April 2008 Minutes

April 21, 2008

MEMBERS PRESENT

Dean Farmer, Chairman
Jerry Cosby, Member
Richard Curry Jr., Member
Loren Heger , Member

OTHERS PRESENT

Chairman Farmer calls the April meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order.

The first order of business on the agenda is the Approval of the March 17th, 2008 and March 19th, 2008 Minutes.  Mr. Heger moves to approve the minutes and Mr. Cosby seconds the motion.  The motion is voted on 3-0.

Item number 2 is the Cable Agency Report submitted by Mr. Rick Maultra.

Mr. Maultra thanks the Board for the opportunity to highlight some of the things that the Cable Communications Agency has been involved with during the past month.  

Dating back to at least last October, ETC has had significant transmission issues that the City has determined through an engineering assessment require Bright House to address. The Agency's counsel has prepared and sent out a letter to Bright House management detailing the problems. ETC does have some audio hum issues that contribute to horizontal lines going from bottom to top with both of its channels. Hopefully these problems can be addressed ASAP as the signals at time for the customer is almost unwatchable. There have been instances where Mr. Maultra has seen triple ghosting patterns on ETC 2.

The ETC grant to be disbursed to the University of Indianapolis was approved last Monday by the City-County Council.  The Agency appeared before the Finance & Admin Committee to present the request for the fiscal ordinance where it was approved unanimously, as well.

The Agency attended the Council’s Rules & Public Policy Meeting as well as last Monday’s City-County Council meeting with respect to discussion on our new Board member; Mr. Jerry Cosby. The Council approved him unanimously.

With respect to the Bright House audit review period of 2004-2006, the City has issued a counter to Bright House counsel’s letter to the City of March 14.  Consistent with the franchise agreement and City Code, the Office of Corporation Counsel has also requested that amount above and beyond what the City had been liable in paying in past years to execute a franchise fee review. The past due amounts now owed the City in the amount of $76,421 as of today. Mr. Maultra understands that Bright House’s corporate counsel has been in touch with the City's attorney, Logan Harrison, to discuss this matter.

The City has sent a letter to AT&T outlining the problems that their customers have been experiencing with regard to the PEG access channels.  The issues that are evident include the lack of closed captioning, absence of the emergency alert system, quality of PEG signal being less than the standard of the current government access signal and lastly, inordinately long wait times to have the signal actually download to the end user.

The City’s Parks Department requested public service drops for Sahm and Northwest Parks for which Comcast has yet to comply with.  The City has issued Comcast with a non-compliance letter as the standing language for public service drops carries forward over to their current State franchise.  The City is waiting to hear back from Comcast with respect to this matter.

The City’s contracted auditor has issued the paperwork with Comcast to commence the franchise fee review with respect to 2007 video service revenues.

The Cable Communications Agency has been serving as a consumer advocate to Indianapolis and Marion County cable subscribers in assisting them in mediating cable complaints on their behalf.   

 For the month of March, the Cable Agency received 16 complaints for Bright House .  The complaints were derived from Digital Voice, Modem/Internet and Rates.  For Comcast , the Agency received 3 complaints, even though the Agency’s contact information has been taken off of Comcast ’s billing statement.  The areas of complaints for Comcast were derived from rates, technical service and unburied cable.   

That concludes Mr. Maultra’s Agency Report and remarks and he will answer any questions that the Board may have.

The next item on the agenda is the Government Access TV Programming Report submitted by Mr. Maultra.

Channel 16 covered 44 different meetings for a total of 56 hours and 49 minutes of live and tape delayed meeting coverage for the month of March.

There were 14 hours and 12 minutes of specials and events production for the month of March.  Channel 16 did 2 hours of In-Kind Production for City-County/Government Agencies and 3 hours on Series Programs.

The total for new production in all categories was 76 hours and 51 minutes. 

The Online Archives Usage Report for March was included in the Board packets.

Mr. Maultra offers to answer questions from the Board regarding this report.

The next item on the agenda is the Cable Operators Management Reports by Bright House Networks. 

Al Aldridge, Director of Public Relations offers to answer any questions regarding their monthly report that was distributed to the Board but does not present their total numbers.

The next item on the agenda is the ETC Monthly Report submitted by Mr. Chuck Fearnow, ETC President.  

The ETC meeting was brief this month, and only three members were able to attend, due to illness or business.  No minutes were taken.  Discussion revolved around the signal and what could be done to improve it.  Mark  Harris suggested that finding a program, air it and then test in a number of places throughout the city to compare the signal.  They will probably do this after Bright House has made changes to the connection that they are currently working on.

Wednesday morning, Anna Martinez reported that the connection is bad from IPS to U of  I, and was wondering if that might be related to the work  being done by Bright House.   Jeff Walker is investigating.

Mr. Fearnow responded that the students of U of I produce a couple of programs that are broadcast over ETC but no students do any of the engineering or any work of that nature.  He added that he thinks the issues are coming from a connectivity problem.

The IPS to U of I problem was definitely a connectivity problem.  The ghosting problem that is going on now is probably the line between U of I and Bright House.

Mr. Aldridge adds that the coax to Bright House system is 25 years old.

Mr. Maultra stated that part of the signal issues with ETC right now are because when the Bright House upgrade was to be done per the 1996 agreement, the whole system was to be built out with a hybrid fiber coax system.  The INET and the B-cable that carry the PEG access transmissions hasn't been upgraded.  It is also worth noting that when ETC's head end trnasmits and they hand off their signal to Bright House, Comcast is getting a poor signal as well because it's Bright House that connects to Comcast and then hands off the educational access signals to Comcast subscribers.

There is no items New Business or Old Business on the agenda.

There is no Public Comment.

Mr. Heger thanks the City-County Council for appointing a new member to this Board.

Mr. Jerry Cosby introduces himself to the Board.

Chairman Farmer announced the next scheduled Board meeting on Monday March 19th, 2008, at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting.

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