Cracking down on PEG TV
April 12, 2007 at 2:10 pm by Wayne GarciaPEG is public, government and educational access television. You know, those small cable channels that feature anything from government meetings to school programs to naked women (pre-Ronda, that is).
Louise Thompson, the exec director of Speak Up Tampa Bay, which produces and manages Hillsborough’s public access channel, sends out a warning today about a Florida Senate bill that would harm all the PEG channels:
Senate Bill 998 is in the Community Affairs Committee of the Florida Senate right now. Once it gets out of that committee, it is expected to go the Appropriations Committee.
The bill would allow the telecom companies to unfairly take copyrighted content — shows produced by the community — for their use – without paying the copyright holder for that content.
The bill would move all PEG [Public, Education and Government] channels from the lowest tier. This means, PEG channels could be on channel 327 or some other high channel numbers. It also means that people would need to pay higher costs to view the PEG channels and that those channels would not be available to the lowest cost subscriber.
The bill would create high transmission costs for PEG channels because of its technical requirements — costs none of us could afford.
Lastly — and the worst case scenario — if this bill passes, ALL access channels — public, education and government — will be eliminated on July 1, 2007. This is because there is a requirement hidden in the bill for an access channel to air 8 hours of local original content per day not counting replays in order to stay alive. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, TNT, HBO and other commercial networks do not air 8 hours of local original content per day because doing so is unaffordable. How could we?
Thompson urges pressure on the local Senators (Victor Crist, Charlie Justice, Mike Fasano, Arthenia Joyner, Ronda Storms, Dennis Jones) to defeat the bill or change it to protect PEG channels.
While they’re doing that, how about changing the law to prevent local governments from spending millions in cable fee taxes on government access shows that are little more than propaganda? Limit government access to televising public meetings and events such as town halls?
