[Peace] my letter to Champaign City Council members on the Public Access crisis...

[Randall Cotton]

This letter to Champaign City Council members (which I just sent off) touches on
perhaps all the major points that should be covered by folks speaking during
public comment at tomorrow night's Champaign City Council session. You Champaign
residents out there, please step up, seize on your favorite point(s) and speak
out during the meeting tomorrow. You'll need to fill out a form to do so once
you arrive. Interested Urbana residents are also strongly encouraged to attend
in order to demonstrate the larger interest in Public Access community-wide (but
perhaps not speak unless you're really inspired 8-)

Dear City Council members,

I'm a Champaign resident and I serve on the city's Public Access Study Committee
under the C-U Cable Television and Telecommunications Commission. I'm writing to
you in support of Public Access Cable Television. In particular, I'd like to
address the City Staff's misinformed study session report which was in your
packet. The report regrettably urges the Council to forego any attempt to seek
Public Access funding from the local cable provider (Insight Communications) in
the impending franchise contract renewal and instead urges asking Insight for a
increase in funding for government programming).

Each argument that the City Staff has used to describe a disadvantage of seeking
franchise funding of a new Community TV Station is misinformed and consequently
misleading. Below I itemize each argument and describe its flaws, beginning with
the premise that there is little public interest in Public Access Cable TV. Our
community is increasingly recognizing the powerful potential of a well-managed,
well-funded Public Access facilities to bind the community closer together,
creating new connections between non-profit agencies and our citizens, providing
a conduit for individuals and organizations to enrich our local culture with
programming that covers community events of all types, fostering increased
participation in our democracy and engaging in interactive community debate
about the important issues of the day that matter most to our citizens. I have
more to say about the benefits of Public Access to our community near the end of
this note. Other similar-sized communities have successfully reaped these
benefits, our community deserves them just as much (we are quickly falling
behind), and they can be achieved simply by asking the cable companies to
provide a fair share of their revenues to fund them, negotiating with them to
return some of their profits directly to the community, by negotiating franchise
contractual payments for the use of our city's "rights of way".

Over the past two years, there has been considerable community support building
for a new, dedicated Public Access Cable TV channel run by an independent,
non-profit institution. This new channel and the Community TV Station would be
funded by both initial capital and ongoing annual funding from our franchised
cable provider (Insight). And this funding would be negotiated as part of the
impending franchise contract renewal that will soon be initiated by Urbana and
Champaign jointly.

The main justification that City Staff puts forward in opposition to seeking
funds for Public Access seems to be:

"City staff does not believe there is sufficient public interest in a new public
access channel" (staff report page 6)

As a member of the Public Access Study Committee convened by the
Champaign-Urbana Cable Television and Telecommunications Commission, I helped
document the substantial and growing support for Public Access.  In chapter 9 of
the Study Committee report (Assessment of Local Interest in Public Access), we
concluded "The Committee finds there is a high level of interest in Public
Access in this community" (first paragraph). That same chapter also describes
how:

1. Over 500 community members signed a petition in favor of a "fully-funded,
independent non-profit community Public Access Television Center with dedicated
public-access cable channels" (page 21)

2. There has been a recent "dramatic growth" in use of the existing (somewhat
limited) Public Access cable facility (UPTV), having grown from 12 members in
2002 to around 200 now in 2006 and forecast to grow to nearly 500 by 2009, when
the current cable franchise contract ends (page 21). Please note: half of UPTV's
active membership actually resides in Champaign.

3. In response to a survey of community organizations (76 organizations from
across the political spectrum), 91% indicated that if staff from a Public Access
center could be used to make videos for their organization, they would use this
service. 93% said they would make use of a low-cost community camera crew or
community video production service (pages 15 through 17).

Support for the Public Access Study Committee's recommendations has already been
provided by:

1. Champaign-Urbana Cable Television & Telecommunications Commission (January
18, 2005)

2. Urbana Public Television Commission (Dec. 12, 2005)

3. Urbana City Council (March 6, 2006 City Council Resolution 2006-02-007R).
This resolution is included as an appendix to the study session report and is
also available on-line at:

http://www.ci.urbana.il.us/urbana/city_council/agendas/agendas_2006/03-06-2006/Resolution_2006-02-007R.pdf

These bodies have all supported the recommendation to create a new, dedicated
Public Access cable TV channel funded by our cable provider through franchise
fees negotiated by Champaign and Urbana. Yet the Champaign City staff seems to
be ignoring the community's expressed public interest in favor of significant,
self-serving funding increases for their own existing operations.

