a teenager-aimed program on a commercial CBS affiliate, three blocks of which I have no doubt were paid for by advertising for Pepsi and Levi’s and the Lincoln car dealerships that kept American local television alive in the early Reagan years. The format was loose. The show featured kid interviews, viewer letters read on air, and unscripted segments of the kind that the FCC’s mandates for “ascertainment of community needs” were supposed to encourage and that the FCC’s 1981 decision to deregulate radio, followed by the parallel television deregulation of 1984, was designed to kill. Kidding Around did not survive into the late 1980s. It was a casualty of a specific federal policy decision documented in the book I published earlier this year, Selling Saturday Morning.
Selling Saturday Morning came out of the position of a sixteen-year-old who had a television show and then did not have one. That book is the institutional history of the commercial side of American television in the years when its regulatory floor was removed.
Today I am publishing the companion book.
Underwritten: The American Experiment in Public Broadcasting, 1967 to 2026 is the institutional history of the other American television. The non-commercial federation. The system that operated under a different statute, a different funding mechanism, a different mission, and a different relationship to its audience than the commercial system I worked inside as a teenager. Underwritten is the third volume in the Institutional Autopsy sequence after Carceral Nation and The Claimed Body. It is also, taken alongside Selling Saturday Morning, the second half of a diptych on the institutional history of American television in my lifetime.
I want to tell you something about Lincoln.
The Station Across Town
In 1981, while I was hosting Kidding Around at KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska, the University of Nebraska’s public broadcasting network, Nebraska Educational Television (NETV), was operating less than two miles from the commercial studio where I worked. NETV had been on the air since November 1, 1954, founded by Jack McBride. Under Ron Hull’s longtime production leadership, NETV produced programs that ran nationally on PBS across decades: the poetry anthology series Anyone for Tennyson?, directed by Marshall Jamison and aired in 1976, along with contributions to Great Performances and later to American Experience after that series premiered in 1988. The Nebraska press wrote about NETV regularly. State university officials cited it in legislative testimony. Few state-network production operations in the country were as ambitious.
I did not watch it. At sixteen, with my own commercial show in production, the public station’s programming felt to me, in 1981, like programming for adults who had patience I did not yet have.
I did not understand, at sixteen, what the public station across town actually was. The station was federated to a thousand other stations across the country through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service. That poetry anthology I would have rolled my eyes at if I had bothered to watch it was being shipped from Lincoln to a national distribution network and aired in Boston and Los Angeles and San Antonio. An entire architecture, from my Saturday morning show on the commercial channel to the Anyone for Tennyson? segments at NETV, was built by federal statute. And the architecture was about to be taken apart.
I have been writing my way back to that understanding for forty-five years. Selling Saturday Morning worked one half of the architecture. Underwritten works the other half. Both books are, in different registers, about how American television was a federally structured artifact of the period from the 1934 Communications Act through the deregulation cycles of the 1980s and the federal-funding rescissions of 2025. On the commercial side, the system was deregulated and reshaped around advertising sales to children. On the public side, the system was federated and protected and starved across five political campaigns before the sixth ended it on January 30 of this year, when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting filed its Articles of Dissolution with the District of Columbia.
What Underwritten Documents
The book runs fifteen chapters. It opens with the four-second PBS logo sequence and the sensory event that anchors institutional memory of public broadcasting for everyone who watched it. It traces the November 7, 1967 signing of the Public Broadcasting Act in the East Room of the Johnson White House and the political coalition Lyndon Johnson built to pass it. Middle chapters examine the federation’s architecture across the coastal flagships at WGBH and WNET, the regional and state networks (Nebraska ETV included as a dedicated case-study chapter titled “The Heartland Node”), the independent producers at Florentine Films and ITVS and Sesame Workshop, the canonical programs that defined American cultural memory, and the five political campaigns from Nixon through the second Trump term that tested the federation’s resilience. Later chapters work through the dissolution itself: the Rescissions Act of 2025, the dissolution vote, the post-dissolution landscape of archive preservation at WGBH and the Library of Congress, the rural and tribal communities whose emergency broadcasting went dark with the federation’s coordination, and what survives.
