Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-CABLECOMM-1990-12-11 Or y1;140--e City of Ithaca Cable Commission Minutes of December 11th, 1990 Attending:ICC: Tom Terrizzi, Peter Hess, Jim Ferwerda, Chris Heegard ACC: Barbara Lukens, Chris Doyle, Jim Blizzard Public: Bill McCormick, Rick Gray, Christine Piatco 1. Call to order 2. Approval of minutes of November 13, 1990 meeting Approved as submitted, Lukens will review and attach written comment. 3. Chairperson's Report To be included in Sections 8 and 9: Old and New Business. 4. Public Comment McCormick reiterated his exposition on access constituencies (see minutes of 11/13/90 ICC meeting) and ACC's access equipment purchases, concluding that the new equipment would not fairly serve all constituencies or reduce the current overload on access production facilities and asked the ICC to assert its authority over ACC to halt the current equipment order. Lukens countered that the new production equipment (2 portable videomixers, 2 SVHS camcorders, and an SVHS editing system) would significantly reduce current loads on the access studio's edit suites. McCormick again requested (see minutes of 11/13/90 ICC meeting) that the ICC place ACC in breach of franchise for its delays in activating additional access channels, proposing that a fine of $75.00/day per channel be levied against ACC until the additional channels are operational. McCormick requested that the ICC investigate the legality of ACC's using the 2% fund for maintenance costs on access equipment and for purchase of modulators used in ACC's distribution system (so-called hub or head-end equipment). McCormick asked that the City and the ICC audit ACC's access related expenditures to date. Terrizzi reported that ACC's access expenditures are currently being audited by the City. 1 McCormick stated that CAAB comment should be formally taken into account in performance reviews of access staff, citing possible conflicts of interest arising from access staff working for ACC's commercial operation. McCormick asked that ACC honor public requests for an access channel for religious programming. McCormick called for the City and the ICC to assert its authority over ACC on community access issues by establishing rules, regulations and procedures for access use, maintenance, and development. McCormick complained of the inadequacy of the current access facility citing a lack of studio space, and dispairing over the lack of plans for expansion. Piatco stated that she was upset over ACC's plans to move the Weather Channel from channel 7 to channel 23 because as a budget subscriber she cannot receive the upper tier. Heegard said that the City has no explicit control over the content or mix of channels in the cable system. Hess asked Lukens to describe the guidelines ACC must follow in determining content offerings. Lukens said that there is no "must carry' rule for the Weather Channel. Terrizzi said that Appendix C of the s outlines content requirements. 5. ACC Report (see attached) Lukens reported that ACC's attorney is drafting a response to the City attorney's letter to ACC and that it will be published within a week. Lukens reported on the Senior Citizen Discount Program Heegard asked who maintains the records of Discount Program participants Terrizzi asked Lukens to draft a letter of agreement between ACC and the City describing a plan for maintaining Discount Program records. Lukens reported that she had asked WVIA's manager to notify its customers of WVIA's termination but that to date she had seen no notice. 2 Lukens reported the results of ACC's customer survey stating that per requests the nostalgia, science fiction and E! channels will be added to the upper tier. Lukens reported that the Weather Channel currently being carried on channels 7 and 42 will be moved to channel 23 and a classified ads channel will run as a background for other channel 7 programming. Terrizzi asked how many complaints ACC has received on the planned change. Doyle reported that he was not sure but that he thought the number was approximately 75 adding that records of complaints are only kept if letters are sent or a caller leaves their name. Lukens brought up the issue of access equipment expenditures saying reiterating that the CAAB's recommendations were delivered at the moment when ACC had to commit an order and that the recommendations were based on the CAAB's reading of the as-yet- unresolved hub cost issue. Lukens said that her primary responsibility is to ACC so she went ahead with her order which included modulator equipment. Terrizzi challenged Lukens' comment that the CAAB recommendations were not delivered in a timely fashion, adding that the City is becoming impatient with ACC's attitudes on this and other access issues. Terrizzi asked Lukens what is ACC's fiscal year for equipment purchases. Lukens said that it is the calendar year and that the 2% fund is computed on the previous year's revenues. Hess asked what the franchise guidelines are for computing the 2% fund. Lukens said that ACC's revenues are not calculated until books close at year's end. Hess said that the 2% fund should be calculated on a quarterly basis. Terrizzi asked Lukens if ACC had any problem with calculating the 2% fund on a quarterly basis. Lukens said that she would inquire with ACC's accountant and report next meeting. Lukens reported that ACC's annual customer newsletter is being printed and would be mailed to customers mid-January. 