FCC looks to alter access channels funding source

Cable companies say they face ‘excessive’ fees

A new rule being considered by the Federal Communications Commission could sound the death knell for community access television around Connecticut, some advocates for the channels are saying.

The new rule, if it is approved by FCC commissioners, could dramatically reduce one of the key sources of funding cable access or community television channels receive. Much of the programming that these channels do — such as meeting coverage, high school sporting events and public affairs shows — are paid for by fees that cable television giants such as Comcast and others are required to include in customers’ bills.

But under the proposed change being considered by the FCC, the cable companies could limit the fees they collect for community programming.

“It will put us out of business,” said Tom Castelot, president of Soundview Media, which produces public access programming for cable systems serving Bridgeport, Stratford, Fairfield, Milford, Orange and Woodbridge.

The current funding method for cable access operations is a fee the cable companies pay based on the number of subscribers they have in a given cable system. The FCC rule that requires that dates back to the mid-1970s, according to local cable access advocates.

Walter Mann manages three New Haven-area access channels in North Haven, North Branford and Branford. Mann said in Connecticut, the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority annually reviews what cable system operators pay access channels.

“PURA looks at the rate of inflation and comes up with an annual adjustment,” he said. North Haven’s community access channel, NHTV, gets about $8 per subscriber annually, according to Mann.

NHTV also does fundraising of its own and the town also provides some funding.

Funding sources vary from channel to channel, Mann said. The only source of funding Wallingford’s government access channel gets, for example, is from the town, he said.

Rich Hanley, associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University, said large cable companies are lobbying the FCC for the change in order to maximize their revenues.

“Because of the number of cord cutters, their profit margins are shrinking,” Hanley said, referring to consumers who are getting rid of their cable television service in favor of cheaper alternatives.

But Hanley said that the real cost driver for cable television systems are the fees they pay to programming providers such as ESPN.

“Local access channels are pretty low budget operations to begin with,” he said. “And the idea people can get the programming that they provide somewhere else really isn’t true.”

Castelot is more blunt in his assessment of cable television giants.

“They really do very little that helps the access channels,” he said of cable television system operators. “And if we disappear, who’s going to do what we do? The cable companies aren’t going to do it.”

Philadelphia-based Comcast has 14 cable television franchises in Connecticut, including systems that serve New Haven, Branford, Clinton and Seymour as well as surrounding communities, according to information on PURA’s website. But a company spokeswoman declined comment on the proposed changes by the FCC.

“Comcast has not filed at the FCC on this issue, and as it is an industry issue rather than company specific, I’d like to refer you to the industry association, NCTA for comment,” Comcast’s Sena Fitzmaurice said in an email last week.

The NCTA is the Internet & Television Association and, in a filing made to the FCC this month, officials with the trade group wrote that “a number of jurisdictions have come to rely on the franchising process not as a means of encouraging the deployment of valuable service in their communities, but as a means of leverage to exact financial commitments and obtain products and services paid for by cable operators and their subscribers.”