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from: Callahan's Cleveland Diary

Cable association shows porn at SB 117 hearing

The “news” at the second House Public Utilities Committee hearing on Senate Bill 117 was the cable industry’s outright endorsement of the bill.

The entire first hour of yesterday’s hearing was devoted to that endorsement, delivered by Ohio Cable Telecom Association director Jonathan McGee, assisted by Time Warner’s Ohio boss, Ed Kozelek. OCTA has been vigorously, loudly “unopposed” to SB 117 since it was introduced in March, so the cable trade group’s shift to open support makes little real difference. But it gave the committee leadership a chance to keep opponents of the bill cooling their heels for several hours (after McGee finally finished, the committee recessed for lunch and a floor session). And it gave McGee and Kozelek the opportunity for a cheap-shot attack on public access television and Local Voice Ohio, the coalition of cities and public access groups formed in response to SB 117.

The attack on LVO was, basically: “Hey, where do these people get off raising money to pay for lawyers and lobbyists?” McGee read from an email the coalition’s lawyers at Walter Haverfield sent out to municipalities in April, asking for contributions to support the campaign against SB 117: “Based upon our estimate of the work involved in the above-described activities, we suggest a contribution to Local Voice Ohio in the amount of 3% of your community’s annual franchise fee revenue.” (See the whole email at Bytes from Lev.) McGee indignantly told the committee that if every Ohio city and town had responded with a 3% donation, Local Voice Ohio would have raised nearly two million dollars to fight the bill. (He said $1.6 or $1.8 million, I can’t remember which.)

McGee did not report, and nobody on the committee asked, how much AT&T, the Ohio Telephone Association, and his own trade group have raised and spent on lawyers and lobbyists to get SB 117 passed. It would have been fascinating to take an inventory of the hourly charges for pro-SB 117 consultant fees, legal fees, executive salaries, et al. that were being rung up in that hearing room while Mr. McGee testified (including Mr. McGee’s own salary, of course.) And strangely, no one asked who’s paying for all those prime-time TV4Us commercials.

But the highlight of the McGee/Kozelek testimony was the part where Kozelek lit up a big flatscreen and showed an “example” of public access programming: about a minute of people engaging in various extremely lewd acts at a bar or party. Yes, folks — it was serious porn, right there in the Statehouse, where god-fearing legislators just got through raising the moral tone of Ohio’s strip clubs.

We were warned to look away if we were easily offended, but as far as I could tell everyone (including 100% of the committee) summoned the strength to watch the whole thing.

Of course Mr. McGee didn’t say, and no one on the committee asked, just exactly which PEG channel on which cable system had carried this minute of debauchery, or how it made its way into OCTA’s porn collection, or what exactly the committee was supposed to learn by seeing it. But it sure got everyone’s undivided attention. And isn’t that what great TV is all about?

On the substantive side, a few legislators got to ask the cable people serious questions. Points for substance go to Garrison (D-Marietta), Stewart (R-Athens), Okey (D-Carrollton), Barrett (D-Amherst), and Foley and Williams (D-Cleveland).
Rep. Garrison was very concerned about whether the bill will allow video providers to take private property without the property owner’s consent. The reassuring responses to this question all focussed on the wrong section of SB 117 — Section 1332.21 (A), which says:

“Access to video service” means the capability of a video service provider to provide video service at a household address irrespective of whether an owner or landlord or other responsible person has granted entrance or a subscriber has ordered the service.

But this is not the problem language. Rep. Garrison should be looking at Section 1332.24(A)(1), which would give state-authorized video service providers “when necessary to provide that service… the power of a telegraph company under section 4931.04 of the Revised Code.” Here’s ORC 4931.04:

A telegraph company may enter upon any land held by an individual or a corporation, whether such land was acquired by purchase, appropriation, or by virtue of any provision in its charter, for the purpose of making preliminary examinations and surveys, with a view to the location and construction of telegraph lines, and may appropriate so much of such land in accordance with sections 163.01 to 163.22, inclusive, of the Revised Code, as it deems necessary for the construction and maintenance of its telegraph poles, cables, conduits, piers, abutments, wires, and other necessary fixtures, stations, and the right of way in, through, over, across, and under such lands and adjacent lands, sufficient to enable it to construct and repair its lines.

(I’d like to ask ask LVO to pay me for this amateur legal research out of its bulging campaign budget, but since I got the tip from a two-month-old LSC analysis, I guess I’ll hold the invoice this time.)

Rep. Foley asked McGee the key question for incumbent cable providers: Since you assert strongly that you have no intention of abandoning any communities that you now serve under local franchises — which the current language of SB 117 clearly permits — would OCTA be willing to support an amendment to prohibit such abandonment?

Strangely, Mr. McGee seemed reluctant to have his members tied down by such a prohibition — because, you know, it’s hard to predict how circumstances or business plans might change. Hmmmm. Of course, that’s exactly what the abandonment concern is all about (e.g., Time Warner gets a state VSA for Cleveland and sheds its existing citywide service obligation, then three or four years from now decides that its business plan no longer justifies serving the city’s poorest neighborhoods.) However, McGee said OCTA is willing to discuss some compromise. Stay tuned.

Next week, another hearing. This time I might get to testify.

P.S. For Joe Hallett’s benefit I wish to state that this post is 100% original content. Has to be, in fact, since I can’t find any MSM coverage of the hearing. Too bad for them — they missed the dirty video.