Roxie Cole

Roxie Cole led the founding of Dayton Access Television, the public access station that began as Access-30 Dayton and went live to cable homes around Dayton on March 1, 1978. DATV started with a budget of $39,000 in cash and $50,000 worth of black-and-white television equipment, operating from one room in the basement of Roberts Hall at the United Theological Seminary. Its first staff consisted of one person: Roxie herself.

Roxie served as DATV’s Executive Director and became one of the defining public access leaders in Dayton and the ACM Central States region. In 1984, the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, the predecessor organization to the ACM, recognized her with the Dirk Koning–George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication, one of the award’s earliest honors.

Roxie became known in the Central States region as the “Mother of public access,” and the region later created the Roxie L. Cole Leadership Award to honor people who carry forward her vision. Her story is the kind of founding story at the core of community media: one person, a small grant, a basement room, borrowed equipment, and the conviction that a city deserved its own television.