Underwritten is dedicated to my wife, Janna Sweenie, a Deaf ASL performer and educator and my collaborator across the publishing constellation. This book is one of many she has watched come together at our kitchen table in New York.
Where to Read It
Underwritten is available now in Kindle ebook on Amazon, in paperback on Amazon, and as a free PDF download from BolesBooks.com. Kindle edition pricing is $9.99 with the paperback at $19.99 (509 pages, 1.273-inch spine, cream paper). A free web-download PDF carries the same content with full color typography matching the cover.
Underwritten joins Carceral Nation and The Claimed Body in the Institutional Autopsy sequence, and it sits beside Selling Saturday Morning as the second half of the television diptych.
Coda
The federation that produced the four seconds I did not watch when I was sixteen is gone. Across town from KOLN sat a station I could have walked to in twenty minutes, the station that had originated Anyone for Tennyson? for national distribution five years before I arrived at the commercial channel and was still producing for PBS while I was hosting Kidding Around. It is now operating under post-dissolution funding arrangements that may or may not sustain it for another decade. The federation that made the broadcasting possible is not coming back.
The station across town is where the book always lived. I just did not know it.
#anyoneForTennyson #broadcast #davidBoles #geneBunge #kiddingArouind #kuon #lincoln #marshallJamison #nebraska #nebraskaEtv #netv #network #pbs #politics #publicBroadcasting #ronHull #tech #television #theTrialOfStandingBear #williamJenningsBryan -
We don't have to wait for permission, or for celebrity involvement, or for funding.
If you want to make television you can do it Right Now! I do it every day.
If you want to fund community broadcasting, but don't want to make television, you can do it right now! You can fund #netv or #communityBroadcastingNetwork or #nham or democracy now, or a large number of other independent television producers, by ... just giving us money.
Or, if none of those are to your liking you can organize your own independent television network.
(All of our content is available for syndication, for free!)
-
Hey, I haven't talked about it recently, but here's a reminder of this thing that I'm doing: https://communitymedia.video/w/icMDFVmUA8jC8WEDFei1SB
Me and Connor and some of the other #NETV folks are taking the ideas behind #NewEllijayTelevision and #communityMedia national.
We've launch a youtube channel and a peertube channel and a website to help highlight independent and community media around the globe.
Check out @communitybroadcasting.network
-
"But I NEED my highly processed foodstuffs & circuses!"
:blobcatreeeeeee:
Whines the average cis-het white person in the #USA as the police state develops to murder >1/2 of the population, but won't even get off of #twitter
:meowTableFlip:Fuck them & join us in sky piracy.
https://retro.social/@ajroach42/115890824979881160
https://www.mountaintowntoys.com/sky-pirates/
#SkyPirates #NewEllijayTV #NETV #Resist #Protest #Anarchism #AnarchoSyndicalism
-
Just watched episode two of Filibus the Mysterious Air Pirate. What a delightful show! The score is amazing! I love Filibus' shenanigans and costumes!
-
I've been working on the next issue of The Mysterious Air Pirates tonight.
And I'm wearing my Mysterious Air Pirates shirt, and I have new Mysterious Air Pirate shoes, and I'm about to upload chapter four of Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirates to #NETV and the #CommunityBroadcastingNetwork
-
NEW TOY ALERT!
Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate returns in a super stretchy, squishy rubber Keshi. Based on the 1915 Italian science fiction film The Mysterious Air Pirate (Watch it now from #NETV @video with new score by @DoctorDeathray ) and featuring an all new character design from us! Mountain Town Toys, this Mysterious Air Pirate stands approximately 1.75 inches tall, and is injection molded by me ( @ajroach42 ) and my team (mostly @djsundog ) in our facility in Ellijay Georgia.They come in lots of colors, and some of those colors glow in the dark! To celebrate, we've also 3D printed a couple of much bigger iterations of the character, which you can see in the attached photos.
Available now on our website, shipping towards the end of the month.
-
If you're a regular Youtube user, please consider watching the video and interacting with it there. We're trying to get enough attention from the big silo'd platforms to pull some people out onto the open web.
