The channel went live in January, but the city celebrated the opening of the studio Monday with a ribbon cutting, during which Mayor Andre Dickens and other city leaders spoke.
“Elevating the voice of the people of Atlanta is what public access television is and has always been,” Dickens said.
“This is about your voice on your channel, from your station in your city.”
Launched in the ’80s, Channel 24 featured a wide array of community-oriented programming, from educational to pure entertainment.
There was “The American Music Show,” which featured drag and musical performances, sketch comedy and field reports from around the city, where a young RuPaul got his start.
Butler Street YMCA, the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus Inc., the NAACP and other organizations regularly produced programs that aired on the channel.
Channel 24 is separate from Channel 26, which airs information about city government.
At Channel 24’s height, thousands of people in the city were trained to use community media equipment and facilities.
The channel went off the air in 2023 after the city’s contract ended with its previous operator.
The city started a process to locate a new operator, but a request for proposals on public access was canceled after receiving a limited number of applications.
Residents complained to the city about the lack of a public access station.
The complaints came almost every single day, City Council member Antonio Lewis said during the ceremony.
Last year, the mayor created a committee to make recommendations on restarting its public access media program.
The committee included Jabari Simama, who was the station’s founding director of access, Marion Fedrick, chief of staff for Georgia State University, and Rick Clear, president of Atlanta Video One Network.
The committee delivered a report in December that recommended transitioning the community media program to a permanent operator by July, establishing an annual operating budget of $650,000 and creating a central hub at 2 Peachtree.
It also recommended the operator establish an online presence with a website and social media accounts, launch a mobile app and expand accessibility to popular streaming platforms to reach a broader audience, as well as place a greater emphasis on youth engagement than in the past.
The city has ambitious goals for expanding the station.
Dickens encouraged outgrowing the space.
Lewis mentioned making the technology and training accessible to every neighborhood and expanding the initiative to recreation centers.
But a challenge ATL Community Media faces is actually reaching the public.
The station is relaunching as people’s consumption of traditional television continues to decline.
They’re cutting cable subscriptions, an important source of revenue for many of these stations, and instead turning toward streaming services and social media to find information and entertainment.
The number of local access channel operations has decreased over the years.
According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, about 2,500 public, educational and governmental access operations existed during the medium’s heyday in the 1980s.
In 2021, there were 1,600.
But one positive is that cameras are smaller, less expensive and higher quality, Simama told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Producers can be more agile.
“We’re in an age now where information is very important, but we’re also in a time where alternative facts present themselves as facts,” Simama said.
“One of the ways we’re going to be able to deal with the environment where there’s a lot of hostility against the trust of the media is to be able to give people a direct voice to speak to one another without having to go through gatekeepers.”
There are several shows running on the channel.
Among them are “Now Dig This,” a rock music variety show featuring live performances and interviews; “Comfort ATL,” which showcases Black-owned restaurants in the city; and “Financially Focused with Dennise Williams,” a financial literacy program.
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