Public access television existed at the frequency of good intention. No ratings. No sponsors. No notes from the network. A person, a borrowed camera, and heart.
The parallel to the Good Web is direct: anybody, any channel, no gatekeeping by production value or corporate approval. The IndieWeb is to corporate social media what public access was to cable networks.
The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 mandated cable operators to set aside channels for public, educational, and government (PEG) use as a condition of municipal franchise agreements. Every city that let a cable company run wire through its streets was owed a channel — a commons.
Notable examples:
Paper Tiger Television made the low-fidelity aesthetic into an argument: the expensive slickness of commercial television was not a neutral condition. It was a statement about who had resources and whose speech came pre-validated by production value.
Consumer-grade equipment made broadcasting accessible to people who had never been near a camera. Grainy images and unstable framing did not disqualify the message.
Public access television as a legal commons existed because cable had a monopoly on distribution. That monopoly is gone. The internet replaced it — with the same consolidation problems and new ones.
Radio is television's older sibling. Pirate stations, micro-broadcasters, people who went on air because commercial broadcasting was never going to give them a slot.
The distinction that matters: a podcast is a document. Radio is a presence. You tune in, you catch what's happening, you're in the middle of something.
See AzuraCast for the technical implementation of a self-hosted community radio station built in this spirit.