Tom Bishop

Tom Bishop was executive director of Media Bridges in Cincinnati, Ohio, a public access organization founded in 1988 that combined community television channels, production training, nonprofit media support, and community radio into one of the Midwest's most comprehensive access operations. He served on the ACM national board during his tenure, contributing field leadership alongside his station management work. Media Bridges received funding through a state fund provided by Time Warner Cable until the cable giant successfully lobbied to end the fund in 2011, forcing the organization into an unsustainable position that ultimately led to its closure in December 2013. He received the ACM's Sue Miller Buske Leadership Award in 2008.

In the public fight over Media Bridges' funding, Tom made the argument explicitly: the city's own surveys showed that low-income Cincinnati residents depended most on what the station provided, and that cutting it was a policy choice to defund infrastructure serving the people with the least access to other platforms. That argument, made publicly and with documented evidence, became part of the national record on what happens when community media loses its political support.

Tom's tenure at Media Bridges is part of both the leadership history and the cautionary history of community media: what stations can be when sustained, and what communities lose when the political will to fund them runs out.