An FCC ruling has put public-access TV at considerable risk

[Mark_Giardina]

Great editorial in the Democrat & Chronicle.


The Federal Communications Commission is caving in to the major telephone companies' self-serving move to weaken local franchises for cable-TV service.

A recent ruling capped the fees local governments can charge franchise applicants, money that's used in part to support public-access channels such as Rochester Community Television.

The apparent objective for the phone companies is to have the federal government eventually create a sort of national license for providers, enabling them to move into communities, essentially closing out Rochester and other cities from the process.

That's completely the wrong direction. Not only are franchise revenues for Rochester at risk, but these local arrangements better protect public access television. This service needs to grow and improve, not be pushed further into the shadows because the telephone companies want a piece of the cable-TV pie. Instead of acquiescing to phone companies, the FCC should be finding ways to ensure that public-access channels have even more support from local cable providers. If they did, these channels might fulfill their promise to open more of government's closed doors.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who rightly has ordered Web access to state department and agency meetings, should see in the FCC ruling a clear danger to the democratized media he apparently favors.

Local franchises work. For the cities and for public-access TV. The FCC had best change course.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Cable Company Propaganda

Hold the phone there, Mark. Let's look at the whole idea of franchise fees, and local governments getting a piece of the action. Get comfortable, because this is going to take a few minutes.

In the old days, telephone voice service was analog, and data service was separate. The phone company paid - and pays - for the privilege of stringing their lines on existing power company poles, or paid for rights of way to put up their own poles. ALL levels of government got - and get - their cut. In return, the local phone company was a de facto monopoly.

In the meantime, the cable companies came along, and wanted to add their lines to the poles. As the phone company did, they negotiated rental fees, rights-of-way, etc. in the form of franchise fees. They delivered video, and charged customers like you and me ever-rising fees for hundreds of program channels that go unused by the vast majority of viewers. Can we choose the channels we want? NO. They are a de facto monopoly.

Then came the telephone modem. Suddenly, you could use an analog phone line to transfer data from one place to another. Computers and other devices could communicate. The digital age was born, fax machines were born, and suddenly the lines between analog and digital became irretrievably blurred. Modems got bigger, faster, and smarter, new data packeting protocols were born, and switching systems went from "connect this line to that line" to "route these data packets".

Smart people at both the phone company and the cable company started having "light bulb" moments. We have wires that can carry both voice AND data. In fact, if we convert all the analog signals to digital signals, we can put a whole lot more channels on the same lines. In the same time frame, the phone company was broken up, and multiple smaller companies each got a piece of the monopoly. Ohter companies were given the right to compete with the local phone companies, usually by leasing lines from the local phone company at a rate lower than the phone company was allowed to sell them because of FCC tarriffs on those lines.

Cable companies were part of the group that opened Pandora's box. They petitioned the FCC for the right to offer phone service. After all, they had lines to houses. The technology developed that allowed them to dedicate channels to voice phone service. In fact, they were among the raiders who insisted that they be allowed to put their phone switches in the phone company's central office, and be given access to the phone company's backbone network. In fact, their entire distribution system depends on the phone company for bandwidth as they transport signals within the local area, and between major cities.

To add insult to injury, various Public Service Commissions punished the phone companies if they couldn't provide lines and bandwidth demanded by their competitors. So, the phone companies built up capacity to handle current and future needs by adding fibre-optic cables, digital switching systems, and a host of other innovations to the system. They also converted everything from analog to digital at the first available switching point in order to improve efficiency and sound quality.

It didn't take much of an intellect to figure out that "bits is bits". What it starts out as - audio, video, or digital data - it ALL becomes digital data during transport. At the other end, it's reassembled into the form it started out as. That means that the phone company could get into the TV business if they could deliver enough data at high enough speeds over the final link, between the last digital switch and the house. If effect, they wanted to move the analog/digital conversion point to the house, not the pole, or a cabinet a mile away.

The phone company already paid - and pays - fees for their lines and rights of way. Now, the cable companies - who don't pay any extra franchise fees for offering phone and high-speed data services - want the phone company to pay extra fees for adding video and high-speed data services to their existing offerings. That's when the phone companies cried "Unfair!", and took the matter to the FCC.

We live in an age of digital delivery, with on-demand and/or "podcast" type TV already available. The networks already offer much of their content for download. We're entering an era where you could skip cable TV altogether, and schedule your computer (or Tivo) to download the programs you want and store them until you get around to watching them on YOUR schedule. Cable companies are, and will be competing as high-speed data providers. If that data happens to be a program stream, or a podcast, is immaterial. Where it comes from - a local cable head-end, or a network server on the other side of the world, is also immaterial.

It may be time to find a new way to finance local public-access channels. It's also time to revamp the entire "tarriff" system for various phone services. Stopping progress and reducing the services available to the public to preserve an antiquated billing system are NOT realistic options.

 

[BobRoss]

That's completely the wrong direction. Not only are franchise revenues for Rochester at risk, but these local arrangements better protect public access television. This service needs to grow and improve, not be pushed further into the shadows because the telephone companies want a piece of the cable-TV pie. (...) Local franchises work. For the cities and for public-access TV. The FCC had best change course.

I have to agree with SirRoxalot, but for a few different reasons.

1) If franchise fees are meant for public access, then I want a federal inquiry into where the hell my franchise fees have been going. An old Gateway PC running an endless MS PowerPoint 98 slideshow off a PC-to-TV converter does NOT constitute actual programming in my opinion. I don't know what's on the public access channel in Rochester, but here just outside of Syracuse, I've never seen ANYTHING pn public access. I didn't even know what channel it was on until recently; apparently it doesn't come through the digital cable converter -- only on the TV's where the cable's going from the wall directly to the TV.

2) Even in places where I *have* caught things on public access, they're always lame and boring. School board meetings on very old, dirty tapes (likely 3/4" that have been reused hundreds of times) with muddy audio. And usually that's about it, since it's BOCES -- not the city or village or town -- doing the taping. I've never seen city council, town/village board meetings or anything of the sort on public access.

Franchise fees are seen by many muncipalities as gravy for the overall budget. They are rarely used for public access programming. With the money everyone's paying into the system, most cities could probably afford to televise every single council meeting live in high-definition. Or at least buy a real CG machine to run their slideshow of legion breakfasts and cattle-farming roundtable discussions.

3) Do satellite providers have to pay franchise fees? No! Cable and telephone therefore have a valid argument that making customers pay franchise fees is unfair competition. If the "sticker price" on cable and satellite is the same, but satellite is cheaper in the end because the taxes/fees are lower, then it's unfair to cable.

4) To me, Joe Q. Public, eliminating franchise fees is a great thing. The money I save on those franchise fees is money I can now devote to battling higher gas prices, higher utility prices, higher rent and general inflation. I don't know about you, but my paycheck doesn't automatically rise whenever gas or milk prices go up. And to me, the public access channel is just like all the useless extra channels I would get rid of if the cable companies offered a la carte. I don't watch it, so if I don't have to pay for it -- great!