Category Archives: Comcast

City Council, City of Peoria, Comcast, Television

City to temporarily extend Comcast franchise agreement … again

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Comcast’s 20-year cable franchise agreement with the City of Peoria expired in April 2006. Since then, that franchise agreement has been extended temporarily numerous times while the City and Comcast have been negotiating a new agreement. Tuesday, the council will consider a request to extend it once again — this time until November 30, 2010. The reason is so we can see what kind of agreement Comcast makes with other communities in Illinois (Rockford, Champaign, and Urbana). City staff believes this will somehow be advantageous to Peoria.

Meanwhile, Comcast has jettisoned oversight and execution of public access (technically known as “PEG”) programming, off-loading it to the City, which has in turn outsourced it to a third-party organization. Comcast has also closed their local customer service center. And Comcast can, at any time, get a franchise agreement from the State of Illinois, thanks to legislation pushed through by AT&T.

Comcast, thanks to the complicity of the State, has the City over a barrel. So, all these extensions appear to be only delaying the inevitable: a franchise agreement on Comcast’s terms. It’s hard to see what good these temporary extensions are doing.

2010 Election, City of Peoria, Comcast, Peoria County, Peoria Mayor, Peoria Public Schools, Traffic

Blogging Bits and Pieces

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Here are some odds and ends that I just don’t feel like writing a whole post about:

  • It looks like District 150 has just about settled on a new superintendent, and her name is Grenita Lathan. She’s currently the “interim deputy superintendent at California’s San Diego Unified Schools.” Other than that I don’t know much about her, and there’s surprisingly little on Google, Lexis-Nexis, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, or any number of additional sources I checked. Oh, there are some snippets here and there. You can see some interview footage with her here. Commenters on another post have several links to quotes and information they find troublesome. Some have already passed judgment. I’m kind of old-fashioned, though. I like to wait until someone actually screws up before I start criticizing them. From what I’ve heard, the first thing she wants to do is purge the administration of unnecessary and ineffective administrators. I certainly can’t complain about that.

  • John Vespa was not endorsed by the Journal Star to succeed his brother as the 10th Judicial Circuit judge. The reason they give for passing him over is that “Vespa fell below the 65 passing grade” on something called the bar poll “and is ‘not recommended.'” They say the bar poll (where responses are anonymous) is “controversial,” but they evidently believe it. Not surprisingly, the Vespa campaign begs to differ. They report: “To understand the relevance of the bar poll … it is important to look at … the number of people participating. There are 911 lawyers in the Circuit that are eligible to participate in the poll, according to the ARDC website. Of those 911, there were only 152 that registered an opinion. (16.3%) The majority of those 152 felt John met the requirements of the office. Of course John would expect to have some legitimate detractors, particularly given the fact that half of his practice is devoted to criminal defense. In fact, it would be troubling if he did not. (All of his opponents practice for the most part, civil law only).” As the Journal Star would say, “Voters can make of that what they will.”

  • One of my readers recently told me about this site called “How We Drive” — and specifically, this post on “Parking Availability Bias.” Very cool site full of interesting information.

  • The “religious group” that the city is considering to operate the public access channels on Comcast’s cable system is called GPS-TV, and is located in Washington, Illinois. Here’s their website.

  • You can download a transcript (PDF format) of Mayor Ardis’s State of the City address here. Of course, the biggest announcement of the speech was this: “I have spoken at some length with County Board Chairman Tom O’Neill and we are prepared to put together a group that will be charged with exploring the opportunity to move Peoria City?County towards combined municipal government.” It will be interesting to see what recommendations that group makes in the future. Will it just be combining certain functions, or a total UNIGOV proposal?
City Council, City of Peoria, Comcast

City reaches agreement with Comcast

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The City of Peoria’s cable franchise agreement with Comcast expired in 2006, and ever since then the City has been trying to negotiate a new agreement. Along the way, they have passed numerous temporary extensions and held a few public forums where residents could express their feelings about Comcast’s cable service.

Now the city has finally reached an agreement. One big change: it’s term is significantly shorter at five years (previous franchise agreements were for twenty). The shorter term means that “after two years, the renewal process will begin again.”

The proposed franchise agreement has another significant change: Comcast will cease providing a studio and equipment for public access programming, something the cable operator has done since its inception. Instead, that responsibility will fall to the city, who is apparently planning to outsource it to an unnamed “religious group” that is reportedly “ready to step in and run the public access channels” for reasons unknown. One can only speculate as to what effect this will have on public access programming.

Getting rid of public access responsibility is not unique to Comcast’s dealings in Peoria. Just last month, Springfield’s city council voted to take over their public access channel, “Access 4,” after Comcast ceased programming it. The State Journal-Register reports that “Comcast must provide three channels for public, educational and governmental access programming,” but the franchise agreement “doesn’t require Comcast to operate the channels.” The reason? “Comcast is doing what they have to do to cut back,” Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin was quoted as saying. In Peoria, they have already laid off George Bean, “manager of Peoria’s public access channel for almost 20 years.”

City of Peoria, Comcast

Comcast gets raked over the coals

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Over 60 people showed up at City Hall on Tuesday evening for a chance to tell Comcast what they think of the city’s only cable provider. Comcast representatives Debra Piscola (Director of Government Affairs) and John Niebur (District Director) listened as over 30 residents — including six city council members — expressed frustration over service and pricing issues.

