Amid Falling Cable Revenue, Regulatory Changes, PEG Urged to Get Creative

"The PEG grant more and more often is just going to be for operating capital" that may not pay for everything, said Alliance for Community Media CEO Mike Wassenaar, a public access channel advocate. In some cases, that support is being nixed, he added: "Franchise fee support is only going to be diminishing," with "constant downward pressure." PEG operators need a brand, panelists said. "No one loves a pipe," Wassenaar said. "No one loves the transport device, unless you’re sort of a geek. People love the content."

In her Washington suburb in Maryland, Montgomery (County) Community Media CEO Nannette Hobson said MCM is focused on content, too, winning an Emmy for its video. "Content is king, and I worry a lot about everything Mike said, all of it," Hobson said of the hurdles Wassenaar cited. She realizes "how little power I have over all of it, except for this part" -- programming, she said: If she and her colleagues "make all the right choices … if you are true to your mission, I hope we will survive all of this. ... We must evolve in all we do." It can be "precarious," she said.

A so-called hyperlocal focus was recommended, amid the decline of newspapers and as TV stations have a regional focus. "We want to partner with everybody in the county who wants to make media" and be hyperlocal, Hobson said. "Mike is right, we need members who support what we do, not borrow cameras to make videos." MCM tries "to fill the void" within the county "that is no longer served by a local newspaper," Hobson said. Many "are not embracing the 501(c)(3) parts of themselves" and are not seeking donations, she said: "We are a nonprofit and we need our community to understand our value." She showed a video ad describing what MCM does and saying "please give today."

At the conference, public access programming and its challenges have been perhaps the No. 3 focus, behind 5G and FCC and other regulations (see 1909240055). Speaking from the audience, cable accountant and NATOA board member Garth Ashpaugh invited attendees to a closed-door meeting (see 4 p.m. Wednesday listing) on the FCC cable franchise order. "Even if you don't do the regulatory stuff in your area, I think you need to be" there, he said.

FCC Concerns

The regulatory "process is not providing any solutions to the community needs" for PEG, Wassenaar responded to our query. It's "ignoring the Cable Act," he said. Hobson answered that "the challenge is to take in the landscape right now" and "get a strategic plan for the future. And to do that, you have to imagine what the future will look like." It's "a fork in the road, so I think that’s the impact" of regulatory changes, Hobson said. "We are at this place where we need to make some choices." For Quad Cities Cable Communications Commission Executive Director and panel moderator Karen George, her organization's plan from 2013 "looks very different than the plan that my board just adopted this Thursday," she said.

Wassenaar slammed the FCC including for its Aug. 1 cable franchise fee order and coming regulation on how cable operators can value their carriage of PEG and deduct that fee from what they pay local franchise authorities. Franchises are done on a "case-by-case" basis, he noted in an interview, and the order doesn't account for that. "It's unhelpful for" commissioners "to demean services that local communities need." He partly was referring to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's statement in favor of the 3-2 order: "There are numerous examples of where video providers lack the ability to say no to 'voluntary' waivers of the five percent cap" on what localities can require operators pay, O'Rielly said. The companies have "no recourse but to agree to all manner of in-kind contributions," he said, including "supplying transport lines to cover ice cream socials in Minnesota."

There were concerns about regulatory uncertainty. "It's not clear what's going to happen" with the proceeding the FCC promised on how cable operators can value PEG carriage, Wassenaar said. The agency says "they'll review the issue," he noted. "I don't know what that means." He thinks the regulator is illegally "rewriting the Cable Act." It would give local government "a choice between money" from cable operators or getting the companies to carry PEG "but not both," the lawyer added.

O'Rielly's reference to ice cream socials came "directly from an ex parte" filing, emailed the commissioner's chief of staff, Joel Miller. NCTA on July 29 "listed examples of the types of PEG transport lines that have been required of cable operators in the past," Miller said. The FCC declined to comment.

"Most PEG services are not sustainable" as cable revenue falls, Wassenaar warned the conference. "We set them up to get revenue from one source." These challenges are "going to force regionalization" of public access channel operations, and possibly combining PEG providers, he said during Q&A. "There's a whole host of ways you can be" combining administrative functions short of a PEG takeover, he added.

Hobson thinks "if we are diversifying the content we produce, then we can [get] diverse revenue sources." Concluding the panel, Quad Cities' George said "we are in a brave new world, and we have to think creatively."

NATOA Notebook

What some at the FCC liken to a pizza box to deploy 5G is much larger, local telecom officials were told Wednesday. Showing a photo of himself standing in such a facility, engineer and lawyer Jonathan Kramer, who represents some municipalities, joked at a panel that "it's quite slimming." He showed an array of such facilities that could be up to about 28 cubic feet, under commission rules. Carriers look at rolling out fifth-generation cellular as "a five-year issue," but Kramer said "we as local governments are looking at our communities' aesthetics for the next 50 years" with siting of such structures. "What is the impact on our communities," he asked. The FCC declined to comment.

Because communities' needs vary, so, too, will rollout of 5G, municipal telecom officials were told Wednesday. "If you’ve seen one county, you’ve seen one county. If something works in one county, it doesn’t mean it will work in another," said National Association of Counties Associate Legislative Director Arthur Scott. It's "hard to apply a cookie cutter formula" to carriers and 5G, he said. "When we start having fees for local governments, we’re not just trying to" hurt industry, "we’re trying to leverage the investment the local government has made in the infrastructure," he said of application fees. Scott recommended communities partner "with their telecom providers to establish a working model" on the wireless standard. "This is not just one small cell, this is many, many cells in many, many places through a community," he said. "This is going to require significant upkeep" by the locality, he said. "Those fees that are associated with small-cell applications are critically important."