Gretjen Clausing of Philly CAM talks the technology behind public access TV

Gretjen Clausing thinks it’s “just perfect” that she grew up in Media.

She has lived in Philadelphia since 1989 — currently Roxborough — but from studying film and photography at Ithaca College to helping organize the first Philadelphia Film Festival to working at the Prince Music Theater or the Scribe Video Center, Clausing says she’s always had a hand in some form of media.

Gretjen Clausing

And now, the 45-year-old has a new role in the same industry.

Last June, Clausing took on the role of shepherding Philadelphia Community Access Media, the city’s long-awaited public-access cable channel. It’s a big role, considering, as she says, “that Philadelphia had the dubious reputation of being the last big city in the United States without a public access channel.”

There are public broadcasters like WHYY and WYBE, which has recently been rebranded as MiND TV, but Clausing says it’s time Philadelphians have a source for their best shot at getting the most local voices on the air. Now, Clausing is tasked with making a public-access cable channel that just launched in October a serious player in a two-decades old game, but she says she has all the advantages in the deck.

Read more

Ten Philadelphia competitors and their January Web traffic

Click to enlarge.

Perhaps one of the most influential realities of the Web is metrics. The details of traffic and audience online have so rapidly become expansive that they have likely not yet been entirely harnessed.

Arguments still rage around the accuracy and importance of a myriad of Web analytics, but, away from page views, an increasing standard is to compare sites by their monthly unique visitors, though that number’s efficacy has no doubt come into question.

Until now, very little attention has been paid publicly to comparing Philadelphia’s many competitors by way of traffic comparison. With the first numbers for 2010 released this month by public Web analytics company Compete, Technically Philly decided to compile the first such digest.

Read more