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Public-Access Channel Debate: Add Or Subtract?

Posted on: Thursday, 11 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Aug. 11--North County cable subscribers are paying 84 cents every month for public-access programs they have not yet been able to watch.

But Monterey County officials say a new government channel should be on line for North County just as soon as Charter Communication starts providing more channels to its North County subscribers.

At the moment, the county and Charter are feuding over how that extra channel should be provided.

Charter officials say they would be forced to remove one of its commercial stations from the Charter lineup if the county requires it to start providing the government channel. They say they have asked the county to tell them which channel should be removed to make way for the government channel.

"If we took off the Weather Channel, for instance, we would have a mutiny on our hands," said Marsha Berk-Bigler, who is representing Charter during its negotiations. "Especially if we were to replace it with a government channel."

But county officials say Charter could easily reconfigure its technology in a way that would allow North County viewers access to another 31 channels, one of which would be the government channel.

"Our position is that if they provided more channels to subscribers in North County, they would probably be able to attract more subscribers," said Virgil Schwab, director of the county's information technology department.

"We talked to them last week and told them we wanted our channel," Schwab said. "They told us, 'Which station do you want us to take off the air?' We told them we don't want any channel deleted.

"Anyway, that's why we're stuck with not delivering the government channel at this time."

But Berk-Bigler said that converting its technology is too expensive and would not necessarily resolve the problem. "Our problem is that there is just no available space on our channel spectrum," she said.

Like most jurisdictions through the United States, Monterey County is attempting to provide what is referred to as "PEG" programming to cable subscribers.

In broadcasting parlance, PEG is an acronym for public, education and government, and represents the locally generated, noncommercial programming that is made available through the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The legislation allows local government to require cable operators to provide the programming to local subscribers.

In the city of Monterey, Comcast subscribers receive all three PEG programming channels.

In North County and the Salinas Valley, Charter subscribers receive only the education programming offered by the Monterey County Office of Education through KMST-TV.

Monterey County earlier this year approved a new franchise agreement with Charter Communications. Negotiators for the county and Charter are now trying to hammer out the details of the three-year pact. The government channel appears to be the big hang-up.

Schwab said the county is ready to start providing government programming, which would include broadcasts of the Board of Supervisors meetings, if Charter would make a channel available.

The new franchise agreement requires Charter to charge subscribers 84 cents each month to finance PEG, and Charter started collecting the fees earlier this year. The money is used to help the county buy the equipment needed to provide the PEG programming.

Most Comcast subscribers on the Monterey Peninsula pay $1.60 per month for their PEG programming. Schwab said the PEG fee is lower in North County now because subscribers are not receiving all three channels.

Schwab said the money collected from Charter subscribers is being held in a "restricted revenue account" that is not "just accumulating for the time when there is an opportunity to start providing the service."

Berk-Bigler said Charter advised county representatives not to initiate the PEG fees prior to signing the franchise agreement because Charter could not guarantee it could provide the channel.

"We're committed to public access programming and we like to put it on when we can," she said. "We're just waiting for the county to let us know what channel they want us to remove."

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To see more of the Monterey County Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.montereyherald.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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CHTR,

Source: The Monterey County Herald (Monterey, Calif.)

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