digital PEG channels and art

The United States is slated to cutover from analog tv and radio to digital tv and radio stations in February, 2009. As I understand it, one analog tv channel can be replaced with up to eight digital channels. In the state of Iowa, recently, the state took control of community franchise contracts, with a law that entitles each community with 50,000 population or less to "up to two" PEG channels. Public access tv channels (PEG) would necessarily become up to 16 digital PEG channels in February of 2009. Iowa has a few thousand communities, and when February comes, could potentially have tens of thousands of digital PEG channels. So, how would the art community take advantage of all these new public access channels that enable live interactive tv talk shows and live interactive radio talk shows, and all the educational stations that will be created?

Oh, no need to worry. A low-end desktop computer is all that's needed to prepare digital files for viewing on tv's and radios. The state-of-the-art audio and video software can be obtained freely from Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. So, what actually could happen, is, every small community will become a very active recycling project gathering older computers to turn into state-of-the-art digital recording studios, so residents can work from their home as easily as they might work from the local public access studio. If you're in Iowa, contact me at [email protected], and let's make Iowa one huge digital media arts community, together.