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from: The Plain Dealer

Lawmakers beat partial retreat on statewide video franchising

Posted by Aaron Marshall April 24, 2007 18:34PM
Categories: Breaking News

After getting an earful from local mayors as well as the public access crowd, state lawmakers retreated Tuesday on several of the more controversial elements of a bill setting up a statewide franchising agreement for video service providers.

The bill, known as Senate Bill 117, which is being pushed primarily by telecommunications giant AT&T, would wipe out the local agreements that individual communities negotiate with cable companies and other video service providers in favor of a single, statewide agreement.

Changes to the bill were outlined near the beginning of opponent testimony on the bill in a Senate Committee Tuesday by state Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican sponsoring the bill. Coming out of the bill: Language which local mayors were worried would erode their ability to control public rights-of-way as well as a more narrow definition of "gross revenues" than what some communities had negotiated with their local video providers.

The bill's current definition didn't include revenues from such things as advertising and shopping channels, leaving communities with agreements in place covering those areas concerned they could lose big bucks.

"We're going to let that be a local decision," Jacobson said.

Also being substantially tweaked will be language that public access TV supporters had worried would severely limit the channels that would be available for government and public access shows. Jacobson said the bill will be reworked to include a "more generous" definition of what it means for local government and public access channels to be "substantially utilized."

Under the current bill, those local access channels would have to generate almost 10 hours a day of original programming to meet that definition.

"We want to keep them functioning to an amount that is considered to be a reasonable amount," Jacobson said.

Jacobson told the bill's opponents that the goal is "a bill that maintains the best of the system we have now while allowing more flexibility and more competition."

Public hearings over the legislation continue in the Senate's Energy and Public Utilities Committee with no vote on the legislation yet scheduled.