(Host) If you subscribe to cable television, you’re familiar with public access TV. In many Vermont communities, you can watch raw footage of government meetings, catch a video of a Fourth of July parade or view locally produced talk shows and documentaries.
These programs are paid for through a fee on cable TV bills. But the public access providers say they face increasing pressure from the Comcast cable company. They complain that Comcast wants to micromanage their budgets and pay less for the service.
VPR’s John Dillon has more.
(Dillon) Let’s peek into the archives of Channel 17, which for 25 years has hosted public access programs in Chittenden County. On the video tape, you’ll see visiting politicians, government meetings and countless hours of community programs.
Burlington City Council: This is absolute violation of parliamentary procedure.
Point of order, Mr. President. You are out of order, according to our rules.
Karen Kerin: Hello, Vermont, this is the unreported news network coming to you from the stockade newsroom. I’m Karen Kerin bringing you the unreported news.
Call-in show: Beep! Hello! You’re live on Channel 17, Winooski’s update. Hello?? Hello?
You’re live on Channel 17 Winooski’s update.
Caller: I don’t think so..
(Dillon) Okay, so production values were sometimes a challenge in the early years.
But the programs are commercial-free and as local as the corner store. They’re paid for by cable companies, which by law have to set aside a percentage of their video revenues to support public access. This financial relationship has led to tension between Comcast, the region’s dominant cable company, and many public access organizations.
(Davitian) "The issues that we were addressing in 1984 are very similar to the issues that we address now in 2009."
(Dillon) Lauren-Glenn Davitian is executive director of CCTV. She led the effort 25 years ago to get the Burlington station on the air.
(Davitian) "The public rights of way, which cable companies use to string their cables, are public, they’re public property. And in exchange for the use of public property, it is the right thing to do to provide a portion of that bandwidth for public purposes and a percentage of the gross revenues of the companies to support the creation of public media."
(Dillon) Cable companies pass through the cost of the local service to subscribers. But Davitian says that over the last year or so, Comcast has put the access providers under the financial microscope as their contracts come up for renewal.
(Davitian) "Comcast has started to scrutinize at a level we haven’t seen before, expenditures and budgets and plans to the point of micromanaging."
(Dillon) Comcast spends about $4.4 million dollars to support 22 public access providers in Vermont. The annual budgets range from about $558,000 for the Rutland network to $18,000 for Hardwick Community TV. Many of the access channels are shoestring operations.
(Noyes) "All right, this is our equipment room as well as our head end or our control room. So this is where our broadcast chain is set up here."
(Dillon) Frederic Noyes is access coordinator at Brattleboro Community TV, the state’s oldest access provider. A fan keeps the electronic equipment cool as Noyes talks about some of the challenges facing the organization.
(Noyes) "Three of the seven cameras that we have now won’t record to tape. So it’s a little bit of a detriment."
(Dillon) The station airs town government meetings and offers training in video production. And despite the broken cameras, BCTV makes equipment available to local producers.
(Noyes) "We consider ourselves to be First Amendment television and make no judgment about what people bring in. You know, we do get a handful of phone calls when some kind of program is on and someone might say why are you showing that? I don’t like that. And our answer always is, ‘If you don’t like that, you should come in and make a program that responds to that.’"
(Dillon) The Brattleboro station has been operating without a contract with Comcast for over a year. The non profit is negotiating with the cable company. But Board Chairwoman Lynn Barrett says Comcast wants to cut back.
(Barrett) "The situation right now is that there is a proposed budget that would basically give us less than what we have been getting. So we’ll be talking about why we should be signing that kind of document, when in fact they’re probably making more money now."
(Dillon) Pam MacKenzie is area vice president for Comcast in Vermont. She says the boards of the local cable providers – not Comcast – are responsible for the budgets.
(MacKenzie) "And we expect that, and Vermont law requires that. But they also require that we exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that they are being appropriately run. And Comcast does have a responsibility to ensure administrative and financial responsibility for our customers."
(Dillon) In Chittenden County, Comcast has taken a tough stance with the Regional Education Technology Network, which provides educational programming in 12 communities. Comcast has alleged financial mismanagement and threatened to cancel its contract with RETN.
But an independent audit, requested by Comcast, cleared the non profit station. RETN executive director Scott Campitelli has worked with other cable providers, including Adelphia, which sold its Vermont territory to Comcast. But he says it’s tougher dealing with Comcast, now the nation’s largest cable company.
(Campitelli) "Comcast has really shown a large degree of scrutiny and assessment of financials that are not clearly spelled out in state rules."
(Dillon) MacKenzie, the Comcast vice president, said she hadn’t seen the RETN audit report and couldn’t comment.
(MacKenzie) "All that we ask is to have a reconciliation of the funding and how it was spent at the end of the year. Because it goes back to the fact that our video customers are the ones that are providing those monies."
(Dillon) Advocates say Comcast should view the public access providers as adding value to the cable service.
They say they’re much more likely than other broadcasters to tell stories like one from longtime Burlington resident Babe Bove. He was interviewed in the mid 1980s about an urban renewal project that destroyed much of the city’s Italian neighborhood.
(Bove) "They stole the land from the poor people and built that. They stole from the people they bought $3.5 million worth of property, and they only paid about $800,000 to $1 million for it."
(Dillon) Five of the public access providers are now negotiating with Comcast. If they don’t reach a settlement, the state Public Service Board may eventually have to sort out the financial issues.
For VPR News, I’m John Dillon.