Alliance for Community Media

The predecessor to the ACM, the NFLCP, was formed in 1976 by a group of media activists based in the Alternate Media Center (AMC), a New York University (NYU)-based organization created by American documentary filmmaker George C. Stoney and Red Burns to encourage citizens to tell their own stories through video production.

The NFLCP held its first national convention and Hometown USA video awards in 1978 in Madison, Wisconsin, at which time a board was established to lead the non-profit organization.

The NFLCP persuaded industry and government regulatory agencies to dedicate a portion of the new cable broadcast spectrum to public-access television, a requirement that was codified in federal communications law in 1984. Part of the agreement was to set aside bandwidth and funding for TV channels dedicated to public, educational, and governmental access programming (PEG).

The 1970s and 1980s were the heyday of access television, with hundreds of TV operations springing up in communities around the country. The ACM grew in response to the unique needs of this group of professionals, many of whom ran small operations that required them to multitask as program producer, manager, technical support, and more. The ACM facilitated training, networking, and resources to support this specialized role.

In 1992 the organization was renamed “Alliance for Community Media” so as to recognize the scope to be more than “just cable”. In the following decades new forms of media delivery became incorporated into the average PEG operation and by extension, into the agenda of the ACM's educational programs.