A kaleidoscopic celebration of creativity and the boundaries of free speech, David Shadrack Smith’s Public Access revisits the birth of cable television, providing a complex oral history of its promises as a mirror for society and the first wave of media-creator culture. Initially, the radical democracy and experimentation of public-access television mirrored the work of pioneers like video artist Nam June Paik and the early collective Videofreex. A year after Manhattan Cable Television’s launch of Channel C, the Videofreex—then based in upstate Lanesville, New York—launched their own pirate television station, as highlighted in Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin’s essential documentary Here Come the Videofreex.
Manhattan Cable Television (MCT) launched its first public-access station, Channel C, in 1971. This was a pre-YouTube era when providing airtime for independent content creators was a requirement for running a cable utility. It wasn’t until the advent of Channel J—a “leased” access station featuring explicit dispatches from the infamous swingers club Plato’s Retreat—that public access became profitable for MCT’s parent company, Time Warner.
Organized by Smith and his team, including editor Geoff Gruetzmacher and archival producer Anne-Marcelle Ngabirano, Public Access serves as an oral and visual history of MCT’s stations. It features interviews with staffers, on-air talent, hosts, and executives who were initially energized by the platform’s potential. Staffers Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers saw the station as a reflection of art and community, viewing New York as a “testing ground for change” in culture, technology, and sexuality. They point to the groundbreaking club CBGB as the musical version of public access; like that club (which is now a John Varvatos store), nostalgia and creative expression have since been monetized and commercialized. Smith chooses to focus on the work itself rather than the “creator economy” that followed, which often prioritizes engagement over personal expression. Early programs, as Time Warner Vice President and self-proclaimed “First Amendment lunatic” Charlotte Jones tells us, had the potential to highlight voices far outside the mainstream.
Early Channel C programs gave artists a chance to “make their own damn media” with shows like TV Party, which celebrated the downtown art scene and hosted guests like Fab Five Freddy, Amos Poe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, and David Byrne. It gave these future luminaries a public playground for expression. Slowly, however, those voices shifted to include fare like Speak Your Piece, a “weekly sexual survey,” and Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue, which featured live dispatches from the peep shows of 42nd Street. These programs walked a fine line and eventually led to Channel J becoming an opt-in station that was scrambled by default.
Channel J also offered a vital space for queer-friendly programming like Men In Films, Emerald City, and Lou Maletta and Michael Musto’s Gay Cable Network, which provided essential information about AIDS at a time when there was a vacuum in the mainstream around prevention and safe sex. This explicit content naturally raised questions about free speech; figures like Al Goldstein ultimately sued to prevent measures that made Channel J less accessible, viewing them as a violation of his freedom of expression.
Similar to Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public, Smith’s Public Access documents the boundaries of expression in a vacuum. Naturally, when given total freedom, human behavior can gravitate toward extremes, even if the experiments start off as playful. It should be noted that pornography has often been at the vanguard of new technology, from home video to streaming. Public access was no exception—while Channel J created headaches for Time Warner executives during the Reagan years, it became a lifeline for the LGBTQ community.
While Smith and his team work with a vast archive and leave a few threads untied, Public Access is an incredible look at the first wave of content creators who paved the way for today’s YouTubers and podcasters. While some voices, like teen Jake Fogelnest of Squirt TV, eventually reached mainstream audiences via MTV, the archive is so rich that it is impossible to contain this televised revolution in just 107 minutes. For those seeking an introduction to this history, Public Access—along with Here Come the Videofreex—is essential viewing.
Public Access premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.