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.”
That’s not the only layoff they’ve had in Peoria. The local workforce has been gutted. Drive by and look at their parking lot on a work day.
Are they going to do anything to improve our channel selection or are they going to keep taking thing away while upping our price.
Peoria had a Public Access Manager? What in the world did he do? Because, you know, Public Access TV has been so powerful and effective in Peoria.
BTW, I’m am aware of the makeup and plans of the group taking over programming, and I have confidence that they can foster something of great benefit to the community.
There’s so much the council could have done to help preserve local jobs. Sad.
Vonster – so glad to see you have finally emerged from your mourning over BJ.
I do wish COMCAST could get their billing straight. For three months in a row they have screwed up my bill. They can’t add two and two and come up with anything near four. And I get really sick of all the new customers being offered all the perks and low prices while the long time loyal ones get their bills raised and get the shaft.
Diane: Bill knows wassup and is being silent. I find that odd. Bill??
SD: To be fair, do you have a cell phone?
Alex — The city can’t do anything about the channel lineup. There’s actually very little they can do in the franchise agreement; they have very little bargaining power now that the state can give out franchise licenses, too.
Kirt — What were your expectations for the public access channel that you feel the manager at Comcast did such a bad job? I personally think cable access is a relic of the past. Don’t people just upload their videos to YouTube now?
CJ: Don’t tell that to the CAPtions folks…
The real question is: When will AT&T bring U-Verse to the Peoria area?
It’s already in parts of Springfield, Decatur, Champaign-Urbana, Danville, and much of the Chicago area.
Strange set up . AT&T owns the poles where lines are strung ,Amerin &Comcast use them. if you want a pole repositioned then you pay AT&T and They move it , Amerin is there gets nothing ,Comcast does not even show up for the move. I do not believe AT&T orVerizon have FIBRE OPTIC cable here???Insight installed all that Comcast has.
Comcast has gutted Peoria office of personel & equipement and setvices. My friend was long time trainer ther ,after being sento Springfield and completing their staff . The cleaned out Peoria and he was let go. Speed of Broadband is down . Check out there stocks{2} top 6 exec’s make in 6 figures. ,equipement is old. Peoria paper had a rticle on what they are doing in suburbs in Chicago ,making all HD {that will up your bill.} We do not have to give them a loong term aggrement,City lawyers just do not want to do the work ever three years. and he works for us.
Vonster, no I do not have a cell phone? What does that have to do with them messing up my bill?
The recent Knight Community Information Challenge reminded me of the active Peoria area blogger community. Glad to see things are basically the same. Bill is still having server issues and Vonster is still an ass! Sorry to hear about George and Access 4. This is happening everywhere. I’m not going to try to make the case to save traditional public access, but there is an option other than turning the channel over to a religious group (no offense CJ) or looking to YouTube to serve your local community instead of the LCD with the next 2 girls 1 cup video. The Open Media Project is a Knight NewsChallenge funded, open source solution that gives the community control of the channel. It basically turns the channel into a shared screen connected to a big Tivo where the everyone has a turn at the remote.
If there are a few PHP savvy geeks in Peoria and local video producers who’d volunteer their time, I’d throw a 100 hours of my time and $1,000 in a hat towards getting a new, truly community controlled station started in Peoria.
I am not having server issues. I am migrating my site. No problems. I just choose to be transparent.
And please, people, do NOT Google 2 girls 1 cup. Trust me on this if you trust me about anything.
Does Comcast act as a utility company? This morning, even though I refuse to pay for Comcast and use an antennae, their truck pulled up in front of my home, their employee got out and proceeded to walk all over my property. He then went across the street and walked behind that home, also. Do they have a right to be roaming all over everyone’s property?
Not sure if anyone will see this, but here goes…
ok, so I’m a relative newcomer to Peoria Chronicle. I decided to browse some blogs concerning Comcast. Happened to
catch info I didn’t know back in January. I did know that Bean got laid off, and the other employee, TJ, has been working his butt off keeping things going. What folks don’t realize is one person now receives tapes/DVDs from producers like us (CAPtions, Bourbon St. LIVE), converting them to the server, programming them for airing; directing or doing studio production of what shows still use the studio; coordinating the city council broadcasts; shooting other government meetings. And he does this not just for Comcast Cable 22, but also Religious Channel 20 and Pekin’s Cable Channel 5.
The new info I read here concerns this GPS-TV takeover, but their website is under construction. But public access takeover is now being bid out by the City anyway.
CJ, in many cases, public access may be a relic; but then, there ARE people out there who don’t know how, or don’t care to watch videos via Internet. (We do have a lot of elderly that watch our shows). But since the beginning of this year, we have been uploading both CAPtions and JT’s Bourbon St. LIVE to both YouTube and Facebook.
Re: “Me”s comment: CJ: Don’t tell that to the CAPtions folks…
What did you mean by that? I am curious, are you a CAPtions viewer?
Dennis in Peoria, I’m glad to see you found C.J.’s blog–I’ve appreciated your input on the PJS website.
Dennis in Peofia ought t start a blog.
Thanks, Sharon
nice idea, tellpeoria, I could have lots to say, but I’d be considered
too liberal for some posters. And I really don’t have the time. Plus,
I’d be wanting to promote PCCEO, it’s issues, and our TV shows…which may be in violation of CJ’s rules.
“I could have lots to say, but I’d be considered
too liberal for some posters. And I really don’t have the time.”
Yes. It would definately not be a good idea for you to post being so busy and all. 🙂
So what downside is there to being “too liberal” on a blog? Last I heard, they don’t lock you up for they. I mean, they stopped arresting bloggers when Bush/Chaney left ….
And if you don.t wanna do your OWSN blog, blog here:
http://tellpeoria.com/yourturn
It’s a group blog that works like twitter
Dennis:
Even if you don’t start a blog – I am regularly looking to post PCCEO video that may be of interest to the broader public.
So, what happened to that charter school lottery video you were supposed to be posting?