 Hello and welcome to the Donahue Group. We're delighted that you could join us for a half an hour of vivacious and interesting conversation on all sorts of issues that are of interest to our local community. Joining me today is state senator, former state senator Cal Potter, Professor Tom Pineski, a mystery guest who will sign in later. Ken, Ken Risto, I remember the name now, who's a social studies teacher. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue. I'm a lawyer in town. Our special guest, this bright shining face here, is Scott Miliff. And Scott is wearing a wonderful buttons that says save access Wisconsin. And we've asked Scott to join us here today to talk a little bit about something that is near and dear to all of our hearts, which is local programming, local cable TV, which allows the Donahue Group to shine forth, what, 45 times a month? Or thereabouts. Local access TV, which some of you may know, some of you may not know, is in significant danger. And Scott is the, what is your exact title here? I'm the production coordinator at TVA. And so that's a simpler title than say Ken Risto's title. So. And it doesn't change his office. And it doesn't change his office. For that you should be great. One episode, one title. There you go. You're probably. It's also on the state board for cable access, aren't you? That's right. I'm also on the board of directors for the WAPC, it's the Wisconsin Association of PEG channels. PEG. Tell us what PEG is. It's an acronym, within an acronym. PEG is public education and government. It's the three legs of community access television. First of all, tell us just a little bit about what, what you mean, what we all mean about community access and how it, how it shows itself here in the Sheboygan community. Okay. I'll speak specifically about Sheboygan. Although there are similar setups in, in communities all across the state and the nation for that matter. TV8, which is what we're on right now in Sheboygan is sort of a twofold. It's public and government access. We also have several educational access channels in Sheboygan. Channel 20, the Sheboyganary School District Channel. Channel 15, the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan. And also, Channel 25 on the Charter Line Up is LTC's channel, which would be considered educational access as well. Where does the County Board come across to it? The County Board is seen on, on Channel 8. Is it? The County Board and City Council meetings. And for that matter, Committee of the Whole are, are covered by, by TV8. Channel 20 carries the, the School Board meetings. So those are exciting nights and afternoons of Sheboygan. The only, you know, full coverage of local government. I mean, you'll get highlights in the newspaper or some sound bites on the radio from the meeting. But, you know, for full gavel to gavel coverage of any of those local meetings, unless you're able to attend the meeting in person, the, you know, local cable is the only, local access channels are the only way to, to see those. And how, how does local access channels 8 and 15, 20, 25, where do they get their money? Okay. I'll, I'll talk more specifically about Channel 8 because I'm most familiar with that. TV8 is, is funded largely from a portion of the franchise fee that the city receives from the cable company. Currently that's charter communications in the city of Sheboygan. Franchise fee is money paid from the cable company to the municipality for use of the publicly owned right of way that strip of land along the road where the cables run. Use of the poles and that sort of thing. It's viewed as rent. Private enterprise, commercial business using publicly owned land and its reimbursement to the public for use of that land. Again, that franchise fee is 5% of their grocery seats received on cable television. Now in more recent years cable companies have been getting into internet service and now even telephone service. Those revenues aren't included. It's just the video service that that 5% applies to. I guess that money comes into the general fund of the city and about a third of that those monies receive are used for the general operating budget of Channel 8. Okay, all right. And then there's a contract between the city and charter specifying the channels that there is to be as part of the contract these public access channels. That's correct. That's part of the locally held franchise. And has that always pretty much been the way that it's been done? In other words, there's always been a Channel 8 as long as there's been cable TV or some form of Channel 8 and some form of public access to the airwaves. For the first 15 years that there was cable TV in Sheboygan, there was a Channel 8 as a public access channel. But for those first 15 years, the cable company provided the studio and equipment and staff and so forth. The studio was within the charter, the cable company wasn't chartered to them. The cable office on, yeah, it was a Lakeshore cable. It was Star cable and Marcus prior to becoming charter. And you'd go down there and use their studio? Right, the studio was right there at the office on Broadway Avenue and, you know. Okay, I remember that. All right. The old Piggly Wiggly building. For those of people who've been around for a while. And now we're out here at UW Sheboygan in this gorgeous setting. Look at