Re: Covering the city council

[David Moisan <dmoisan@shore.net>]

At 11:47 PM 3/26/2000 -0500, you wrote:

>Are these carried by the cable company or by the local access channel?
>They are usually different entities.  In Brookline, the Board of
>Selectmen, Town Meeting, etc. are carried by Brookline Access
>Television, not by Cablevision.
>
Moreover, this even depends on the franchise agreement that a city makes
with its cable company.  Some public access studios are run by the company.
 Others--like Salem Access TV, where I am on the board--are independent
not-for-profit corporations.

In general, cable companies don't want to run public access, and try to
shift it off to someone else, or even close it down.  The latter scenario
has happened in Beverly, and M1, which also owns Marblehead's community
station, wants to divest itself of city-council telecasting.

It's ironic that RCN was the topic of that selectman's meeting referenced,
but I don't think it was purposeful.  They just flat out don't want to do
it and were it not for federal law, SATV's 3 channels as well as other
public access channels, would just as soon belong to commercial concerns or
even PBS (which considers public access unprofessional and beneath their
concern except for the bandwidth they represent.)


Take care,

Dave
Not speaking for SATV


David Moisan, N1KGH   ARES/SKYWARN                dmoisan@shore.net
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