3 Lukens responded to McCormick's comment about conflicts of interest regarding access staff saying that staff training is routinely done in ACC's commercial facilities. Lukens asked for clarification on McCormick's comment about unilateral dealings with educational institutions. McCormick explained that he meant that scheduling decisions on Ithaca College's use of the access channel are made between ACC and IC with no public input. McCormick went on to complain about IC's disregard for the commercial speech rules for public access channels Lukens said that she had sent a letter to IC's general manager about the commercial speech issue but had received no formal response. She added that she was concerned about IC's transgressions and was glad that the CAAB was raising the issue. 6. Public Comment Piatco asked Lukens how decisions about the basic tier programming are made. Lukens responded that the decision is more or less a commercial one. Doyle added that ACC wants public input citing the recent customer preference survey, but added that in some cases a business decision must be made. McCormick asserted that the results of ACC's customer survey regarding interest in access are not valid because unlike the commercial channels, the specific content areas of the access channels are not described. McCormick repeated his concern that the unresolved issue of what constitutes proper expenditures from the 2% fund is costing the city thousands of dollars in lost revenues for access development. McCormick spoke again about the Senior Citizen Discount Program saying that ACC is not doing enough to notify eligible customers, suggesting that customers should be notified at the time they subscribe. Doyle said that ACC's customer service representatives don't have time to discuss all of details of ACC's programs and services with subscribers at the point of sale. McCormick said that the Weather Channel should be kept on the basic tier because of its public service function in weather emergency situations. 4 • Lukens agreed with McCormick in principle but said that she didn't think it is ACC's responsibility to provide that service. McCormick said that Lukens reneged on her agreement with the ICC to negotiate with Mary Jo Dudley of the CAAB on access equipment purchases. 7. CAAB Report (see attached) Hess raised the issue of IC's breach of the commercial speech guidelines, citing complaints by access producer Jorge Cuevas Terrizzi asked Lukens what the guidelines are for commercial speech on public access channels. Lukens said that PEG rules don't permit any commercial speech. Hess cited page 23 of Cable 13's policies and procedures manual as documentation. Terrizzi asked what course of action would be taken by ACC to stop IC's transgressions. Lukens said that they would be formally notified that they are breaching the guidelines, and that if they do not desist then they risk being billed for usage. Hess asked Lukens who would receive the penalty fees in that case. Lukens: ACC. Hess asked Lukens to provide copies of the correspondence between ACC and IC to the ICC. Lukens agreed. Heegard citing the ongoing controversy between ACC and CAAB over access equipment expenditures made the following motion: "The Ithaca Cable Commission requests that the Cable Access Advisory Board propose access capital spending procedures. Upon receipt and review of the CAAB's proposal the ICC will adopt an access capital spending procedure." Hess seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved by the ICC. 5 Hess outlined the makeup of the CAAB, reporting that the CAAB currently has four vacancies and two applicants. Hess nominated Rick Gray as an interim City representative to start immediately and Cathy Johnson as an interim institutional representative to start immediately and to become the City representative starting February 1991. Nominations were moved, seconded by Terrizzi, and approved unanimously. 8. Old Business No outstanding old business was raised. 9. New Business No new business was raised. The meeting adjourned at 10:55 pm. Minutes submitted by Jim Ferwerda 6 ! -_�- , ' ^ �, . ~ '^ • . ACC REPORT . FOR THE 7TUACA CABLE COMMISSION 12/ 11 /91 * A written response to Mr . Guttman regarding the terms of the franchise as regards access should be forthcoming next week. * There are 223 seniors currently receiving a discount on their basic service. ACC receives updates from the city every few weeks. Since there is some duplication when we receive these updates, we plan to provide a list to the city of those people who are receiving it . ACC has placed messages on City of Ithaca customer ' s bills informing them of the discount availability. We will do so again. * I contacted Bill Kelley at WVIA to ask if he would inform members in this area of the findings with regard to signal quality