Focusing on introducing a participatory public television system which would actively serve the specific needs and interests of the community by directly involving the citizens in the station's decision-making process, the experiment examined the relationship of Cattaraugus County, a rural depressed county, to the new public television station introduced specifically to serve the area. Begun when the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and Cattaraugus Community Action (CCA) responded to a notice that funds were available through a national "Mobilization of Resources Program", the experiment sought to "eliminate the deficiency of knowledge among the low-income and the community-at-large by mobilizing the local resources to make use of a local Educational Television network". This paper outlines the development of the participatory television experiment in Cattaraugus County, examining in particular the efforts to generate local participation during the project's initial phase. The project's origins and assumptions, objectives, and strategies used to involve the communities are discussed. The efforts to generate local involvement are described, with in-depth analysis of the activities in the small towns of Cuba and Springville. An overview and analysis of the findings and their potential application to other such efforts at developing feedback mechanisms for public television are presented. (Author/NQ)