The most common complaints were:

  • No local customer service — When you need to call Comcast, there is no local number available; you have to call an 800 number and talk to a call center in some other city. There were also complaints over how long it takes these call centers to answer the phone.
  • Channel movement — C-SPAN2, EWTN, and other analog channels were reassigned to digital channels, and some channels such as National Geographic were reassigned to most expensive cable packages.
  • Pricing — When Comcast first took over Insight, they said they weren’t going to raise prices, then immediately raised prices. Then they reassigned channels, some to more expensive tiers, causing many residents to feel they were paying more for less service. One person reported that he was quoted one price, but when he threatened to switch to a satellite service, he received a lower price, prompting him to ask what the real price is. Another resident similarly asked for “transparency in pricing.”

One person requested the ability to choose which cable channels he wanted and pay only for those (also known as “a la carte” pricing). Another complained that he was given a 12-hour service window, meaning he had to wait around his house from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the cable company to do a simple installation; the cable technician showed up at 7:50 p.m.

The Comcast representatives answered some questions, but mostly just thanked the audience for expressing their concerns and promised to address those concerns in their franchise agreement negotiations with the city.

City council members in attendance were Clyde Gulley (1st District), Bob Manning (3rd District), Bill Spears (4th District), Pat Nichting (5th District), Ryan Spain (at-large), George Jacob (at-large), and Eric Turner (at-large). Gulley left early, but the rest of the council members in attendance said that they get numerous complaints from constituents regarding the cable company. Spain said the number of complaints he gets rivals the number of people calling about more expensive and controversial issues like the CSO project and the recent downtown hotel plans.

Turner said that he wouldn’t support a new franchise agreement if service issues aren’t addressed and improved. Unfortunately, that’s somewhat of an empty threat, since state law allows cable companies to get franchise agreements directly through the state, bypassing local municipalities completely. City Attorney Randy Ray says the public hearing Tuesday night is one advantage of having a local franchise agreement — if Comcast were to get a state franchise, local residents likely would have to trek to Springfield for any public hearings regarding cable service.

Original plans were to bring a new franchise agreement to the council for approval at the next scheduled meeting. However, due to the “level of dissatisfaction,” Ray said it may take a little longer to negotiate an agreement that the council will support. The last 20-year franchise agreement expired in April 2006, but has been temporarily extended multiple times during negotiations for a new agreement.

City of Peoria, Comcast

Tell Comcast what you think of them

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I have to laugh whenever I hear Comcast commercials “warning” people that satellite TV service may pixellate or completely lose its signal when there’s inclement weather. I laugh because Comcast can do that in all types of weather! Not only that, some channels may disappear because they’ve moved them from an analog channel to a digital one. And if you call to complain, you don’t get to talk to anyone locally, you have to call an 800 number and deal with some completely unhelpful wage slave in Who-knows-where.

Why not cancel Comcast service, you ask? A couple of reasons. First, they’re the only place you can see local access channels, including the Peoria City Council meetings and school board meetings. Second, they can be the cheapest service you can get, if you get Basic Cable. I only pay about $15/month. But just because I don’t pay big bucks for a digital cable package doesn’t mean I should get shoddy reception and poor service.

So, I think I’ll be attending this meeting:

The City of Peoria and Comcast Cable will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, February 3, 2009, at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will take place at Peoria City Hall, in City Council Chambers (Room 400).

The purpose of the public meeting is to discuss the current contract with Comcast and the services provided by them. This will be an opportunity for the public to make comment and voice any concerns regarding Comcast.

The public is welcome and encouraged to attend.

Comcast

Surprise! Cable rates going up

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Well that didn’t take long. Comcast has sent out a mailing notifying its customers that it will be raising its rates effective April 2, 2008.

Basic service is going up a dollar per month, from $13.60 to $14.60. Expanded basic (formerly Classic Service) is going up two dollars, from $35.15 to $37.15. That means that a standard cable package that includes Basic and Expanded basic will be going from $48.75 to $51.75 per month, or about a 6% increase. DVR rental is going from $8 to $10. And all the various premium services are going up one or two bucks per month, too. There are various other changes in prices.

Comcast says, “Occasionally, we must adjust our prices to reflect the value of our services and the investments Comcast makes to bring you the best that technology has to offer.”

Meanwhile, satellite service only costs about $30 per month, and over-the-air broadcasts are free.

City of Peoria, Comcast, Insight Communications

Still no franchise agreement, and now Comcast

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TV iconSince April 2006, the City of Peoria and Insight Communications have been operating without a franchise agreement. The old 20-year agreement expired last year and negotiations for a new agreement have been going on ever since. The City isn’t saying what the holdup is, although it could be any number of things, including state and federal legislation designed to take local franchising authority away from home-rule communities like Peoria.

In the middle of all that, the news has been released that Comcast will be taking over Insight’s cable systems in Illinois, including Peoria. So what does that mean for Peoria’s on-going struggle to nail down a new franchise agreement?

City attorney Randy Ray had this to say: “There is a procedure whereby the City approves the transaction. Hopefully we can use that as leverage and get an agreement.” He didn’t elaborate on what the “procedure” is.