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Public education TV group stands up to Charter's channel reshuffling
Charter Communications is no stranger to complaints, but company officials seem taken aback by the outcry over their proposed relocation of Madison-area public, education and government (dubbed PEG) programming to upper tier channels.
The Wisconsin Association for PEG Channels sent Charter a letter last week breaking off negotiations with the cable company over the move, which would switch PEG channels from their current analog locations on basic cable to a digital "Public Affairs Neighborhood" upwards of Channel 900.
"We have no problem going digital," said WAPC executive director Mary Cardona. "The problem is they're discriminating against PEG access channels, pulling them out of an analog tier that all consumers can see and putting them into a tier where nearly half of the subscribers won't be able to see it."
Currently, two-thirds of the nation has access to cable, but only about half of those people have the proper equipment -- either a modern television with a QAM tuner or a digital converter box -- to view digital cable channels, she said. Although the Public Affairs Neighborhood channels will still be part of the basic cable lineup, those who don't have the proper equipment either will have to buy a new TV or pay $5 a month for a digital converter box.
Cardona said the channel moves, which are being implemented nationally by various cable companies, will "marginalize these public access channels."
Tim Vowell, the director of government relations for Charter, said the plan to shift PEG channels this fall was "well-thought out" and called the letter a "surprise."
"There's an overall transition from analog to digital format, and so this in no way singled them out," he said, adding that last year, three cable networks -- G4, Game Show Network and Lifetime Movie Network -- were switched to digital-only service, and that Soap Net, Toon Disney, Jewelry TV and Shop NBC would be making the move to a digital tier along with channels like the Madison City Channel and WYOU.
The move from analog to digital channels for cable companies is part of an effort to free up additional bandwidth for high-definition channels such as Fox Sports Wisconsin, Vowell said, which will be offered to Charter HD customers beginning Aug. 20. Not all analog channels can be switched now, however, because of a Federal Communications Commission ruling that cable companies must serve analog televisions until 2012. Thus, some analog channels are being moved earlier than others. The PEG moves were originally slated for Aug. 12, but Vowell said they have now been delayed until September or October.
Vowell said the PEG channels were given an "ideal location." Public access channels will be located on channels 978 through 994, with four new Wisconsin Public Television digital channels preceding them and analog channels immediately following them in the rotation.
Channel line-ups "are circular, not linear, so you go Channel 3, 2, 1, then 999, so they would be just on that very end of the digital spectrum immediately adjacent to those channels," Vowell said. Moreover, he said, because there will be more PEG channels on the digital tier, Charter customers will be able to pick up channels from surrounding communities for events like high school sports games and more Dane County residents will have access to County Board meetings, which were previously only available to Madison customers on the City Channel.
Vowell said Charter representatives met with the Wisconsin Association for PEG Channels on July 23 to talk over the move and offered them an unprecedented $20,000 to promote the channel changes. However, Cardona and Madison City Channel station manager Brad Clark said the money came with conditions unacceptable to the organization.
"Everything that they offered had strings attached or it was extremely limited in scope and reach," Cardona said. For example, she said, the association as well as station managers would have been prohibited from speaking negatively about the moves.
"Clearly, our position is such that we could never do that," she wrote in the letter to Vowell. "Further, our organization simply cannot bind our members in that fashion. WAPC represents the common interests of our member stations. We lobby, we organize, we motivate, we hope to effect changes that benefit our member stations. At best we can recommend a course of action to our members. We can't control their speech."
Clark added that Charter did not want any deals to make the switch easier for customers without digital service -- such as discounts on digital converter boxes -- to be widely promoted.
"It smelled kind of funny," he said.
Vowell said Charter would be working with individual customers if they had concerns about the transition, but based on previous conversions in other communities, it did not anticipate many problems.
"We don't think there will be a huge issue, but we'll do what's right for the customers," he said.
The WAPC is still re-evaluating its response to the move, Cardona said. The group may consider legal action on the grounds that the moves violate the federal 1996 Cable Act, but she said they "were heartened" by indications from some state and federal lawmakers that they intended to respond to the channel moves.
File photo
Tim Vowell, director of government relations for Charter Communications, said the plan to shift PEG channels was "well-thought out."
