March 15, 1999

City County Building
Indianapolis, IN 46204

MEMBERS PRESENT:

Carlton Curry, Chairman
David Leonard, Member
Steve Nelson, Member
Stuart Rhodes, Member
Charlie Hiltunen, Member

OTHERS PRESENT:

Chairman Curry brought the meeting to order at 2:30 P.M.

The first agenda item was the approval of minutes for the Cable Board’s February 16, 1999 meeting. Motion was made by Rhodes and seconded by Mr. Leonard, to approve the minutes of the Board’s February 16, 1999 meeting. Motion carried unanimously.

The next item on the agenda was the status report of the Audit of Cable Operators. Ms. Piety stated that Mr. Karrison is in the process of preparing a preliminary report on the audit of cable operators; however, she has not viewed the reports as of yet.

The next item on the agenda was the Status Report of Review of operator rate filings.

Ms. Piety stated that she has received from Mr. Karrison a preliminary draft of his review of the rate filings of both operators for the current cycle. Ms. Piety stated she is in the process of preparing rate orders to support the reports. Ms. Piety also stated that the operators have not seen the reports as of yet, but she reported that the preliminary reports are that the operators are in compliance with the FCC rules and regulations.

The next item on the agenda was the Cable Agency Report. Mr. Maultra presented the Cable Agency report which highlighted the events that have taken place at the Cable Agency in the last month. Mr. Maultra stated the Cable Agency finished its review of the compliance of the cable operator’s franchise agreements. The Agency has passed along its findings to Time Warner and Comcast for their response and anticipates some informal discussions from there. The Agency reviewed the Indianapolis Public Access business plan and met with its officers to discuss it .

The Cable Agency was contacted by Congressman’s Burton’s Office to discuss upcoming competitive issues such as satellite TV service providing local channels. U.S Senator John McCain is sponsoring the legislation that will set the must carry ground rules for direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) carriers that elect to provide local TV signals. Achieving this would make the programming between cable and satellite appear more similar. Mr. Maultra stated satellite TV currently does not offer local channels and that has served as a deterrent to its appeal to consumers. A concern with such legislation is that the deployment of the DBS must carry for local channels will be almost exclusively limited to the East and West Coasts and that migration to the Midwest will be slow in coming.

The Cable Agency has worked with both cable operators with a summary and breakdown of problems attached to the Agency report. Time Warner had a total 50 complaints for the month, and Comcast had a total of 70 complaints.

The next item on the Agenda was the Channel 16 Programming Report presented by Mr. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery highlighted some of the activities of Channel 16 for the month of November. In February there were 34 hours and 06 minutes of live meeting coverage. Tape Delay meetings totaled 5 hours and 39 minutes. Special Events Production totaled 12 hours and 26 minutes.

In the area of In-Kind Production, Channel 16 had 7 hours and 16 minutes. Series Programs totaled 8 hours. Total new production for the month of February was 67 hours and 13 minutes.

Mr. Montgomery stated in reference to additional notes that Alan Dhayer of Channel 16, was awarded a bronze Telly award for the Crack back one neighborhood at a time video. Also he stated that Channel 16’s International video is in full production and the hope is it will be completed in April of 1999. Channel 16 also has a Bi-monthly series which Angie Gilmer is working on with the Airport authority and BAA to do a informational program about improvements at the airport. The City Market video aired on the local FBS channel, WFYI-Channel 20.

The next agenda item was the Cable Operator’s Report. Mr. Satterfield presented the Time Warner Report. Mr. Satterfield stated that Time Warner had a loss in the number of full cable service subscribers in the month of February. Time Warner completed 3,233 installs for the month of February with 3,915 scheduled. Incoming calls for the month were 42,597 with 94.8% answered in 30 seconds or less. Busy rate 0.98%. Service calls for the month were 2,110 scheduled and 2,069 completed. Time Warner planned 6 outages for the month and there were 63 unplanned outages.

The Community Involvement report supports a lot of different community events and programming, including the announced unique collaborative effort between Court TV and the Marion County Sheriff’s Department to roll-out "Choices and Consequences" to schools throughout the county. The announcement was made during a state legislative reception hosted by the Indiana Cable Telecommunications Association. Under the program, a Sheriff’s deputy will partner with a local teacher in each of the Indianapolis Public Schools, the county schools and Indianapolis parochial schools to present Court TV’s "Choices and Consequences" program to middle schoolers.

