Notifying the Public: Survival Information Television 1972

New Orleans Video Access Center

Ever wonder where old media ends up? As a population, it is imperative that we ensure that local media with community voices are not only preserved, but made accessible again. Preserving transformative content from New Orleans’ history is necessary to continue growing as a community. Looking back on the past and learning from it will enlighten and benefit New Orleans.

New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) works to preserve obsolescent media before it’s too late by converting them into media we can access today. From old VCRs and half-inch tapes to Vimeo videos, NOVAC’s archive spans 40 years of community media dating to early purchase of consumer video cameras. One look in the vault shows how community television actively reached out to poor and working class New Orleanians.

In the 1970s, NOVAC produced closed-circuit programs called Survival Information Television (SIT). The videos included informative skits and advertisements that communicated solutions to issues that commonly effected lower income New Orleanian families. For example, a video promoting a catchy jingle about Early and Periodic Screening Diagnostic and Treatment for children with Medicaid. Spreading the word of these free facilities to those who needed them the most was crucial in SIT. The videos were created “for the people, by the people” in a specific manner to both attract and educate their audience. In order to reach the precise crowd, videos would be played on tape loops in hospitals, courthouses and social service waiting rooms, where low-income citizens frequently visited.

A SIT compilation reel that I screened included a video providing information on a free clinic for low income families in New Orleans, the Well Baby Clinic. On it, a woman enters a car repair shop to fix her engine that had been making noises all week. The men in the repair shop encourage her to be more efficient and use preventative maintenance. They urge her to be conscious when she feels something is off in her life, whether it be the car, her health or her child’s health. When her baby starts crying, they inform her about the Well Baby Clinic that provides free checkups for babies. The men describe the clinic’s free vision tests, hearing tests, dental work and more free accessible health checks. When the woman complains about her broken down car, they remind her that the Well Baby Clinic provides free transportation as well.

SIT represents how media can help achieve the ideals of a liberal democratic society. The videos promoted the ideal that every individual has the right to an equal protection of human rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, today we are seeing less and less of a liberal democratic society, especially regarding the media. The concentration of media ownership that has arisen with conglomerate news organizations leads to significant faults of democratic processes. The limited range of opinions presented by mainstream media serve to limit the horizon and landscape of political discourse. They get to decide what is “normal” and what is totally out of the picture. Corporate media today is limiting the accessibility of contesting views and creating a single point of view for the public to follow.