January 2006 CFB Meeting Minutes

January 17, 2006

MEMBERS PRESENT

Peter Blum, Chairman
Kent Burrow, Member
Elizabeth Herriman, Member
Daniel Lynch, Member

MEMBERS ABSENT

Robin Winston, Member

OTHERS PRESENT

Chairman Blum calls the January meeting of the Marion County Cable Franchise Board to order.

The first order of business is the approval of the December minutes, which were included in the Board packets. Ms. Herriman moves to approve last month’s minutes. Mr. Lynch seconds the motion. The motion was voted on four-zero.

The next item on the agenda is the Cable Agency Report, submitted by Rick Maultra, the Director of the Cable Communications Agency.

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.

Last Monday the full Council approved the modification to the City’s Cable Code with amendments that will require a new multi-channel video applicant to pay an initial $5,000 instead of $50,000. It also requires the Agency account expenses and send a copy to the provider.

With the assistance of counsel, the Agency has notified Bright House that their response and payment to the City for the audit period of 2002-2003 has not been satisfied and that they owe the City an additional $132,734.00. The Board was notified of this at last month’s meeting when the Agency submitted their auditor’s comments that were in response to Bright House’s own audit. Since, Bright House has repeatedly requested that the Agency’s auditor come to do an on-site inspection, which neither he nor the Agency deem necessary.

The Cable Agency has written a response with respect to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which is due soon at the FCC. They have distributed copies of the City’s response to the Rulemaking to the Board. The City’s response is a comprehensive body of evidence as to the benefits we derive from our local franchises from our multi-channel video operators.

Senate Bill 245 passed out of committee last Tuesday. The Cable Agency had prepared and distributed a briefing for the Board and policy makers within the administration for their review and consideration.

The Rules & Public Policy Committee approved the resolution that the Cable Franchise Board passed at its last meeting. The Agency spent about 45 minutes educating the Committee on the issues facing the City at the state and federal level with respect to local franchising.

The IRIS grant check went out January 5 to benefit the visually impaired program offered via WFYI.
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 December, the Agency received 22 complaints for Bright House. The high areas of complaints were in billing procedures and service interruptions. For Comcast, the Agency received 39 complaints. The high areas of complaints were in the areas of billing procedures, customer service, rates, and telephone service.

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 with Ken Montgomery, Manager of Channel 16.

The numbers for the month of December were a little smaller than normal. There are a few less meetings to cover and a few less special events. There were 47 hours and 3 minutes of new live and tape delayed meeting coverage last month. In the area of specials and events production, the big thing that Channel 16 covered was the Legislative Conference, which is an annual event held over at the Indiana Convention Center. It’s about a daylong affair that deals with what is upcoming in the Indiana State Legislature.

Channel 16 had 12 hours and 53 minutes of specials and events production and 5 hours for in-kind production for City-County Government Agencies. They did 3 programs with Chief Greeson of the Indianapolis Fire Department and one for Continuing Legal Education for the Public Defender’s Office. The total new production for December in all categories was 65 hours and 56 minutes.

Channel 16 did about $2,465 worth of in-kind services if they would have charged for it.

Mr. Montgomery has put together another document that is an end of the year summary that reviews Channel 16’s production outfit for the year. He also does a comparison on previous years. He is pleased to report that in 2005, Channel 16 produced 994 hours of total new production for the year.

Total time in new production was slightly lower than in 2004 at 1009 hours. The average monthly production for 2005 was 82 hours and 52 minutes. In 2004, it was 84 hours. The total number of meetings covered in 2005 was 490 and in 2004 it was 481. The meetings portion stays pretty consistent. The biggest difference that will be seen was in the total of specials and events covered as well as the number of series episodes. Mr. Montgomery attributes that to losing a producer in the middle of the year. Although, with having one less staff member, the numbers were still pretty close to where they were last year.

With that, Mr. Montgomery will answer any questions from the Board.

The next item on the agenda is the Cable Operators Management Reports beginning with Bright House.

Al Aldridge, Director of Public Affairs for Bright House Networks will present their operator’s management report that was included in the Board Packet.

Bright House lost 17 limited basic customers and gained 145 full cable service customers, giving a system total of 128 customers gained for the month of December.

