Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) is a non-profit organization that broadcasts programming on four public-access television cable TV stations in Manhattan, New York and provides a community media center that enables individuals and groups to produce shows for its network.
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It has operated since 1992, and is currently funded by Time Warner Cable, Verizon and RCN Corporation in a franchise agreement with New York City. Its studios were initially in a rented facility on 23rd Street above ETC/Metro-Access Inc. Studios. It currently operates out of a studio it owns at 537 West 59th Street. In 2002 MNN had two satellite facilities: one on the Lower East Side, a partnership with the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the city's oldest community media centers; and another in East Harlem, a partnership with PRdream.com, also known as MediaNoche, the city's oldest new media gallery based in a community. The relationship with PRdream/MediaNoche ended in 2006. MNN reopened a smaller, temporary operation in an East Harlem, basement storefront on Lexington Avenue.
MNN instituted one of the first community media grant programs in the country, providing video equipment, staff and training for community groups in New York City. This program helped groups to document some of the most historically significant issues of the 1990s and 2000s, including AIDS activism, labor organizing, police brutality, community gardens, immigrants rights and LGBT rights. From MNN's inception in 1992, it has aimed to serve as a public access station, as well an organizational hub for community media. In addition, MNN producers, staff and community groups led opposition to telecommunications corporations, who the group alleged to be circumventing mandated public obligations to give back to local communities where they run their cable and wires on public streets and land.
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