Note that the Public Access Study Committee Report is included in its entirety
in the City Staff report for Tuesday as an attachment. As you probably know,
that City Staff report is available on-line at:

http://archive.ci.champaign.il.us/archive/dsweb/Get/Document-3975/SS%202006-029.pdf

And the Public Access Study Committee Report is also separately available
on-line in two parts: the main matter and the (somewhat bulky) appendices:

Main matter:
http://archive.ci.champaign.il.us/archive/dsweb/Get/Document-3384/2005%20Public%20Access%20Study%20Committee%20Final%20Report.pdf

Appendices:
http://archive.ci.champaign.il.us/archive/dsweb/Get/Document-3376/2005%20Public%20Access%20Study%20Committee%20Final%20Report%20Appendices

Now I would like to individually address the other justifications that the City
Staff provided to recommend against pursuing funding of Public Access by
Insight.

*******************************************************
Justification 1: "Public access is already available to Champaign residents
through UPTV, but it is underutilized."
*******************************************************

There has been a surge of growth in UPTV's utilization over the past few years,
as described in the Public Access Study Committee report (details cited above).
Additional staff, equipment and programming time has been required at UPTV to
accommodate this growth. And this growth has taken place in spite of the
city-management model used for UPTV, which actually has impeded growth. As
described in the Public Access Study Committee report on page 11 (under
"Municipal Government Management Model) and on page 13 (under "C. Public Access:
Urbana), the nature of our community's existing Public Access infrastructure's
management actually hampers its growth and development. This, more than anything
else, would be the cause of any lack of utilization.

As an aside, Public Access should be managed much in the same way libraries are.
In the same way you wouldn't have government staff managing library operations,
the same is true of Public Access Cable. As is done with many libraries, Public
Access facilities and services should be overseen by a Board of Directors
constituted in large part by members of the community who are enthusiastic about
the institution. This idea is embodied in the recommendation for a new
non-profit independent organization run by a Board of Directors. A library run
by government bureaucrats would be much less responsive and accountable to the
public and the same is true of Public Access.

*******************************************************
Justification 2: "Recurring financial support from the Cities will likely be
necessary to ensure the channel's viability."
*******************************************************

This is misleading. The vast majority of municipalities across the country
(Urbana is no exception, for instance) choose to entirely fund their Public
Access with cable company revenues, not city funds from tax revenues or other
sources. During cable franchise contract negotiations, large capital
expenditures are secured for startup facilities and other initial expenses and
ongoing payments from the cable company (typically based on a percentage of
cable company revenue) are negotiated to provide for ongoing financial needs.
There needn't be (and conventionally there isn't) any financial demand on the
city or its tax revenues.

*******************************************************
Justification 3: "By requiring another access channel during negotiations,
attempts to negotiate for other high-priority services or contract terms may be
less successful."
*******************************************************

This presupposes that "public access" is not "high priority", however, "there is
a high level of interest in Public Access in this community", as identified in
the Public Access Study Committee report.

*******************************************************
Justification 4: "Uncertain future of all identified public access funding
sources."
*******************************************************

While there are federal legislation attempts underway by the large phone
companies to reduce the ability of municipal governments to obtain public access
funding through franchise contracts, the future outcome of those efforts is
unknown and may never actually come to pass. Regardless of the future outcome,
this is no reason for our cities to refrain from aggressively negotiating now
for the best possible level of Public Access Cable that we can get.

*******************************************************
Justification 5: "Though supported by City dollars, programming content on
Public Access has First Amendment protections and could not be controlled."
*******************************************************

This justification seems to demonstrate an unsettling contempt for free speech.
Should it really be a goal of our municipal government to thwart or control
speech? This is a troubling statement and somewhat of a non-sequitur as well.
Regardless, establishing an independent, non-profit board-run organization to
oversee Public Access facilities will essentially insulate the city from any
controversy that might come to pass over Public Access programming.

*******************************************************
Justification 6:   "If collected, Champaign resident cable subscribers will bear
the expense of the PEG fee."
*******************************************************

Cable companies will charge whatever the market will bear for their services. As
with all other goods and services in our economy, the total price of cable
service is dictated by market conditions, mainly their competition (such as
satellite dish network providers DirecTV and Dish Network). Cable
franchise-related fees charged by municipalities have little, if any, effect
overall (they only amount to, at most, a dollar or two per cable bill, on
average, regardless).