If you're not a regular youtube user, all the details are on our website: https://www.communitybroadcasting.network/2026/03/01/filibus-restored-rescored-reimagined/ which also posts here to the fediverse @communitybroadcasting.network
and the video is on the #NETV peertube (which, again, also posts here to the fediverse @video ) https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/kFoxEgStdXMREbZmbq8RmY
-
Our newest show, a short form video program highlighting neat landmarks and businesses around our small town, debuts today.
The first episode is up on #NETV https://vod.newellijay.tv/videos/watch/85ee96a9-01d9-4c81-a976-5a70a260ec26
It is also on youtube, because it has to be on youtube if I want the people who might pay for us to keep making the show to consider paying for us to keep making the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETU35LkEPMI
-
These public domain japanese cartoons will make there way to #NETV sometime soon.
-
I did a big thread yesterday highlighting a bunch of the work that we do at #NETV @video and @MountainTownToys and ... you know, everything else.
It's a big thread: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/115884970250442866
-
I don't really follow economic news beyond what I learn from Connor on #NETV but uhhh
What the hell is going on with the silver market?
-
If you're seeing my #publicDomain work, or seeing #NETV #NewEllijayTelevision for the first time, or even if you're already familiar with what we do and the ideas behind #communityMedia let me take this moment to make a small pitch:
New Ellijay Television needs advertisers to keep it going. Let me advertise your art project, indie website, small business, album, or other thing.
We'll stick you up on the Sponsor section of NewEllijay.News and run your 30 second spot at least 4x a day on our live stream and our cable network.
If you're not making much/any money on the thing you make, but you just want to get the word out, I'll run the ad for free.
If you're making money on the thing, and you want to get the word out to make more money, our packages for fedifolks start at $50/month.
Let's talk.
-
I'm getting ready to publish the second chapter of the excellent CC-BY-SA "There is no Antimemetics Division" series I found on youtube to #netv
When it's done it will live here: https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/p/2z7ZxKWko9MgdeyuaVcehf
-
Way before I started #NETV, in the very early days of peertube, before COVID, before I was running a coffee shop in the mountains, when I thought I'd be an engineering manager in #BigTech for the rest of my life, I was planning to stream and do videos about computers and video games in the style of Cathode Ray Dude or LGR.
I turned a portion of our living room into a video studio. I bought some vintage computers, and set up an absolutely Bangin' windows 98 box.
I got some video cameras from the 70s and 80s and built a rig so that I could capture and mix footage from my PCs and these 70s and 80s cameras.
I had it all pretty much ready to go just before Christmas 2019, I was just waiting on some parts to arrive from China for a PC build that would serve as my primary streaming rig.
I registered a twitch account, I did a couple of test streams to an audience of one or two to find my feet. I was getting ready to turn making media into my Whole Thing.
And then it was Feb of 2020, and I caught COVID at SFO before anyone even knew it was in the country, and didn't get out of bed for a month.
-
To that end, I think I'm actually going to try and start the short, infrequent, "I found this cool thing and I want to tell people about it" video series.
It'll probably become a television program for #NETV. every time I've got five or six of them, but mostly it'll be me sharing neat stuff that I found and some info about the folks that made it.
-
Practically, for #NETV right now, it wouldn't change much.
I don't know of any other community television stations. I know of some public access stations, but that's a different kind of animal in a couple of ways.
But it would give us a second homepage and window into the world that was a little less Ellijay centered and a give us a good reason to spin up a second Roku channel that might improve discoverability.
-
CW: Personal anxiety - New Ellijay Television / New Ellijay Heavy Industries
Really and truly I believe that what we're doing at NEHI and NETV are vital to the future.
When I talk about what we're doing in each of these endeavors, that might seem silly, but I believe it.
So I'm going to talk about what we do, and then I'm goign to talk about why I think it's important.
#NETV is a television network and streaming service based out of Ellijay Georgia. It's Community Media in the kind that I wrote about here: https://communitymedia.network
We have a roku channel and a peertube server and we produce a lot of local content including music gear review shows, sitcoms, and political video essays. We also archive a lot of historical material from film. I've written about this stuff extensively, and I'm not going to re-hash it all here.
#NEHI is our haha only serious name for our manufacturing efforts. We're running a machine shop and making injection molded plastic using environmentally sustainable and horizontally scalable processes.
Most of what we've done so far has been toys, most of what we'll do in the future is toys.
