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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-CABLE-2015-08-31 1 City of Ithaca Access Oversight Committee (AOC) minutes Monday, August 31, 2015, 4:30 PM Meeting Room, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY As approved Oct. 5, 2015. Present: chair Rich DePaolo, AOC members Wayles Browne, vice-chair Wies van Leuken, liaison from Common Council (City of Ithaca) J.R. Clairborne, studio manager Lauren Stefanelli; member of the public and producer Theresa Alt. 01. Call to Order: 4:40 by DePaolo. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none. 03. Public Comments: none. 04. Approval Minutes of the July 6, 2015 Meeting: approved with one clarification from Stefanelli, moved by DePaolo, seconded by Van Leuken, vote 3-0. 05. Municipal Approvals of 2016 Budget: Clairborne reported that the City of Ithaca approved the budget in August. The Village of Cayuga Heights and the Town of Ithaca approved it in June. 06. Access Studio Coordinator Report. a. 2015 Budget. - Progress Report. Stefanelli has located one TASCAM DVD player, still hoping to find more. This is the type that NEXUS works with. Consumer-oriented DVD players have the drawback that they are "Energy-Star" rated which means they turn off automatically after a certain period. b. TWC's Maintenance and Repair Report. See “Equipment and Facility Maintenance and Repair” in attached Coordinator’s Report. c. PEGASYS’ Facility Improvements – Progress Report: See "Facility Improvements" in attached Coordinator's Report. The contractor is about to paint, and has offered a choice of colors. d. PEGASYS’ Front Entrance Repairs – Progress Report. See “Building Improvements” in attached Coordinator’s Report. Work is practically complete. e. Move of Digital PEG Channels on August 25, 2015. See "Cablecasting" in attached Coordinator's Report. AOC is concerned that TWC made this change without due notification (30 days) to viewers and its own personnel. 07. Member Reports a. Second Quarter 2015 Franchise Fee Report from City and Town. Clairborne will ask the City for 2nd quarter data; DePaolo will ask the Town. b. Publicity: for next meeting. 08. Old Business a. Franchise Agreement. DePaolo: the negotiating committee will meet in September and discuss priorities. 2 09. New Business. None. 10. Next meeting: 4:30, Monday, October 5, 2015.
 11. Adjournment 5:50. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. ===== Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2@cornell.edu> City of Ithaca: Michael Brutvan <mbrutvan@me.com> City of Ithaca: J. R. Clairborne, Common Council liaison 2014-5 <jclairbo@cityofithaca.org> Town of Ithaca: Rich DePaolo, chair <rd@richdepaolo.com> Village of Cayuga Heights: Wies van Leuken, vice chair <pmv4@cornell.edu> Web site for the PEGASYS studio, with program schedules: http://pegasys.webstarts.com/index.html studio location: 612 West Green Street, Ithaca, New York mailing address: 519 West State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 phone (607) 272-7272 fax (607) 277-5404 PEGASYS staff: studio manager Lauren Stefanelli <lauren.stefanelli@twcable.com> 3 August 2015 Access Studio Coordinator Report - Building Improvements  Our entryway received new plantings in the garden bed and new exterior light fixtures. The new lights make our entranceway much brighter and safer at night.  The interior painting project is underway. No closure of PEGASYS is planned, although to facilitate working on the walls, all furniture and equipment was moved towards the center of the main room for the duration. One producer joked that it looked like a “hoarding situation.” - Equipment and Facility Maintenance and Repair  STUDIO: Our studio camera 1 cable was repaired and returned to us. However, it did not fix the problem. The cable is now good, but there was still no power to camera 1. The camera and its accessories were therefore sent for repair, so we are still down to a 2-camera studio.  PORTABLE: Our second JVC field camera with a wobbly viewfinder was repaired under warranty [!] and is back in service. - Institutional Access  ICTV director Chris Wheatley gave me a grand tour of Ithaca College’s new $1.9 million dollar HD facelift of their TV/radio facilities in the Park School of Communications. Wow! All new everything. Among other interesting tidbits, they are starting a live remote video class that will produce new programming for ICTV that includes a number of events other than sports. Like opera recitals, and other events not covered by the music department. Chris did explain a bit about the roadblocks to the AOC’s request to put IC music dept. events onto channel 16. He said that the music department videotapes many of their events for their own use and for web streaming, but didn’t want these programs on TV, and didn’t want ICTV to do their own coverage with another set of video and audio. Sounds like turf wars.  Ithaca High School had problems with their live video signal for their Board of Education meetings. They had no sound on their videotape recording for 2 meetings in a row, so I spent an afternoon with their new technician trying to solve the patching problem. Turns out, the technician had removed our video signal to serve his livestream. Fixed now.  The City of Ithaca finally made its first government bulletin board and put it on the version of their city channel on the digital QAM tuner: 97-6. 4 - Cablecasting  On August 26, Time Warner made changes to its Tompkins County digital retransmission structure, and in the process, moved the PEG channel assignments for QAM tuner viewers from 97-3, 4, 5, 6 to 97-1, 2, 3, 4. This information was sent to PEG producers and producing institutions and appears on our website: http://pegasys.webstarts.com/  I have completed the series renewal for Fall 2015. There are 12 locally produced series and 4 syndicated series signed up so far. 5 local series are not renewing – all because of personal issues or schedule problems faced by the producers. I am hopeful some of them will be back as these issues resolve.