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from: Columbia City Paper

Is Public TV In Peril?
By Todd Morehead
February 14 12:35 PM

One year from now, television as we know it will change forever. For those who haven’t yet purchased a converter box, are not cable subscribers or don’t have a compatible TV, the screen will go dark on Feb. 17, 2009 as the industry switches from broadcasting a traditional analog signal to a digital one. The “DTV switch,” as it has come to be known, will not only facilitate the continued progression toward high definition systems but will also free up the 700 MHz spectrum for the creation of more standardized public safety communications. In the background, the FCC has plans to auction a chunk of that vacated analog spectrum to large wireless and telecom companies like Verizon and Google. Some analysts predict the sale could fetch up to $15 billion dollars. Meanwhile, many Democrats on Capitol Hill worry that an unprepared and under funded FCC has not adequately educated the general public about the DTV switch.

Lost in the fray, so far, have been the implications for public television. Some large cable companies are using the digital transition as a means to remove public television channels from their basic cable packages and are lobbying for legislation that may remove license fee funding for those channels.

Late last month, John Dingell (D-Mich.) went before the congressional Commerce Telecommunications Subcommittee in response to cable giant Comcast’s actions in his home state. The hearing centered around the public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels in Michigan that were slated to be removed from basic cable packages, since the company switched to an all digital format. PEG channels consist of public access programming, cover local government and schools—like the Columbia city council meetings that Time Warner Cable airs locally on channel 2 and the Richland school district information aired on channel 12. In Michigan, Comcast planned to bump the PEG channels—still broadcasting in analog until next year—up near the 900 channel range thus making them no longer accessible to the general public and only available to subscribers of the more expensive digital cable service tier, an action that would have effected an estimated 1.3 million viewers.

Comcast, an AT&T company, pitched it as a technical upgrade but when the same thing happened to a PEG channel in Tucson, Ariz., a cable rep showed his hand, so to speak, while explaining their move to a local CBS affiliate, saying, “Analog channels consume capacity where I can put eight [digital] channels in the same place.” And where PEG channels generally reside, in the lower 20 channels, is considered prime broadcasting real estate.

A federal judge eventually blocked Comcast’s plan. The company issued an apology during the congressional hearings and plans to make arrangements to keep PEG channels available to the general public in Michigan.

Comcast was able to act so brazenly in Michigan because they and other large telecom companies have long been lobbying to change the language in federal, state and local cable franchise legislation. In Michigan, all of AT&T’s network is digital. Recently reworded legislation there and in many other states has since eliminated safeguards for PEG channels thus leaving them susceptible to being booted up into the high channel netherworld.

On June 8, 2006 the House passed the COPE Act, which later stalled out in the Senate and was eventually scrapped. Introduced by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)—AT&T corporate headquarters are based in Texas—the bill would have allowed telecom companies that wanted to provide video content to bypass the current local franchise process by establishing a uniform national franchising process. Before COPE, telecom companies would have to strike deals with hundreds of local municipalities, each with their own regulations and many levying a one to five percent franchise fee that went to the funding of public TV programming. COPE would have done away with all that and set a national standard for cable franchising with no proviso for PEG channel fees—which can sometimes provide over $1 million annually. The absence of that funding could bring many smaller public access TV services to a grinding halt.

Though it eventually tanked on the federal level, big telecom simply reintroduced versions of the bill on the state level. Like Michigan, a version of the bill passed in South Carolina in 2006. The “South Carolina Competitive Cable Services Act” (S.C. 1053, H. 4428) passed the House unanimously on Feb. 15, 2006, the Senate approved and ratified it on May 18 of that year and it was signed by Gov. Sanford five days later. The bill introduced a statewide franchising system and, according to some analysts, offers no PEG financial support. City Paper could find no language in the bill that specifically omitted payouts to PEG channels and the bill does appear to require that cable companies provide at least 3 PEG channels as a public service. However, the bill does state that “any PEG channel …that is not utilized by the municipality or county for at least eight hours a day may no longer be made available to the municipality or county but may be programmed at the cable service provider’s discretion.”

Nancy Horne, president of the S.C. Cable TV Association, says PEG channels in South Carolina should continue to be available to all cable subscribers, both basic and high end.

“Our state law requires that PEG channels be carried on the lowest tier [or subscriber package] available to the consumer,” she says. “So, you might get a PEG channel with a high number, but it would still be carried through the basic tier.”

According to Horne, under the state law there is no requirement for PEG support. Before the law was passed, individual PEG channels may or may not have made agreements with the cable company and the local or municipal franchising authorities. If those deals included support for PEG channels prior to the 2006 bill, those contracts should be honored until they expire, according to the new legislation. Next installment: “Spectrum for Sale”