Cable access television is a general term covering a number of special services provided by cable television companies to communities in the United States. There are several other names for this, including local origination, community access and PEG access (short for public, educational, and government access). Cable companies are required to provide these services at a certain level, though the amount of locally-produced programming varies from area to area. The most well-known cable access service is public access where members of the public can create and broadcast their own (typically very low-budget) programming. Cable access and other terms are often used synonymously with public access television.
Local governments, educational institutions, and, to a certain extent, commercial entities have rights to the cable system along with the general public. Educational access is used for providing educational material while also allowing area schools to broadcast special events ranging from concerts to school board meetings. Government access is used to broadcast city council meetings and other municipal events and activities. Across the U.S., more than 20,000 hours of public, educational, and government access programming is produced each week.
Leased access is used largely for advertising. Time on those channels can often be purchased by businesses outside of the local area.
Different municipalities have varying contracts with the local cable companies. Depending on the size of the community being served and the contractual agreement between a municipality and the cable provider, these different access types may all be combined into a single channel, or they may be split across several. There have been some controversial moves made in certain areas across the country, where local programming is outsourced to an entity other than the cable provider. Often, this squeezes the amount of time available for public access programming.
A notable cable access success story is Tom Green, whose guerilla gross-out comedy first appeared on Ottawa's Rogers Cable access channel.
