politics, meet geeks. Geeks, meet politics.

[trochee]

I'm a board member at a local public access studio. We're having an interesting problem, from both a socio-political point of view and a geeky epiphenomena point of view.

Like most public access studios, it has a wide variety of producers, who are often at loggerheads. Let's call one of them C for Christian, another P for pornographer. Now C and C's friends prefer that P (and P's friends, like G for Gay) not have any shows at all. (For the record, I don't have any love for P or P's work.)

The studio, of course, thinks that C, P, and G should all be able to have shows if they can put them together, and makes no preference among them. Unfortunately for P, the studio is restricted by the city to allow "adult" shows on the air only after 1:00a.m. This wouldn't seem like a big deal, but the studio schedules shows by lottery -- producers fill out what times they want their show to be on, and rank their choices, and draw lots. High-scorers get their top choices.

C., however, chooses a ranking-order in such a way as to maximize C's chances that C's show will end up scheduled in one of the few available post-1am hours, scuttling P's chances to have a show.

My reaction to this is that I think that we should revise the lottery so that those shows which are restricted by a studio decision to certain hours (e.g., "adult" shows to after 1am, live shows to when the doors are open) get a better chance at those time-slots than those shows which could be broadcast at times outside of those restrictions.

So I have two questions -- one for the politicos, and one for the geeks:

For the politicos: am I crazy to think that what C is doing is obnoxious? I'd like to prioritize a diversity of programming, and to discourage producers from strategically trying to exclude each other. I'd like to design the lottery/schedule-selection so that it encourages co-operative scheduling, rather than exclusionary timeschedule coups-d'etat. Is this an outrageously radical position? Am I disrespecting C's rights, in a way, by discounting C's belief that P.'s show should not be on the air?

For the geeks: assuming that my political decision to make these changes is correct, is there an easy way to make a new and yet comprehensible lottery so that it is difficult for C's kind of blackout competitive scheduling is impossible, or at least penalized? Note that we cannot count on C to be honest about why C's scheduling always seems to wind up at the same time as those shows that C disapproves of.

I've been kicking around an idea of insisting on bloc-preferences, in contiguous regions across days or along a given day. Also, I've been considering some kind of instant-runoff with tie-breaking, but that's a reverse strategy from the usual use of instant-runoffs.

Suggestions? Thanks!

Comments

[my-robotic-limb.livejournal.com]

How many hours per (scheduling period) does C take? How many does P? I've got some ideas, but it's difficult to come up with a balanced system without knowledge of the remainder of the existing order.

-a.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

The schedules are basically completely full. As it is, we turn people away every season. (This is why we're trying to negotiate a second channel with the City, but that's a different problem.)

No one producer is allowed more than one weekly show -- I think it runs an hour and a half. But C and C's spouse, and a bunch of C's friends too, all each want their own show, and in at least one season so far, they've organized like this.

Once the regularly-scheduled shows are chosen, producers may sign up for one-time-only shows (OTOs) to fill in the gaps. There are always gaps, but they're not always at the same time every week.

In addition, I'd like to make a priority for a few other items, like locally-produced programming should get a priority over taped stuff, and live shows should get a priority during the times that the studio is open.

[chr0me-kitten.livejournal.com]

You're not disrespecting C's rights. C has every right to C's beliefs, but as long as P is not violating the rules of the station or the laws of the community, then C's opinion is just that - an opinion. C also has the right to manipulate the situation in terms of scheduling as long as the rules allow it; however, you don't have to like it.

If diversity of programming is your priority, work towards schedule changes that first take into account the laws of the community (people wiht shows that fall under the "after 10" time restriction get first dibs on those time slots). That won't completely fix the sitation, but it could help. Also, I don't know if it's an option, but has anyone directly confronted C on this issue? C might not like P or P's friend G, but C is also supposed to not be into deceit.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

C has been pretty good about deceit thus far -- C comes and confronts staff and board members about letting the Eeevil onto the air quite regularly, and has made C's intent quite clear in the scheduling thing.

"First dibs" has been problematic as well; we have such a scheduling crunch at the studio that to reserve timeslots for anyone would be unfair to those people who get bumped off the bottom -- I can hear the screams now "I got bumped, but P's show got a special reserved position! are you trying to *promote* P's show?" (I might even be the one screaming!)

I've been trying to think of a weighted lottery instead, or (crazy thought) some kind of Yankee Swap maneuver that would allow forced trades with somebody who's listed a different slot as a similar preference. But that seems kinda overkill. I'm also wondering if we could pass a staff rule that "competitive/blackout scheduling is discouraged; we're here to give alternative voices a chance, not to restrict each other's points-of-view" so that at least we could call this behavior out. Maybe (I hope!) that's all that might be needed.