I believe these two things are vital for the same reason:
When we make a toy, that toy supplants something made by a distant corporation using media owned by Disney. When someone watches our news coverage or one of the public domain cartoons we've archived or whatever, that's half an hour they didn't spend watching something owned by Sinclair ( https://communitymedia.video/w/kJ3dojouKA3G5onEaKq1Vu )
-
CW: Personal anxiety
The biggest things that I need to do are:
- Figure out how to make our vintage toy sales justify dad's wages, or figure out how to get dad involved in something else that generates revenue or otherwise supports our goals. (This might actually be possible. I need to really think about it.)
- Re-task the other two folks towards projects that are closer to their skillsets and interests and more likely to generate revenue or otherwise support our goals. (What? I'll have to think about it. It almost certainly involves getting them out of NEHI.)
- Figure out the quickest path towards making NEHI profitable, or at least sustaining (I think we're already on that path, it just doesn't feel like it some days.)
- Spend some time really thinking about what happens next with #NETV
-
And I'll let y'all in on a secret. There's another episode up now for patrons (and it's going up for #NETV sponsors shortly.)
-
https://newellijay.tv/festival
It's time for the annual #NETV FALL FILM FESTIVAL
All participants are welcome, regardless of skill level or location. First time filmmakers strongly encouraged!
$500 grand prize. Films will be judged by an independent panel (Not me!) based on lots of factors, but creativity and intent will top polish.
Equipment and space rentals available for folks in the north Georgia area. I'll be posting some "how to make a bad movie" clips on peertube too.
Submission deadline is Nov 15.
-
I love the toy work I'm doing right now, and it seems pretty likely that it's going to pay my bills (and the bills for several other members of our community) for a while.
People like what we're doing, and we're in demand. We're meeting with clients tonight. We're meeting with clients on Saturday. We're emailing clients every twenty minutes.
It's good! And it is absolutely part of the same #CommunityMedia movement that led me to create #NETV.
But it's only *part* of the #communityMedia thing. We need the media. I need to figure out a way to make the production and distribution of independent media financially viable in small batches.
-
As I've mentioned previously, we produce all of these shows for #netv / @newellijaytelevision / @video at the Ellijay Makerspace using 10+ year old cameras and open source software.
All our editing happens in @kdenlive Our videos are distributed through @peertube and our cable network is powered by #ffplayout and #ffmpeg.
We're a #floss shop, running a weird little experimental cable network out of the north GA mountains. We release between 1 and 10 new original videos per month, plus some syndicated stuff from folks like Working Class Music and Captain Isotope and Mr. Lobo.
-
One day in the near future, I'm going to swing by the makerspace and grab my "agile" modulator and bring it down to the cafe.
We have half a dozen TVs at the cafe that could be running the #NETV Livestream we're it not for the struggles inherent in wiring up cable to a big old weird shaped building with a bunch of free floating TVs.
But the agile modulator plus a small antenna pushes a strong enough "bleed" signal that I should be able to get every television with an analog tuner in the place running the same video source with little additional effort.
-
This looks silly!
Three camera feeds of heavy equipment AND the #NETV livestream all running in a double 1080p stream!
Why?
-
Speaking of #Community (not the show), what is one thing that can either bring a community together or drive it apart?
Media. Music, TV, film & news
Do you trust the #billionaires & their corporations to produce those things in ways that benefit & foster community?
Hell no! :blobcatreeeeeee:
This will be a thread about #CommunityMedia. Why and how we should make it. 🧵
The impetus for and some of the details of this are found in this free #zine.
https://communitymedia.network/
It is focused on #DIYTV as that is what @ajroach42 was thinking about as he was launching #NETV but I would like to discuss how these concepts might be applied to other media. That means feedback from you & I would love to hear your thoughts.
Need a kick in the pants?
https://communitymedia.video/w/k8vocDBfJmJRzXZumE11h6
Don't want to do it alone? #ArtFED is always looking for collaborators and comrades.
-
TV is the AM radio of the modern age. It's time to push the Overton window back & to the left.
#DIYTV & #CommunityMedia are the way. #NETV is doing it today. Will you do it tomorrow?
Sound good? Have I got the #zine for you!