Greetings TVCTV Supporters and Producers ~ The Video Service Act is coming back with worse consequences for Public Access Television in Idaho. Monday morning it is coming back as an RS (routing slip) and may be given another number - started as H32, then H156, then H303.
I attended the sub-committee meeting last week (was not permitted to provide information) where changes were made to the bill. Association of Idaho Cities, Idaho Cable Telecommunications Association, City of Boise and City of Pocatello (attended by phone) testified along with Bill Roden - lobbyist for Qwest. A.I.C., I.C.T.A., Boise and Pocatello all said, "They like what we have - it works, they don't agree with this bill, they will not oppose it". Again, Public Access Television was excluded from the discussion even though we are stakeholders in this legislation. It is extremely important to contact all of the House State Affairs Committee members urging them to vote "NO!" on this bad legislation.
Your voice in the community is at stake!
Here are some bullet points from Dave Carlson of Pocatello's Public Access:
1. PEG users were not included as stakeholders.
2. Format has always an important issue with PEG users since Statewide Video Franchising was first introduced.
3. PEG users are in opposition to one sentence regarding video on demand (H0303 sec 50-3010, subsection d, page 12, commencing line 45),
45 (d) Channels for PEG use provided by a system operator may be located by
46 the system operator on any service tier subscribed to by more than fifty
47 percent (50%) of a system operator's subscribers or may be provided as
48an on-demand service which is available to its subscribers without an
(page 13)
1 additional charge. Channels for PEG use shall be of similar quality and
2 functionality to that offered by commercial channels on such tier of
3 service unless the signal is provided to the system operator at a lower
4 quality or with less functionality.
4. The whole purpose of this paragraph, (H0303 sec 50-3010, subsection d, page 12, commencing line 45), is to make sure PEG channels are of comparable quality and function as commercial channels on the video provider’s network. The Video-on-demand form of accessing PEG channels makes it difficult to locate the PEG channel by a viewer and then it takes time to load the requested channel. The process is very similar to loading a video via the internet and looks similar to viewing a video on the internet instead of looking like all the other commercial channels. By federal law PEG channels should be located on a video provider’s basic tier which allows viewing of the channel by all subscribers.
5. Lawsuits have been brought against video providers in several states that have gone to statewide franchising, over the format of PEG channels.
6. PEG Users can not support a statewide franchise bill with this type of format language in it.
The associated links provide more information on the legal issues and problems with
H0303 sec 50-3010, subsection d, page 12, commencing line 45, and with the corresponding wording in the subsequent RS. It has been made clear that there is no negotiation on Video-on-demand in this language.
This is a 6 minute video demonstrating the difficulty of accessing a PEG pre-recorded, archived video stream through a “Video on Demand” service.
This link is a comprehensive review of the PEG situation nationally, including the video on demand. It is provided by the Congressional Research Service in Washington D.C.
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