this beautiful set. I love this set. I mean, how many places have a fireplace? But in any event. It's a little warm. We think that Scott's being a good sport here today because he's usually behind the camera and now he's in that bright glare of the fireplace and can see just how much fun it is to be here. So the, I think it's fair to say, at least at the state legislature, it's kind of a world upside down now for cable access and how channel eight has been doing business for all of these years. You wanna tell us a little bit about, there's an assembly bill and a Senate bill, AB 207 and SB 107 if I'm not mistaken. There we go. Tell us what those bills are about and then I think we can chew on where they're at and what might happen. Well, essentially those bills are an effort to move franchising from the local level. So rather than having a video company negotiate with each community one by one and set up, well, these are, as Cal was referring to, we need at least one public access channel and we'd like two educational channels, one for the school district and one for the university and whatever the needs of that community are, we're moving that to Madison and Charter or Time Warner or AT&T can apply for a statewide franchise and it's an attempt to streamline the process in the view of the providers and they're the ones that have written the legislation. I'll talk about that more in a minute. But they feel it's burdensome to have to negotiate town by town these individual contracts. So they want one franchise in Madison and then they can go wherever they want in the state to provide service. Okay, is Charter now, you negotiate with Shiboy. Does Charter have cable service in other communities? Yes, they do. And so they have to negotiate with that community for whatever local access. And those are spirited negotiations, I know. I mean, the city currently has a committee of citizens and elected officials and so forth that I think are really chewing on the contract and so forth. So those are real live negotiations, I think. Although they don't come up all that often. No, traditionally a cable franchise for 10 to 15 years. Sometimes it's something other than that. But those are pretty common terms for that contract. And at which time it comes up for renewal and it allows the city to say, okay, you've provided service in a good manner but technology has changed or our needs have changed. And we would like an additional channel. We've maxed out on our available space to house both public and government on the same channel. We would like to split those and have a separate channel in which rather than, and I'm speculating here, that this could happen in Shiboygan. We get enough public access programs, other shows like this one that we're competing for time and aren't able to show those and all the city meetings. There's been comments, well, why do you just cover the common council and committee of the whole? Why don't we see any of the council's committee meetings? Because that's where the real work is done is at the committee level, you know? All we see is the common council where it's consent agenda up and down and unless you have the documents in front of you when they read off, well, it's 23-12. Well, what does that mean? Do, I don't remember now. I was on the council when they negotiated the first contract with Lakeshore, I think it was. Is there, do you recall, is there restrictions on how, on the, what the cable companies can charge on an, increase their charges on an annual basis like for movie channels and other kind of channels? But the city has no authority to say it can't be more than this or that. It just gets to 5%, that's all it could. The 5% of the gross revenue. Okay. Well, tell us if you will, what, if anything, is wrong with AB 207 and SB 107? Well, to begin with, the one size fits all model really isn't good for communities. The needs of Sheboygan are different than the needs of Kohler or Sheboygan Falls or certainly Milwaukee or Madison or, you know, somewhere else in a more rural setting. So to say, you know, this one size fits all is gonna leave some wanting and hurting. It might be a little lavish for others, at least initially. So is it possible, at the state level, if this bill were to pass as it's proposed now, that there would be only one cable provider for the entire state or would it countenance having two or three different kind of providers? Well, there would still be the providers that there are today. People would choose rather than the community. Well, the companies would choose where they want to provide the services. Wouldn't AT&T and Charter and whoever go to the state, get their license, then you as a consumer would not be bound just by Charter because they have a contract with Sheboygan. You could choose AT&T to be your provider and over the phone line, which comes to your house already, you'd get AT&T's phone service. That would be true only if AT&T chose to provide service to your neighborhood in your community. But they could do it because they got a license from the state, right? However, no, that's not true. Yeah, now we're getting charged up. Okay. That's the common misconception is that because Charter has this franchise with the city that it's somehow a monopoly, it's not an exclusive contract. If AT&T wanted to come in and provide video service, they