from: City Pulse [1]

Whither public access?

Written by T.M. Shultz
Wednesday, 11 April 2007

When the Lansing City Council approved its first franchise agreement last week with Arialink Telecom LLC under a new state cable franchising law, Christine Timmon was thrilled.

Dressed in her trademark tiara and heavy jewelry, Timmon, a City Council “regular” with multiple public access television programs, threw her arms around Arialink’s startled managing member, Jason Schreiber and cried, “Oh thank God, Jason. Gimme a hug.”

Schreiber obliged.

Timmon uses a Comcast Corp. studio on Miller Road reserved for public access programs. She wants more money from the city, which gives grants to Timmon and others who produce public access shows. The city’s funds come from fees paid by Comcast. Image

But Timmon may not find Arialink and the new state law much of an improvement. In fact, some cable law experts say the state’s new law clouds the future of public access, education and government television channels, known as PEG channels. Especially vulnerable are shows like Timmon’s that don’t have their own production facilities and depend on someone else, like a cable company, to provide them.

First, a little background: On Jan. 1, after much debate, the state’s new cable law went into effect. The law requires cities to have uniform franchise agreements in place for all comers. The days of a city individually negotiating contracts to the minutest detail are over. Now all they can negotiate is how much to charge in franchise and PEG fees. The fees are paid by cable companies to municipalities in exchange for the right to use public rights of way for cable company equipment.

The City Council’s recent agreement with Arialink is now the guide by which all future Lansing cable providers must abide. That includes Comcast, whose franchise agreement with the city expired on Dec. 31. Comcast continues to operate in Lansing under its old franchise, although by law it must sign a new agreement based on the Arialink franchise by the end of April, according to City Attorney Brigham Smith.

As for PEG channels, the state law — and thus Lansing’s new law — simply says that a new provider must “make capacity” available on its system for the same number of channels that existed on Jan. 1, said Neil Lehto, a Michigan attorney familiar with the state’s cable issues.

The problem with the new law is in how it might be interpreted, Lehto said. The legislative intent was that cable companies provide PEG channels, Lehto continued. While that sounds straightforward, someone may challenge whether “provide” means to set up a studio and equipment or merely give already produced shows a channel to air on.

Only the fate of shows on Channel 16, which carries 78 public access programs such as Timmon’s, might be in doubt. Lansing’s government and educational channels are produced by the city and schools themselves with their own equipment, said Randy Hannan, the city’s communications director.

Even with the new law’s uncertainty, Hannan said, the city is “absolutely committed to public access.”

In fact, for the last couple of years it’s been kicking around the idea of a community media center that would act as a television production studio for the entire region, Hannan said.

He grants that the idea isn’t new and no specific timeline is involved, but he said the idea is being worked on by a group of interested citizens.

Lehto said the issue of local public access is important in a democracy because such channels are often the voice of public protest. They give those who wouldn’t otherwise have a public forum a way to debate the issues of the day.

Even Arialink’s Schreiber agrees the public access waters are murky: “There’s a lot of debate whether this state law will stand up to challenge,” he said.

Comcast has been serving Lansing since 2002 when it bought the system from AT&T Broadband TV, said Jerome Espy, the company’s vice president of communications for the Midwest Division.

Espy said consumers should see higher bills now that the city has set its franchise fee at 5 percent and its PEG fee at 2 percent, the maximum allowed by the new state law. Under its current contract with the city, Comcast is only paying a 3 percent franchise fee and no additional PEG fee, Hannan said. He explained that the city takes a small portion of the 3 percent franchise fee and divvies it up among the various PEG channel users.

Arialink’s Schreiber says cable rates eventually should go down because the door to competition is being thrown wide open.

In cable jargon, Arialink is known as an “overbuilder,” Schreiber explained. It comes into markets where cable service already exists and offers either better products or lower prices.

Minutes after the City Council approved Arialink’s franchise agreement, Espy said in a telephone interview that Comcast wasn’t worried.

“Competition is nothing new to us,” he said.

Comcast’s massive cable tentacles reach into 21.4 million homes nationwide, 1.3 million of them in Michigan, Espy said. He declined to provide the number of Comcast’s cable subscribers in Lansing “for competitive reasons.”

If Espy’s reaction to the news of Arialink’s new cable franchise with Lansing is any indication, Comcast may be scrambling to figure out its next move.

Asked about sharing its public access studio with Arialink, Espy initially said, “We wouldn’t provide our studio for them to use.” He also said Arialink, “won’t be able to piggyback (its signals) off of us. How the PEG shows get made is up to them.”

But a short time later, Espy called back to say that after reviewing the franchise document, there’s a possibility that Comcast and Arialink could work out some sort of agreement on PEG channels.

“We can have an interconnect with (Arialink). It is a possibility,” Espy said.

As for the future, Espy would only said that Comcast plans to continue to offer PEG channels.

“The details are being discussed internally,” Espy said.

Schreiber said it’s unlikely his company will provide a production studio for public access, although no decision has been made yet.

“More likely will be a common studio we’ll all use, and we’ll have to negotiate an interconnection agreement (with Comcast),” he said.

Meanwhile, Timmon continues to produce her five shows aired Monday through Wednesday on Channel 16. The shows are a mix of Timmon’s sometimes biting monologues interspersed with various scenes of City Council and state government meetings. Her caustic comments are considered by some to be unnecessarily mean-spirited.

Timmon said she has no fears that the city will try to drive her and others like her out of business under the new state franchising agreement.

“Not if they got any sense,” she said.

However, on one of her recent shows she had taped herself speaking before a City Council committee meeting, threatening to sue the city.

“Of course, if somebody’s got a cable show that you can’t stand, you’re gonna try and stop it,” she is heard scolding.