Verizon has agreed to offer public interest programming and national organizations focused on civil rights and diversity as part of the video-on-demand package for its FiOS TV service.

In an agreement announced today with five organizations, Verizon will launch a pilot program called Community Studio, which will feature a library of public interest and civil rights content each month. Subscribers to FiOS TV will be able to access the content through its video-on-demand service.

“FiOS TV’s amazing capacity enables us to offer a wide variety of programming, including diverse content featuring voices from the public interest community,” said Kathryn Brown, Verizon’s senior vice president of public policy development and corporate responsibility, in a prepared statement. “Our viewers will benefit from additional content choices, and the organizations will gain the opportunity to reach our diverse and growing subscriber base nationwide.”

The groups involved are the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Association for People with Disabilities, Black Leadership Forum and U.S. Distance Learning Association.

According to Verizon, the Community Studio concept grew out of discussions between the company and 35 civil rights leaders.

Verizon and other telephone companies have come under fire from civil rights and consumer groups for allegedly “red-lining” or excluding lower-income neighborhoods when they plan construction of new broadband networks such as Verizon’s FiOS fiber-to-the-premises network.

“Verizon’s Community Studio is an historic first, giving members of the civil and human rights community an opportunity to use new and emerging technologies to enhance the national dialogue,” said Wade Henderson, executive director, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, in a prepared statement.

According to Verizon, TVN Entertainment, which provides its VoD service including backend support, transport and element management tools, will provide encoding, asset management and distribution services to the partner groups as part of the Community Studio pilot.