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from: Examiner

Federal bill threatens existence of new public access channel

Kelsey Volkmann, The Examiner
Jul 18, 2006

Carroll County - The Community Media Center is launching a new public channel that will feature Carroll County’s towns at a time when legislation making its way through Congress threatens the very existence of public access channels nationwide, public TV advocates say.

“It’s fundamentally ridiculous,” said Anthony Riddle, director of the Alliance of Community, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that represents 3,000 public, educational and governmental (PEG) centers, such as Carroll’s CMC, across the nation. “These bills are going to limit the way the public is using communications to a ‘1984’ model.”

Similar to the way Channel 24, launched last year, focuses on county government, Channel 23 will encourage the county’s towns to post bulletin board messages and, eventually, broadcast council meetings, said CMC director Marion Ware.

The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) was designed to overhaul the 1996 Telecommunications Act and will allow phone companies to compete with cable companies in delivering video services to Carroll’s 37,000 household cable subscribers.

But the COPE Act, passed as H.R. 5252 in the U.S. House in June, will slash funding and potentially destroy Carroll’s five PEG stations, which air everything from interviews with county commissioners to guest speakers at local colleges to holiday parades, she said.

“People may not be able to see their kids perform in concerts or the many different types of programs or the public meetings we air,” she said.

The legislation would also strip local governments’ ability to negotiate franchise fees with cable companies — currently Adelphia Communications Corp. in Carroll, but soon to be Comcast Corp., which recently purchased the bankrupt company’s assets — Westminster Councilman Robert Wack said.

Franchise fees, which fund PEG channels, are what local municipalities charge cable companies for laying cables in land within municipalities, Riddle said.

With the creation of a national cable franchise system, subscribers would have to call the Federal Communications Commission in D.C. to complain about service, instead of their local Cable Regulatory Commission.

“The people who are going to lose are the consumers,” Ware said.

The COPE Act’s Senate counterpart, known as the Stevens Bill or S.B. 5252, recently passed out of the Commerce Committee.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com