Mr. Curry stated the percentage of calls answered in 30 seconds for the last month was 94.8% which is an improvement, and the busy rate is less than 1%, over the last twelve months. He asked Mr. Satterfield what it is that Time Warner did differently to make this happen.

Mr. Satterfield stated the change is that Time Warner finished the upgrade and the upgrade created alot of activities such as incoming calls and outages.

Mr. Curry also asked how many hours of local origination programming report was covered by Time Warner.

Mr. Satterfield stated he would have mail the missing local origination programming report Cable Board members prior to the next board meeting.

Mr. Curry asked Mr. Satterfield to explain the "ghost" problem on Channel 8.

Mr. Satterfield stated that it’s called an ingress. An ingress is where a broadcast signal ingresses into what is supposed to be confined distribution system. Mr. Satterfield stated there are three ways in which that signal can interfere with the subscriber picture: 1) if it gets into Time Warner’s network itself at some connection point, or 2) it is picked up by the TV set directly, or 3) it gets into the wiring of the house. Mr. Satterfield stated the problem can be corrected by rewiring or by putting in a converter.

Mr. Curry asked Mr. Satterfield if he had a time table when this issue will be resolved.

Mr. Satterfield stated that Time Warner wants to have this resolved before channel 8 goes to full time digital transmission.

Mr. Mark Apple stated that Comcast launched the cable network "Style" which appears

on Channel 64. Mr. Apple stated it was added to the value pak tier service and there is no rate increase associated with the launch.

Mr. Apple presented the Cable Operator’s February Management Report for Comcast. Mr. Apple stated Comcast’s ending total subscribers are 111,368 customers. For incoming calls, Comcast had 107,219 calls; 59.98% of those calls were answered in 30 seconds or less. Comcast had 50 outages for the month, 0 of them were planned. Comcast received and scheduled 2,434 calls and completed 2,469 ; 54.2% were completed within 24 hours; 95.1% were completed in 36 hours or by customer request. Comcast scheduled 4,506 installations and 4,065 of those scheduled were completed.

Mr. Apple stated that during the month of February, Comcast had 42.5 hours of community interest programming aired on Channel 50. WAV 53 had 127.5 hours of locally produced programming. Comcast aired and produced 14 public service announcements and 19 Newsmakers segments. For Comcast events and sponsorships; see report.

Mr. Curry requested more information as to how the various categories shown on the incoming calls report fit together.

The next item on the agenda was the ETC Report. Mr. Donaldson presented the ETC report. Mr. Doanldson stated that the confusion on transferring funds to Indiana University from the City of Indianapolis for public purpose grants has been corrected. Mr. Donaldson also stated in regards to comments in the Star and News attributed to him relative to the Public Access channel, that Star and News stories were not completely inaccurate. Mr. Donaldson wanted to clarify some issues. He stated that ETC does support the public access channel and the business plan put together by PAI was put together very well; however, ETC feels the funding request in the PAI plan is unrealistic. Mr. Donaldson also stated that the Star and News article indicated that Educational Access did not need more channels. He believes that the Educational community in Indianapolis and Marion County may require future allocation of educational access channels. Mr. Donaldson stated that he also spoke to the reporter about a demand for foreign language programming. Finally, Mr. Donaldson stated in the last month ETC recorded a session from Sue Ellen Reed as presented to Collaboration 2000. The topic was on technology in education in the State of Indiana.

Mr. Donaldson stated the Educational Television Cooperative expresses its gratitude to the Cable Franchise Board the City-County Council, and the Cable Communications Agency for their on-going support for Educational Access Television in Indianapolis and Marion County. ETC entered its tenth year of operation of these resources and has consistently met the mission of the organization. ETC provides an outlet for locally produced educational programming with minimum resources through a partnership of educational institutions in Indianapolis and Marion County. The leadership of ETC is provided through many volunteers, using the production resources of the member institutions and the in-kind support of many organizations to provide quality locally produced educational programming. See ETC 1998-1999 Annual Report.

Under Old Business, Mr. Curry stated that he has not received any input from anyone in regards to the request of information (RFI) asking if Mr. Maultra from the Cable Agency received any input.

