Free Speech TV in Fresno

Free Speech TV in Fresno
By Mike Rhodes

A local public access channel on the Comcast cable network would give a voice to the voiceless. With a public access channel a community group could let everyone know about what they are doing, what special events they have planned, or provide film footage of a guest speaker. An individual could produce a show about the homeless, why air pollution is bad (or good!), or anything else you could imagine. Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! could also be on the public access channel. Most communities the size of Fresno have a public access channel, but so far, Comcast has managed to keep us from enjoying the benefits of this service.

Public access channels are a part of the services cable companies provide to communities, because they use our public right of ways to deliver their product. The cable company, in Fresno’s case - Comcast, must negotiate a franchise agreement to operate. Typically, this franchise agreement will provide for Public, Education, and Government, (PEG) channels. Most agreements also include a Community Media Center (CMC) and a 5% franchise fee that goes directly to the city.

Efforts to secure a new franchise agreement between the City of Fresno and Comcast have taken longer than anyone expected. The first indication that all was not well happened last year when politicians in Sacramento decided they wanted to take the franchise agreement negotiations out of the hands of local governments. They passed legislation that sets up a master agreement that will be used as a template between cable companies and local government entities. That in and of itself is not a bad thing - rather than cable companies having hundreds of contracts to negotiate, they just have the state franchise agreement to implement.

Sue Buske is the consultant for the City of Fresno who has been working on the local franchise agreement with Comcast for several years. Sue is the president of the Buske Group and a nationally known expert on cable franchise agreements. She also spent many hours with legislators last year to include language beneficial to communities that have, or might have some time in the future, PEG access channels.

Buske has been working together with Fresno assistant City Manager Bruce Rudd to secure a fair franchise agreement with Comcast. The preparations for and the negotiations themselves have been going on for years. When I asked for a comment last week about the status of the negotiations, Rudd said "Nothing has really changed. Comcast is unwilling to provide PEG funding for ongoing operations." Buske says that local negotiations are moving slowly and that she would not be surprised if Fresno ends up, by default, with a state franchise agreement that would start on January 2, 2008. One thing is clear, Comcast is not motivated to make a deal with the City of Fresno if it would cost them more than the state franchise agreement. The City of Clovis, who has also hired Buske as a consultant, is waiting to see what happens in Fresno. They plan to ride the coattails of whatever agreement Comcast and the City of Fresno negotiate.

If we default to the state franchise agreement, which seems likely at this point, there will be funding for PEG access. 1% of the gross revenues that Comcast generates in this area will be used to fund PEG. Buske says that revenue stream will be about $550,000 a year. The expectation is that this money will be used to support the CMC facility and PEG access channels. The CMC will provide training in video production techniques and will make the equipment (video cameras, digital editing equipment, studios, etc) available for all interested community members and organizations. Programs will be pre-recorded or produced live. The Education channel will be used by area schools and the Government channel will be used to broadcast the Board of Supervisor’s, City Council, and other important government meetings.

The Community Media Access Collaborative (CMAC) was set up by a broad coalition of community, education, and government representatives to oversee the CMC and PEG access channels. Randy Reed is the chairperson of CMAC. Reed expects the City of Fresno and Clovis to recognize the CMAC as the group that will oversee the PEG access channels and CMC.

The CMAC will coordinate programing on the PEG channels and run the CMC, which is expected to be located at California State University - Fresno. The plan is to build the facility in the Kremen School of Education. Comcast is in the process of linking CSUF with the fiber optic connection so programing can originate from that location. The connectivity with CSUF was agreed to in the Fresno County/Comcast franchise agreement.

The Fresno County Office of Education, where Reed works, already has their own video media center and has several programs on ch 96. Every Tuesday you can see the Fresno City Council live on ch 96. The County of Fresno has plans to put the Board of Supervisors on live too. The vision of CMAC, and those who have been working to bring PEG access channels to Fresno, is to have one CMC that all three groups use for video production. The advantage of having a centralized CMC is that all the groups will pool the resources from the state franchise agreement to buy equipment. Rather than each group buying expensive digital video cameras, they will be able to stretch their dollars by sharing resources.

Because of ambiguities in the state franchise agreement, there is some concern about what the money can be used for. One interpretation, that is primarily promoted by the cable industry, is that the funds can only be used for facilities or capital expenses. That would make it difficult to pay for the staff needed to run a CMC and coordinate PEG channels. But, Buske says the language in the legislation simply says that “purchases must be consistent with Federal Law.”

According to Buske there are also significant non-compliance issues that need to be resolved with Comcast. The resolution of those issues could provide additional resources to fund PEG. Buske is optimistic that funding for PEG will be available in Fresno within a year, whether we are able to negotiate a local franchise agreement or if we default to the state deadline at the end of the year.

Speaking about the future of the PEG project, Randy Reed the chairperson of CMAC said "we're confident that PEG access will become a reality in the near future but there's still a considerable amount of effort and advocacy needed to get the job done. Now is the time for the community to come alongside CMAC for the final push to secure the funding and other resources needed to ensure the success of PEG in Fresno."

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