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AMBI of people talking underneath
About three hundred people crowded into a meeting room at Borough of Manhattan Community College. A stoic four-person panel sat at the front, from the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, known as "DO-IT". They
called out names. Speakers came to the microphone one by one. And they complained.
ACT _01 (:05) I have approximately 23 pages of notetaking chronicling my difficulties with Time Warner.
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They accused.
ACT_02 (:03)There are pricing practices over the last twenty years that are nothing short of price gouging.
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And they even sang.
ACT_03 (:06) I want my public tv.
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Queens City Councilman Tony Avella said he wants changes in the new cable contract, calling for an end to what sees as unfair business practices:
ACT_04 (:09)
It's almost like extortion, how the rates keep going up, and the cable companies force you to take channels that you may not want to see.
Others at the meeting worried whether they'd still be able to see something that they DO want: Public-access channels. Under the franchise agreements, cable companies are required to fund public-access programming out of the money they make from subscribers' monthly bills. . Andy Hum, co-host of the Gay USA show on a Manhattan access channel ... said the cable firms aren't paying enough.
ACT_05 (:10) We have got to increase the resources for places like Manhattan Neighborhood Network or we're not going to be able to reflect the diversity that's in this room on television, it's not going to happen.
A Time Warner spokesperson said in an email that the company - which provides cable service to over a million residences city-wide - has been an ardent supporter of public access. Even so, inflation has stagnated the money paid by cable companies for public access. Over the past decade - since the current franchise agreements went into effect - cable revenues have almost doubled. But usage of public access studios has more than TRIPLED in just the past 5 years.
Dan Coughlin is executive director of Manhattan Neighborhood Network, the nonprofit that manages the borough's access channels. He says the channels are an important outlet for free speech:
ACT_06 (:07) Non-commerical, locally-based diverse voices are critically important to American democracy. It's not something that can be bought and sold on a balance sheet.
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Only talk is cheap however. TV stations require cash. And the amount that goes to public access will be determined later this year as a city commission starts the franchise renewal talks with New York's three major cable companies. Time Warner, Cablevision, and RCN. The panel includes officials from the mayor's office, DOIT and the city council. DOIT spokesman Nicholas Sporedone (SPORE-DOUGHN) said the commission will continue to seek public input.
ACT (07)
This is kind of the first of two bites of the apple if you will that the public will have. The first are these hearings that we're holding in each borough. Then if and when renewal agreements are in place, then they would also, the public would have a second chance again then to comment on what those agreements were and what they include.
The three cable firms control a majority of the market today, but they may soon face a competitor. Verizon has said that it plans to expand its fiber-optic network into New York City. That would allow the telephone firm to provide packages of high speed internet, digital phone and television programming that cable companies offer.
This is Michelle Stockman, Columbia Radio News.