Mr. Maultra stated he received changes only from Counsel which are included in the new draft which was included in the board packet.

Mr. Curry asked whether the Board should consider placing the RFI before the public or wait a month so it can be reviewed with the changes and to see what interest there is for the channel under the negotiated agreement that the Board has.

Ms. Piety stated that she suggested two changes pertaining to the RFI; 1) in the paragraph on public records law, she requested the deletion of any reference to public private agreements, because it doesn’t apply and 2) because the Agency might want to have discussions with people who are submitting responses, she added a paragraph allowing discussions for the purpose of assuring full understanding of and the responsiveness of responses from the people who are responding to the RFI eligibility rules.

Mr. Hiltunen asked if the RFI channel in question for the public access.

Mr. Curry stated from his understanding under the present contract language that has been negotiated with Time Warner and Comcast , this particular channel would not be eligible for public access.

Motion was made by Mr. Leonard, seconded by Mr. Hiltunen, to postpone consideration of the RFI until next month. Motion carried unanimously.

The next item on the agenda was the discussion of PAI Business plan. Mr. Hiltunen asked in regards to the business plan and PAI requests for monies what impact that would have on the Cable Board and Agency budget.

Mr. Leonard stated that the amount of excess monies which goes into the general fund, which is reflected in the PAI business plan, from his understanding is allocated by the Controllers office for different purposes.

Mr. Curry stated that he does not have a problem with the Controller’s office addressing Mr. Hiltunen’s and Mr. Leonard’s concerns next month.

Mr. Leonard stated in regard to page 8, of PAI business plan, that he agrees with Mr. Donaldson’s assessment that the business plan is very detailed and very well done. Page 8 of the business plan also has a discussion of the designation of an access channel for public access. Mr. Leonard asked for comment from counsel as to how the franchise contracts and the local code ordinance addresses the PEG channel allocation.

Ms. Piety stated both of the current franchise agreements require that upon completion of the upgrade that both operators make available an additional analog channel for access purposes. Under Section 601-2 of Time Warner’s and Comcast agreements, the operator must provide one additional analog channel for access purposes. Section 601-2 of Time Warner’s and Comcast’s agreements require the operator provide one additional analog channel for educational or governmental use. Ms. Piety stated that section 602 of agreements says allocation of those channels is by the Cable Franchise Board and by the City and states specifically that the allocation is limited to educational or governmental access non- commercial programming. Ms. Piety also stated with respect to the City Codes Section 851-403 entitled "Public Educational or Governmental Access channels, facilities, and equipment," the Board may promulgate rules and procedures under which an operator may be permitted to use access channel capacity for the provision of other services if such capacity is not being used, including the rules and procedures under which an operator’s permitted use will cease. In reference to Time Warner’s request to put Fox Sports Midwest on an access channel Ms. Piety stated it was a limited time period request to use one of the access channel during Time Warner’s upgrade. The channel was returned to the City as the build-out was completed.

Mr. Hiltunen suggested that the Board view PAI business plan at greater detail.

Mr. Curry stated two major concerns with PAI business are: 1) funding and 2) allocation of channel capacity.

Under New Business Mr. Montgomery presented the Freelance Engineer contract. Mr. Montgomery stated that the agreement between the Cable Franchise Board of the Consolidated City of Indianapolis, on behalf of WCTY/Channel 16, and Jack Tapp is for video engineer services through December 31, 1999, on an as needed basis. See Service Agreement.

Motion was made by Mr. Rhodes, seconded by Mr. Hiltunen, to adopt the Service Agreement for freelance Engineer Jack Tapp. Motion carried unanimously.

Under Public Comment, Archie Robertson, George Neal, Ron Haldeman, Michelle Niemer, Erik Mollbert, Julie Vaughn, James Smashey, Timothy Johnson, Blair Karsch, Nick Hess, Robert Pedersen, Clark Kahlo, Karl Kakasula, George Van Sickles and Alfred Chandler spoke on behalf of supporting the PAI business plan.

There being no other business to come before the Board, Mr. Curry adjourned the meeting at 4:45 P.M.

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Mr. Carlton Curry, Chairman

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Mr. Charlie Hiltunen, Member

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Mr. David Leonard, Member

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Mr. Steve Nelson, Member

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Mr. Stuart Rhodes, Member

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Ms. Janise L. Winston, Recording Secretary