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(e) Requirements for services relating to public, educational, or governmental access

A cable operator may not obtain modification under this section of any requirement for services relating to public, educational, or governmental access.

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The story: Some public-access TV producers in Akron believe Time Warner purposely aired porn in place of Bishop Pilla's annual Christmas morning prayer in late 2004 to curry favor for a plan that started charging producers $25 per show and mandating that all actors (naked or otherwise) on the tapes hail exclusively from the region.

What happened next: Channel 15 went from having a wide variety of shows - from religious and community-oriented to anti-establishment and left-leaning (with gratuitous nudity and nut-slapping in all the gaps) - to one with limited religious and community-oriented programming and little else. Before Akron Council passed the new rules, Rose Wilcher and her FreedomJournalTV had 22 shows throughout the week; she can afford just two now, on Tuesday and Friday nights. "The channel is a ghost channel, but nobody raised a lot of a stir when Democracy Now was taken off the air," Wilcher says of one of the shows she ran before the changes. "Maybe now, with a lot of the 'gray panthers' upset, maybe now something will change." She's referring to two old-timers in Wadsworth who are ending their 13-year-old polka show because of the fee. A lawsuit Wilcher filed in response to council's changes was dismissed, but she's "very optimistic" about the appeal. And what about that other requirement of station programming, that actors be residents? Wilcher and company have cleared that hurdle too: "We have nudity. It's a much better place here in Akron now that it's local nudity and not those nasty California girls." - DH

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