About Educational Access Television (EATV)

San Francisco's educational access television channels (EATV1 and EATV2) are programmed in the public interest by City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District.

EATV programming is distributed from City College of San Francisco's Broadcast Electronic Media Arts Department facilities located in the Creative Arts Extension Building on City College of San Francisco's Ocean Campus. Production facilities are located on both the Ocean and Mission Campuses.

Our primary goal is to extend learning opportunities by cablecasting diverse and quality educational television for all San Francisco communities.

EATV has been collaboratively programmed through a partnership between the San Francisco Unified School District and the San Francisco Community College District. The channel has been entrusted to this partnership since 1989 as part of the original Viacom Cable franchise agreement, and now with its successor, Comcast Cable. EATV is currently programmed by the Distance Learning (Telecourse) Office and the Broadcast Electronic Media Arts Department of City College of San Francisco.

EATV's vision is to provide the highest value in educational access programming and related services to cable subscribers in the City of San Francisco. EATV showcases information and experiences aimed at broadening the horizons of its viewers and, it is hoped, positively affect their perceptions, understandings and ultimately their quality of life.

EATV's mission is to promote standards of excellence while providing imaginative and flexible educational programming to meet the changing needs of our diverse San Francisco community with obligations to two primary groups:

  • Cable subscribers and residents of the city of San Francisco who view and are thus affected directly or indirectly by EATV's programming.
  • San Francisco Community College and San Francisco Unified School District students, faculty, families, staff, administrators, and their Boards.

EATV's potential viewers include, in addition to San Francisco's nearly 190,000 cable subscribers; the Unified School District's 64,000 K-12 students and their families; 7,000 Unified School District teachers and staff; 93,000 City College students and over 24,000 City College faculty and staff.

EATV serves a larger educational mission for San Francisco by providing information about community resources; by being an outlet for student video, film and multimedia productions; and by offering access to information and education to those who are physically challenged or housebound.

EATV achieves its goals by:

  • Showcasing student work.
  • Providing unique educational programming generated by the San Francisco Unified School District and San Francisco Community College District emphasizing programming not offered by other channels.
  • Providing educational experiences for students in technical operations, program production, station programming, publicity, graphic design, administration, management, and general station operations.
  • Publicizing events of the San Francisco Community College District and the San Francisco Unified School District.
  • Providing an informational outlet for San Francisco's diverse educational community.
  • Providing community information and exposure for community based organizations that also have educational missions.
  • Producing videos for the San Francisco Community College District to further its mission and goals.