On the incoming call report, Bright House handled 53,119 calls out of 53,345 calls received. 50,067 calls were answered in 30 seconds or less, which gave a call answer rate of 94.3% and a busy rate of 0.04%, as represented by them.

On the Complaint Summaries Report, there were 22 complaints from 17 customers.

100% of service interruption calls were addressed within 24 hours. There were no planned outages, but there were 28 unplanned outages that affected 4,832 customers. The system reliability for the month was 99.99%, as reported by Bright House.

100% of total service calls were addressed within the next business day, unless as otherwise directed by the customer. There were no appointments kept outside of the 4-hour service window during normal business hours, unless requested by customer.

100% of standard installations were performed within seven business days after the order was placed.

There were 0.06 aerial constructions and 0.09 underground constructions in multiple in single dwelling units on Meridian Street and 11th Street during the month of December.

The Division sponsored its 3rd "Holiday Card" contest among the various schools throughout out the Indianapolis area. This was also their strongest year for entries into the contest. They judged over 170 entries and had 4 winners. Caitlin Graham, a 2nd grader and Jennifer Shepherd, a 6th grader at Emmaus Lutheran School won in the Elementary and Middle School category. Because of the quality of entries at the High School level, they had a tie. Blake Carey and Juan Cabrera, both juniors at Manual High School were winners. Each student received a $500 dollar scholarship grant and a specially designed plaque with his or her card engraved on it. The accredited schools also received plagues of the cards to hang in their school.

The Division was a sponsor of the Marine Corps "Toys For Tots" campaign again this year. Not only did employees donate new toys, but they also solicited members of their cable audience through a PSA, to make donation at one of their payment centers. The efforts of the staff, management, and Bright House Network customers filled over 6-barrels with toys and gifts.

The Division again sponsored the 4th Annual "Challenge of Champions" basketball tournament at Southport High School. The event helps to showcase regional high school basketball, while raising additional funds for the Circle City Classic' college scholarship program.

The Division formed an Employee Holiday Choir again this year. Employees from various departments of the Division joined the choir and helped to spread holiday cheer to several nursing homes and a couple of Indianapolis public schools.

During December, the Division met with the "Keep Indianapolis Beautiful," organization. The meeting was to discuss how a partnership with the organization would benefit the City of Indianapolis in 2006.

The continued partnership with WDNI provided 216 hours of local programming as mandated by the City's franchise agreement.

With that, Mr. Aldridge will answer any questions from the Board.

Next is the Comcast Management Report.

Rusty Robertson will present on behalf of Comcast their report to the Board for the month of December.

Comcast represented that the number of customers requesting total basic service decreased by 160.

87.87% of calls were answered in 30 seconds or less with a busy rate of 1.7%

System Reliability for the month was 99.99%

97.6% of total service calls were addressed by the next business day, or at the direction of the customer. 99.94% of appointments were kept within the 4-hour service window during normal business hours, or at the direction of the customer.

100% of standard installations were performed within seven business days or at the direction of the customer.

Comcast calculated 47 complaints sent to the Cable Agency.

Comcast completed construction in 9 new subdivisions and one apartment complex.

Comcast aired over 225 hours of local community interest programming during the month of December.

Comcast aired public service announcements for Circle City Classic "Challenge of Champions” at an in-kind value of $49,400.

Appearing on Newsmakers last month was John Myrland with the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, Allan Hubbard with National Economic Council, Jim Shella with WISH-TV, Helen Cross from Fairbanks, Gerry Dick with Inside Indiana Business, and others.

Comcast was a sponsor of the Volunteers of America of Indiana's Silent Auction, December 2. Volunteers of America of Indiana are a non-profit human services organization serving Indianapolis and Central Indiana. Proceeds from the Silent Auction will help fund their various outreach programs that deal with today's most pressing social needs.

Comcast employees donated new toys to the WRTV-6 Toy Drive. WRTV taped the donation and aired it during the 11 p.m. newscast on Saturday, December 10.

Comcast sponsored The Lee Foundation Christmas Adopt-A-Family program. The Christmas Adopt-A-Family program provides needed assistance in the areas of clothing, toys, food and other assistance to over 400 needy families in Central Indiana.

