A Round "PEG" for a Round Hole: Advocating for the Town of Oyster Bay's Public Access Channel Restrictions.

This article comments on an old trend but new version of advertising called "alternative" or "guerilla" marketing, and emphasizes the need to restrict such practices so that they can't proliferate the public access media. Guerilla marketing aims at giving expensive items to trendsetting college students, potentially hot showbiz players, and young nightclub-goers with the understanding that each will use and talk up the products. Other examples include extensive product placements in movies and on programs of individual television networks. To protect the customers from frequent bombardment of commercials, devices like TiVo were introduced, which allow users to record many hours of television programming while skipping commercials. Executives of individual network channels fear that the use of such devices has ill implications for their bulk of profits, drawn from advertising revenues. The more advertisers fear that their messages will not reach the intended audience of television viewers, the more they are likely to seek other outlets for these messages. One of these possible dangerous alternative outlets is public access television, which receives little protection from corporate advertisers under the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 ("CCPA"). This Note urges municipalities, cable franchisees, and courts to adopt the same protections afforded to the public by the Oyster Bay, New York cable franchise agreement.