Arlington Community Media, Inc. was formed by a group of Arlington citizens with a vision of better communication in their town.
In 1980, the town licensed its first cable television franchise with American Cablesystems. For the first time, there was a facility for public communication within the town, a combined public access and local origination studio at 81 Mystic Street. During the next two decades, hundreds of citizens used the facility to produce programming for Arlington cable subscribers in the three classic categories: Public, Educational, and Government (PEG). Under that original license, an organization was formed to help the public learn about and to utilize the studio. The board of directors and members of that organization, known as Arlington Cable Access (ACA), maintained the www.arlingtonstudio.com website until the end of September 2006. That site, now listed as www.acmi.tv and now operated by Arlington Community Media Inc. (ACMI), is the site currently in use.
April 2003 – Arlington Community Media Inc. (ACMI) was incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a not-for-profit corporation. Subsequently and over time, a board of directors was chosen, the organization was designated as Arlington’s official access corporation by Arlington’s Board of Selectmen, and the corporation was granted tax-exempt status by the IRS.
July 2006 – ACMI signed its first agreement with the Town of Arlington, represented by its Board of Selectmen, to assume management of Arlington Studio and PEG community access television for the town.
Sept 2006 – ACMI formally undertook, on September 26, 2006, the daily operation of Arlington Studio at 85 Park Avenue in Arlington Heights as the Town’s official community media and public access corporation and as operator and manager of Arlington Studio.
During 2007, the government access channel, lost to neglect more than 20 years earlier, was reinstated at ACMI’s Arlington Studio. By the opening of the company’s first Annual General Meeting in October, ACMI had come to be regarded as a leader in community access technology and innovation in Massachusetts.
Today ACMI offers monthly training workshops to its growing membership so that its members may learn to operate the new HD cameras and computer editing equipment that they will subsequently use in producing local programming, or in covering community political, cultural, athletic, or other events. Studio production operations and technical directing for TV are offered as well This sharing of knowledge and skills and the resulting television programs not only serve to bring our community together in common witness of shared events, but also provides marketable skills to community members. Some of our very own staff and interns have covered regional sports events and, in one case, one of ACMI’s finest was called to Fenway Park for World Series duty!
ACMI’s staff, now expanded to seven, continues to pursue with eagerness its mission to place the latest video production and editing technology within reach of any Arlington resident. Fortunately for the staff, it’s fun and rewarding to bring Arlington’s people ever more in touch with their government, their educators, their community volunteers and caregivers, and each other. Viva Public Access TV !
