This question was asked to determine how participants receive information about their community and to discover the potential role of PEG as an important communications venue for the residents of Worcester. The following charts show the responses of the thirty-nine participants who answered this question:
Each participant was asked to check as many as applied. Numbers shown in the charts are percentages of participants who checked each of these choices, the following are the real numbers of responses:
Broadcast Television 34
Radio 31
Local Newspaper 37
PEG 25
Religious Organizations 13
Organizations 25
Internet 33
Neighbors 23
Other 16
While the Local Newspaper is the most favored medium for receiving information about the community, PEG television was ranked quite high as a source of information about the community, with sixty-four percent of respondents answering they received information about the community through PEG access television. This sixty-four percent response rate is ten to forty-six points higher than all the other studies we have conducted. Worcester faces challenges from Broadcast television because it does not have local Broadcast channels, information on community events is spotty because Worcester Broadcast channels are transmitted from Boston. Only CBS Channel 4 maintains what they refer to as a “community desk” in Worcester, but no studios. Because of this, Worcester residents are in a position of having to depend on the local access channels for local information.