That concludes Mr. Robertson’s formal report and he adds that Comcast has been working on Senate Bill 245. He will answer questions from the Board regarding that or his report.

Mr. Lynch asks Mr. Robertson how he sees Senate Bill 245 evolving or affecting his business here in the next year or two.

Mr. Robertson responds that his main concern is that the Bill is moving very fast. Many people that he has talked to in cities, towns, counties, and even legislators think that it is a telephone deregulatory bill that almost came to pass last year. The big difference from Comcast’s perspective, and should be from the Board’s, is that it has State issued franchising language in it. Comcast believes that cities, towns, consumers, and everybody involved should be concerned about that. In Comcast’s franchise, they have build out requirements and very specific needs that, not only what the Indianapolis ‘ franchise had that was an interest to the City, but also in the other smaller towns around the State. They have different issues and items in their franchises that were important to the community. With a State issued franchise, Comcast does not think there will be the same attention to the community needs.

One of Comcast’s biggest concerns is, all of their franchises require them to build out. All of their technologies are within a community. With a State issued franchise, there won’t be any governing body to make sure that all the different areas that a provider serves will get what they should.

The next item on the agenda is the ETC Monthly Report submitted by Earl Harris.

The University of Indianapolis is producing two new shows. “Greyhound Sports Monthly” will focus on covering sports on the U of I Campus as well as local Indianapolis sports teams. The show will be seen on ETC 2 starting in February.

“Greyhound News Weekly” will be a traditional newscast focusing on campus news and news of interest in college students.

“Greyhound News Weekly” will replace “Uindy Magazine.” The show will also be seen on ETC 2 starting in February.

IPS produced the “IPS Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration.” This annual event put on by the IPS Multicultural Education Office celebrating the life of Dr. King with performances and speeches by students. Sheriff Frank Anderson was the keynote speaker at the event. The program was seen live on ETC 1 in January 13th at 10 AM. It will replay throughout the rest of January.

Due to additions to Mark Harris’ responsibilities at Butler University, he will no longer be able to serve as ETC Vice-President. The ETC will be electing a new Vice-President to take his place.

University of Indianapolis and Bright House Networks technicians have met and discussed the move of the ETC Playback Site. Connectivity through a B-cable to the U of I Campus has been verified. U of I staff is confirming that they have clearance from Campus Administration to make the move of the ETC Playback Site. The process of making the move continues forward. Future updates will be provided.

Chairman Blum asks with the B-cable in place, and assuming that U of I gives it’s ok, what kind of a time frame does ETC think they are on to move.

Mr. Harris responds that their hope is that if they can work it out, it will be sometime next month. There will be a connection put on to the campus and then the U of I people and/or Bright House people will run that connection from its in point to Esh Hall. That will be the U of I timeline. Then it is the case of ETC moving their play back site. Their target is February at the latest.

Chairman Blum asks if that is the lease that Butler has put ETC on.

Mr. Harris responded that Butler actually asked if ETC could be out by the 17th of January but they are allowing more time if necessary.

Chairman Blum states that the Board has talked with the ETC organization in the past about coming up with a presentation with Mr. Wiles on where things stood. He gives Mr. Harris his choice of either February or March to come up with that.

Mr. Harris responds that they had plans to meet, but had to reschedule. They are in the process of getting something set up.

Chairman Blum states that he does not think there needs to be a big event or anything. He just thinks there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that not everybody on the Board is aware about and the public doesn’t know about. He thinks just an update on where things stand is appropriate.

Next is the Public Comment portion of the agenda.

Jim Smashey spoke under public comment with regard to streamlining and ad campaigns by the cable companies.

Chairman Blum announces the next Board meeting on Tuesday, February 21st at 2:30 PM in room 260 and adjourns this meeting.

___________________________
Mr. Peter Blum, Chairman

___________________________
Mr. Kent Burrow, Member

___________________________
Ms. Elizabeth Herriman, Member

___________________________
Mr. Daniel Lynch, Member

___________________________
Mr. Robin Winston, Member

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Ms. Cristy Tirotta, Recording Secretary

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