Tammy Baldwin

Tammy Baldwin is a United States Senator from Wisconsin and a consistent legislative supporter of public, educational, and government access television. She co-sponsored the Community Access Preservation Act, legislation designed to protect PEG channels from the financial erosion caused by statewide franchising laws that stripped local governments of their ability to negotiate cable franchise agreements, and repeatedly co-sponsored the Protecting Community Television Act, which would undo 2019 FCC rulemaking that allowed cable companies to count in-kind contributions against the franchise fees that fund PEG operations. That FCC order forced local governments to choose between supporting community television and funding other public services, and Baldwin's co-sponsorship of the legislative remedy placed her among the Senate's active defenders of the PEG funding structure. She was the first recipient of Wisconsin Community Media's Friend of Access Award.

Wisconsin lost all PEG funding under its statewide franchise law, making Tammy's advocacy particularly consequential for the stations and communities in her own state. Her framing of community television as essential local infrastructure in a time of shrinking local news reflects the field's own argument: that PEG channels exist to serve the people commercial media has stopped covering.

In 2017 the ACM recognized her sustained support with its Special Recognition Award, an acknowledgment that legislative allies who understand what community media is for matter as much to the field's survival as the station operators themselves.