Tag Archives: cable franchise agreement

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.

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.