at our tower site. He said he could not afford to do so, but agreed to write a letter to the Ithaca Journal . I have not noticed such a letter in the Journal , but have not looked daily. It ' s possible they received one and did not print it . , * The results of ACC' s customer survey on programming additions are in. • The details are attached. As a result of this survey, ACC will he adding Nostalgia Television on Feb. 8th and The Sci Fi Channel when it launches (hopefully second quarter , but we du not yet have a firm date) . As an added bonus E ! Entertainment will be added on Jan. 1st . * Customers were informed via a billing message that The Weather Channel will no longer be used as background on cable channel 7, elective Feb. 8, 1991 . TWC will be moved from channel 42 to channel 23, however , so that customers in both rebuilt and non rebuilt areas will have access to that programming on their standard cable service. * The background for channel 7 will be The Marketplace, a photoadvertising service which will include regular features such as job bank information, local weather , a community activities calendar and personal ads. Businesses and individuals will be able to advertise goods and services to include, but not limited to, real estate, bank services, home services, vehicles, and anything else of perceived sale value. * ACC is submitting a procedure to he used for access capital spending for 1991 . It is attached herewith. * After reviewing the CAABrs changes to the access capital spending plan, and realizing that they included spending more than 2% of the city revenues as well as displacing the modulator 1 ' . , and demodulator for channel 53, I recognized that there was nothing I could negotiate with the CAAB as I had said I would attempt to do. I contacted Tom Terrizzi , and explained my position and subsequently spoke with Mary Jo Dudley. I felt that I must use the 2% ceiling in buying equipment , and it is my position that the mod/demod should come out of that money. * ACC' s annual newsletter is being printed and should be mailed to all customers by mid-January. ACC uses the newsletter as a vehicle to highlight the year past , inform of things to come and to provide notice of some items in compliance with New York State regulations. |� • NEW CHANNEL SURVEY RESULTS Telephone interviews were completed with a total of 450 randomly selected subscribers. A total of 253 interviews were completed in the areas not yet rebuilt and 203 were completed in rebuilt areas. Interviews were completed the week of August 8th. Results were tabulated and analyzed using standard statistical criteria. All statistical tests were conducted at a 95% confidence level. That means that in 95 out of 100 replications of this survey, the same results would occur due to factors other than chance. In addition to this phone survey ACC sent all customers a written survey that duplicated the phone survey. 2778 were sent back . in to us and tabulated by the same firm that did the phone survey. NOSTALGIA AND SCI-FI TO BE ADDED After careful consideration of these survey results ACC is going to add the number one choice - Nostalgia. According to the surveys, both phone and written, 67% and 61% respectively of the respondents were "very or somewhat interested" in adding Nostalgia. Nostalgia will debut on channel 44 beginning February 1st. Using the same criteria, the Sci-Fi Channel was the number two choice, however we do not know when it is going to be available to us on satellite. Our plan is to add Sci-Fi to our lineup when it becomes available. The latest word from the service is that they plan to launch their satellite sometime in the second quarter. El Finally, ACC intends to add another new service , El also known as Entertainment Television, on New Years Eve. Although we were only scheduled to add two new services in 1990, research indicated growing interest in news about the entertainment business. El fills the vacancy on channel 39. more. . . • • Survey results page 2 Our original plan was to add only two new services in 1990, however the addition of customer's first choice, Nostalgia, the eventual addition of Sci-Fi, their second choice, and El bring the total number of channels available on tier service to 26. Interest in having additional Public Access channels was relatively comparable between the surveys. Thirty percent of phone surveys and 37% of mail survey customer indicated they were very or somewhat interested in having more of this type of programming. However, 69% of phone survey and 51% of mail survey respondents indicated they were not very or not at all interested in having additional public access channels. The ideal number of public access channels could not be directly , compared, since the mail survey asked for desired number of public access channels, while the phone survey asked for the desired additional public access channels. The mail survey re- sults are displayed below. Number of Additional Percent of Public Access Channels Mail Survey Customers That'Should Be Provided (n=2778) One 35% Two 8 • ;Three 4 Four 2 Six . 0* • Seven 1 Don't know 19 No interest 31 *Less than 1%. Y