Sam Behrend

Sam Behrend is connected to GrassRoots Television in Aspen, Colorado, which was founded by citizens of Aspen in 1972 and is recognized as the first and oldest community-operated, open-source media center and television station in the United States. GrassRoots operates public and educational access channels reaching approximately 18,000 cable subscribers across the Roaring Fork Valley, including Aspen, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood Springs, and has built a 45,000-title community video archive in partnership with the American Archive of Public Media and the Library of Congress. Sam received the ACM's Dirk Koning-George Stoney Award for Humanistic Communication in 2006.

GrassRoots' model, entirely funded by community contributions and local grants without cable franchise fee support, demonstrated a different form of sustainability for community media: one built on direct community investment rather than regulatory mandate.

His connection to GrassRoots places him at one of the field's origin points, the station that proved before most others that communities would build and sustain their own media if given the means and the mission.