could come in and basically take that franchise agreement which has been negotiated in good faith between Charter and the city and say, okay, those terms are fine with us. We just want to be able to offer service too. And for that matter, Time Warner, or Cal's Cable, whatever could come in and offer competition. You just have to have the infrastructure to deliver your product. Right, and that really has been the limiting factor, the pseudo monopoly, if you want to call it that, is that to run wire through a community and serve every single household within this franchise is incredibly expensive from a capital infrastructure standpoint. And quite frankly, that's why more companies haven't come in. There are communities that have competition already. The phone company or somebody has done an overbuild where basically you've got two sets of wires running through town. What you do here, you have Charter and you've got AT&T basically as the old Ameritech who served this area and that's why they've hired probably 15 lobbyists to get this bill passed, because they're in a good position if they choose to come into Shabbat. Sure, how did Charter get a license? They get a license from the city? Okay, so in the new bill, they get a license from the state. Cities are bypassed. Cities are bypassed. Also, if you had a complaint, you call Charter locally, I guess, someplace. Call your alderman. Call your alderman and he'd call. Well, there's a designated person at City Hall that feels as if you call Charter's customer service and your complaint does not resolve in a reasonable fashion to your satisfaction, then you can call a person at City Hall and they can kind of go to that next level. Well, under this bill, you no longer have that local contact. You now have to call the capital and get in line behind every other person around the state who's in the same boat you are. Well, let's talk about the real, the really nasty piece of this bill, other than AT&T spending $54,000 to buy it. It should cost them more than that is my theory, but in any event, what does this bill in its current iteration, and I know there have been several substantial amendments and I have not been able to keep track of them. For us, for the Donahue Group, a huge loss to the community if we were off the air, but what effect does this have on public access, I guess, is the main thing we're thinking about. As we know it today. Like I said, there have been several amendments, two of the main points affecting public access, specifically TV8 and Sheboygan, that have not yet been addressed by amendments are the reduction in removal of a peg fee. This is an additional mechanism of funding outside of the franchise fee or in addition to the franchise fee. Currently in Sheboygan, it's 25 cents per subscriber per month. And it's an additional that goes towards capital improvements for the public access stations. That bought the fireplace then. Well, but the fireplace was actually donated. Oh, okay. We had a very kind benefit from this. It bought the camera. Right, it's to buy new equipment, new cameras. I was just teasing. As technology changes. If you've got, you know, you have to figure out over the next 10 years of a typical franchise, what your equipment needs are. Well, in a industry that's so reliant on technology and technology that's changing at a nearly unpredictable pace, that source of revenue is really vital. So that would be gone under the bill. That would be gone under the bill. So, you know, so there's a reduction in revenue there. The other big piece that has yet to be addressed is what's been called upstream transmission. Again, currently today, the link between our studio here and Charter's head end, which is where they redistribute that signal to all the subscribers in the community. That piece of wire or that link is provided at no charge to the municipality or the PEG center. It's just part of the cost of doing business for the video service provider. In addition to the link from our studio, which is where most of our programming playback and shows like this one are recorded at, we also have a link from City Hall, for example, where that enables us to carry the Common Council meetings live. There are also links from each of the high schools, which has allowed us in this past year to do the North-South basketball games live. Prior to the construction of the Fulham Houses, those were, of course, played at the Armory, which also has a, and there are other ones. There's one at the John Michael Kohler Art Center that we use for live coverage of the 4th of July parade. And there's some down at Wildwood for the baseball and so forth. Well, each of these links, we would have to pay or lease a line to get our signal from its origination point, whether it's at the studio or City Hall or any of these other spots in town I just mentioned, to the provider's head end. Now, it would be true not just for our incumbent cable provider, Charter, but also AT&T, if they decided. So, AT&T comes into town and is offering competition from a PEG standpoint, that means we have to lease a line to Charter and a line to AT&T. And if a third provider comes in, then it means a third line. And in order to maintain the status quo, renting those lines, our best estimate is it would more than double our current operating budget. So, our revenue has gone