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City: I Want My Public Access TV

Posted on: Wednesday, 2 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By Mike Martinez, STAFF WRITER

TRACY -- A recent student awards program, the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life at Tracy High School and a walking tour of the Grand Theatre rehabilitation.

These are examples of programming improvements recently made to the public access channel offered to Comcast Cable subscribers in Tracy on Channel 26.

Tracy City Manager Dan Hobbs hopes to one day show annual theater productions from the drama department of both high schools and broadcast an important football or basketball game.

"I see it as a wonderful opportunity to build a strong sense of community," Hobbs said. "There already is a strong sense of community (in Tracy) and I want to support that with a cable channel."

Hobbs said he's spoken informally with council members about improving programming quality, finding ways to capture what's going on in Tracy and showing it to the community.

He said he would leave it up to the cable television advisory and policy committee -- which consists of himself and City Council members Irene Sundberg and Suzanne Tucker -- to decide how much religious or political programming should be on the air. The next committee meeting is scheduled for next week.

"We'll be talking about a lot of ideas but there are no changes made until the committee recommends them and the council approves them," Hobbs said. "We're going to try and use this as a better tool to show the community itself."

Comcast Cable, which provides television programming to about 15,000 residents in Tracy and about 750,000 people in the Central Valley, can provide three access channels for a community, a cable spokesman said.

Cities can have a public access channel, an education access channel and a government access channel. In Tracy, there is only a public access channel.

The channel is paid for through an existing franchise agreement, which expires in October of 2011, and also grants the city full control over its content.

"These channels are very important to the community and Comcast feels its extremely important to regard this as a resource to provide our customers," said Joe Streng, a spokesman for Comcast. "It's also a really good example ofhow a direct part of the (cable) bill goes right back into the community.

This past fiscal year, the city was paid more than $500,000 by Comcast, Streng said. Tracy cable subscribers also pay an 81 cent fee that directly funds the access channel. Last year more than $150,000 in fees were collected.

Tracy is entitled to two more access channels. All the city needs to do is prove the need for an additional channel and submit that in writing, Streng said.

We would find the channel space for the use of the channel, Streng said. The city is free to use it as they see fit. They can use it for council meetings, or for educational purposes.

Streng said the city can also edit and control the content of access channels.

According to city policy, community access programming is the highest priority for the channels capacity as provided for in the franchise renewal.

The channels objectives are to provide educational programming, establish communication between the city and its residents, and to create a maximum interest in community events, people, places and issues.

Ideally, Hobbs hopes to put more things on the channel that residents could relate to, showcases for the community and youth activities, and art in the city.

Hobbs is especially interested in shows with a longer shelf life. The citys Parks and Community Services Department recently hosted a bus tour of several parks in town and it was filmed for the cable access channel.

We went to most of the parks in the city and (Parks and Community Services Director Karen McNamara) gave a brief history of each park, Hobbs said. I can show that for the next six months. Thats the kind of stuff we want to show.

Source: Oakland Tribune

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