In the same way that expenditures for repair trucks and phone support staff is a
cost of doing business for cable companies, franchise-related fees are also a
cost of doing business. In fact, negotiated franchise fees are "rent" the cable
companies pay for tearing up our streets and using the city's "rights of way"
for their cabling. These rights of way have enormous and increasing market
value. It's only fair they pay this rent for the right to have their municipal
franchise, a guaranteed money-making monopoly. Profit margins in the cable
industry are estimated to be as high as 40% (according to Sue Buske of The Buske
Group - www.buskegroup.com , who was consulted by the Champaign-Urbana Cable
Television & Telecommunications Commission). And with new digital video tiers,
cable Internet access and cable telephone services coming on-line nationwide,
cable company revenues are projected to more than double in the next 10 years
(Kagan Research, LLC, 2005). The funding of local Public Access facilities can
be easily absorbed by the cable company - it's just a matter of the cities
making the effort to negotiate it into the cable franchise contract for the
benefit of the community.

But cable companies do make it a (understandably shrewd) practice of creating a
line item in cable bills for franchise-related fees. And they'll use creative
wording such as "pass through" or even "tax" to describe that line item, giving
the impression that whatever they are charged by the municipality will result in
an inevitable "cause and effect" increase in cable bills by the exact same
amount as long as they have to pay those franchise fees to the city.

For one to believe in this kind of "cause and effect" argument, for instance,
one would also have to believe that if a cable company's franchise fees paid to
a city are suddenly discontinued, than that will automatically mean their cable
bills will forever more be that much smaller, clearly a naive premise. Once a
cable company knows they can successfully charge at a particular level for their
service, they would, of course, factor that in at their next (possibly
expedited) price increase.

Thus, the City Staff's statement that "cable subscribers will bear the expense
of the PEG fee" is harmfully misinformed and only propagates what is a deceptive
public-relations myth brought forth by the cable industry, designed to
discourage the public and municipal officials from rightfully seeking franchise
fees for the benefit of the community in return for granting cable companies
lucrative monopoly franchises.

*******************************************************
Justification 7:  "Significant staff time will be required to define the City's
role in and oversee creation of a new public access channel; and non-profit
entity to operate it."
*******************************************************

Again, cable company funds could be used to offset whatever additional time and
costs are necessary. For instance, it is common practice for municipalities to
use cable franchise fees won during negotiation to pay for consulting services
used to conduct those negotiations. The same could be done for consultants
needed to establish a new Community TV Station and Public Access channel. Also,
the time and efforts of community members can be utilized to help with these
tasks, just as the Champaign/Urbana Cable Television and Communications
Commission convened a Public Access Study Committee, comprised mostly of
community members, in order to create recommendations for the future of Public
Access.

What's at stake for the community:

A high level of Public Access TV services surrounding a vibrant Public Access
Cable TV channel (something we've never really had in Champaign/Urbana) will
foster a greater sense of community and enhance our quality of life:

Non-profit organizations would have excellent new opportunities to create video
programming that will allow them to publicize the work they do, attract new
volunteers, request financial support and in some cases even provide training
videos to instruct their own organizations or provide public-service instruction
to the community at large.

Community discussion and debate in the form of live call-in talk shows,
interactive televised political debates and town meetings will encourage and
assist local residents to become more informed and involved in their community's
schools, government, churches and other institutions.

Local community events such as public concerts and performances, speaking
engagements or school events such as high school athletic games could be
broadcast live and then rebroadcast later as well.

Also, providing a true "free-speech" forum will allow our local community to
express ideas and opinions outside the increasingly narrow range available on
commercial media. As commercial media becomes increasingly homogenized and
consolidated into fewer and fewer very large corporations, programming that
touches on local news, issues and events is gradually fading away in the
interest of greater profits. As media channels become increasingly owned by
national corporate behemoths that are progressively being influenced more and
more by large corporate advertisers and even the federal government,
community-controlled, locally-originated programming and channels will become
increasingly valued over time.

And with emerging video-on-demand technology already being implemented elsewhere
in the country (e.g. Shrewsbury, Massachusetts), public-access programming can
be played on demand at the touch of a button on a subscriber's remote control,
greatly magnifying all these benefits.

Vital and vibrant Public Access Cable TV has great potential to bind our
community tighter, encouraging folks to become more involved and connected
within our community and increasing our qualify of life. And it would be
entirely funded not by tax revenues, but by the cable company itself from a
small portion of their millions of dollars of revenue.

This is a crucial and defining moment in the effort by our community and parts
of our local governments to finally establish the forward-looking,
community-building Public Access Cable TV facilities that our towns deserve - a
moment that will set the future for as many as 15 years (the duration of our
current cable franchise contract). Our Public Access resources have fallen
behind other similar municipalities around the country. Our community deserves
better.

Please feel free to call me anytime at either 351-8644 (home) or 722-8470
(cell). I would be happy to answer any questions or concerns you might have.

Sincerely,
Randall Cotton