The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Publicaccess television facing a growing crisis
Amidst all the sound and fury being generated these days in our nation’s capital, undoubtedly some very important issues are being deprived of the attention they deserve. I have a perfect example, one that affects millions of Americans, and yet the socalled mainstream media hasn’t written a single word about it.
In August, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Republicans, voted 32 to change longstanding guidelines — used across the nation for decades — on how to fund public, educational and government access television stations. In the beginning, The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 allowed towns and cities to bill cable companies up to 5 percent of their gross revenues each year, which those towns and cities in turn used to support their local public, educational and government stations, known in the industry as PEG stations. That 1984 formula has not been altered — until this year.
With the rule change, cable providers will now be permitted on a townbytown basis to deduct the normal costs of doing business in any given town — annual equipment replacement, maintenance and repairs — from that town’s longestablished annual PEG station payments. Consider a big, damaging storm hitting your community. In the past, to keep their picture up and running and their subscribers happy, the cable companies spent what it took to quickly fix their lines and resume normal service. Now, they can recoup those costs from the community, by denying an equal amount of funding to their local PEG stations. That’s a crisis on top of a crisis, for any town. In addition, services that up to now had been provided by cable companies to communities at no charge, such as free cable in hospital rooms, can now be valued, with that value applied to, once again, lessen the amount of money a cable provider must pass on to support the PEG outlets. This rule change is clearly contrary to the wishes of Congress, which intended not only for annual, uninterrupted monetary payments to support the PEG channels, but did so with the reasonable expectation that such support might actually increase over the years, certainly not decrease.
When the FCC announced last year that it would reassess the regulation of franchising fees, PEG station operators were quick to warn of serious potential harm to their financial health, if not their outright survival. In a letter to the FCC chairman, Senate Democrats called the proposal “a loselose choice.” Despite these protests, the FCC passed the rule change, which many PEG entities say will decimate their operating budgets.
How so? I represent FairTV, the PEG station outlet for Fairfield. We provide hundreds of broadcast hours annually, made up mostly of televised town hearings, educational programming and other events of community interest. Covering those events takes equipment and camera operators. Even with the full, previous funding, most PEG outlets, ours included, have been forced to keep and use equipment way past the intended life span, picking and choosing which outdated machinery to use precious resources on replacing and which to keep humming and cross your fingers for.
It’s a classic, constant game of juggling meager resources and an aging television infrastructure. Now, due to the FCC rule change, we stand to lose as much as half our operating budget. We are scrambling to come up with new funding ideas. For the first time, we will approach community organizations for donations and partnerships. Despite our hopes for their generous assistance, we are also making lists of what we may have to cut and even worse, who we may have to let go. All so that our local cable company can save what to them amounts to a very small drop in the bucket.
In her dissenting vote on the FCC rule change, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she believes that the FCC’s actions, “instead of speeding our way to the digital future, (are) slowing us down, increasing our division and diminishing the dignity of local institutions.” Critics charge that the cable companies conspired with FCC leadership on this rule change, specifically to help them lessen the cost of the nationwide upgrade to a 5G infrastructure. But the cable giants’ motivations for the rule change don’t really matter to the pipsqueak PEG stations. Their reality will be the dramatic effects of the rule change, undoubtedly resulting in less open and transparent government and less citizen involvement with local issues, perhaps for years to come. For roughly 1,500 PEG stations across the country, the looming recession has already arrived.
We need your support and your voice. How many local newspapers has your community lost? Anyone keeping track of trends in local journalism and media ownership knows we can’t afford to lose more sources of local information. That was the principle at the heart of the 1984 act by Congress, that community needs must be met when local government and the cable industry partner into franchise agreements. Please write, email or call your various members of Congress and let them know that you value and support PEG stations and PEG funding. Please write, email or call the FCC and tell them to reverse the rule change and keep their hands off PEG station funding. And if all else fails, consider a donation to your local PEG stations to help keep them from going under as a result of this disastrous rule change.
It’s a classic, constant game of juggling meager resources and an aging television infrastructure. Now, due to the FCC rule change, we stand to lose as much as half our operating budget.