down under the plan. Expenses would more than double unless the city says, well, this is important enough. It's a vital community asset. We're gonna fund that, which comes out of the general fund which raises everybody's taxes. Well, everybody's just campaigned on a zero tax increase city budget proposal. Well, you can't have that. And so it would mean a cut in services. So, your association must have an amendment that will rectify your supposed demise. And what will that amendment say or do if it's adopted? What we have proposed is that fine offer, I mean, you can have competition, AT&T or whoever comes, but upstream, that path is the responsibility of the video provider. And that amendment has been amended itself so that to make it more palatable that's the way this whole process works. That if that isn't amenable to whatever video provider, then the local access center can say, all right, if you're not gonna share the cost or pick up the cost, then we're not obligated to provide our signal to you. Under the unamended bill, we would not have that option if there is more than one provider in town, we have to provide the signal to everybody. Okay. I wanna back it up just a little bit so I make sure I understand this, because this is complicated. It is very complicated. The more complicated it is, the more likely chicanery is gonna be created. Under the current proposal that's being considered, the revenue to get a license or a friend, whether it be Charter, AT&T, the monies flow to the Madison coffers. Do any monies flow back to the local municipalities or does the monies stay in Madison? That's one part I'm not quite clear about. And that's part of the reason why the Senate voted to send it to the Joint Finance Committee. I'm getting ahead of myself in the progress. But is my understanding correct to how this works or am I missing a piece? The franchise fee would still flow back to the municipalities. Okay. For an infant item or only for a certain amount of time? Future. For the future. Okay. Is there a per capita payback? Like you said, in the Sheboygan is 25 cents per head. No. The franchise fee is the 5% of gross receipts. Okay. But how do you determine what each community is gonna get? The number of subscribers that come by? Right. It's based on the- Okay. The subscribers of the incumbent cable provider with the most subscribers at the date specified in the bill. So that franchise fee money, the city would not lose under the current- So the money would flow back to the cities more or less but the franchiser who gets the franchise over from Madison would be under no obligation to provide any local community with local access channels. I mean, they wouldn't have to do that any longer if they didn't want to. It'd be up to the city of Sheboygan, the city of Sheboygan to say we have X number of dollars and we want maybe this to continue. Right. Is that correct? And we're running out of time, so. The bill still, the video provider has to provide space on the channel lineup. But outside of the franchise fee, they don't have to provide any in-kind contributions or financial, the peg fee. They don't have to provide money for equipment purchases, is that right? Right. They provide the channels. Right. But they don't have somebody else space for the equipment. I see. Okay. Well, and just kind of wrapping up the discussion. First of all, on April 24th, the assembly did put the bill in a form that can no longer be changed. Cal explained what that process is. It's a 55-41 vote. It appears to be a pretty Republican-Democrat split in terms of all these amendments and so forth. It pretty much along party lines, certainly not entirely. It wasn't the way the vote came down for the amendments in the House on Tuesday. The, you know, prior to that, this whole fast rate, the skids have been greased well on both sides of the party. AT&T has spread their money around pretty well. So it has some bipartisan support that way. Were the corrective amendments you cited that are needed to continue what we have here, were they soundly defeated or defeated in the assembly? Well, those defeats happened along party lines. Yeah, 50-46 kind of lines. Okay, that's why I was wondering how close your work of victory is. They wanted to get the bill pat out of the assembly. Yeah, but just to finish up here because we are almost out of time, what is stunning is that AT&T has provided to date $54,000 in contributions to legislators who are not facing elections till 2010 and other sorts of things now. Don't tell me that state government is for sale. That couldn't possibly be, but I guess there are some concerns that this is being fast tracked. It's very complex, hard to follow really, but it seems like the bottom line is that the Donahue Group, we've been having a good time here for two years. I think we've been on the air two years in last February, if I'm not mistaken. That and other fine programming that really goes on here, and I know people do watch, may be significantly compromised. The argument is more choice, more choice for it, and at a less cost. Now, that's a question that's still undecided whether it would cost less. In other words, for the consumer at a less cost, so let's help the consumer. Hard to say, but Scott, thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed this side of the camera as much as the last.