Most of these figures are from the 2000 US Census.  Here they are rounded to the nearest thousand.  For some locations where the Census Bureau gives no numbers I found comparable numbers at various sites within the state’s administration.  For other areas I’ve not yet found numbers – these are currently erroneously reported here as zero. 

Coverage Area: 

Since there is such a variety of franchising arrangements, using coverage area seems the most appropriate way to begin to comparatively measure access providers’ services, structures, and procedures.  We start here with the assumption that most providers are specific to one city or town.  If the coverage area is a major city (100,000+ population), its name appears in all caps. Those providers that are specific to a county are designated with a “(co)” in front of their name, so that they will sort to the top of their states’ lists.   

Those that serve a combination of cities or towns are denoted with a “+” following the place name of what seems to be either their office/studio location, or the largest place (in population size) they serve.  Wherever possible I have added together the population figures for these multiple service areas, but there are many of these whose population figures are not complete.  In some cases, it’s just impossible to tell – “the Denver area”, for example, or “twin cities area.” 

Although the “Descending” table is presented as descending population of coverage area, I made one exception to this for New York City.  The Census Bureau 1998 estimate for New York City is 7.4 million.  I’ve placed that at the top, even though each of the five boroughs have their own access provider and discrete channels.  The population figures for the boroughs come from a New York State site.  In 1999 Manhattan Neighborhood Network began testing the development of an all-borough network. 

Access Provider Type: 

For layout purposes, I have abbreviated names.  Also for layout purposes I've combined the cable operators and the educational institutions into one column - there are so few of either of these represented by web sites.  This reflects a major skew in the data caused by only measuring web sites.  I know there are many more cable operator access providers than are included here – I imagine most of these would not have their own web sites. 

It is not always readily apparent from a site’s text whether the provider is a non-profit corp., a government agency, an educational institution, or a cable operator.  There certainly must be mis-assignments here. 
  

Rules/Schedules/Mission Statements: 

If the provider’s web site has separate pages for these three common elements, I have provided a direct link to it.  In some places rules for programming are at a different location than other rules, and there I have usually cited the programming rules link.   

Similarly, schedules are variously treated.  If a site uses a central page to depart to schedules for multiple channels, or individual days of the week, I have cited that central page.  If there is no central page, but only multiple pages for multiple channel types, I have normally cited the governmental programming channel – simply as an aid for my review of legislative bodies’ coverage. 

If a site has no separate page for a mission statement, I may instead give a link here for an “About Us” page, or a “Brief History” page, if either of these is available. 

So that the tables might have these hot links available for all providers, certain coverage areas – those with more than one provider - will appear on more than one row in the table.