AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION CHANNELS.

This bill expands requirements on cable TV companies and related entities with regard to town-specific community access. Community access consists of public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access.

The bill narrows the types of entities that are eligible for funding from the public, educational, and governmental programming and educational technology investment account (PEGPETIA).

The bill requires the advisory council for a company with a certificate of cable franchise authority to review all community access programming in the franchise area that has been the subject of a complaint. The certificate is a form of authorization for cable TV companies that was created by PA 07-253; the complaint review requirement already applied to cable TV company advisory councils.

Under current law, the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) must adopt regulations requiring each cable TV company to maintain at least one community access channel available to the public. The bill explicitly applies this requirement to companies that hold certificates of cable franchise authority. It requires both types of companies to provide to all of their subscribers at least the number of community access channels, including town-specific channels, that its predecessor cable TV company or its affiliate provided or made available to the subscribers in a given area as of January 1, 2008. The bill specifies that the regulations may not (1) require these companies to use a specific transmission technology or protocol or (2) specify the use of digital, analog, or other types of carriage. But the company may not discriminate between commercial and noncommercial channels with regard to their signal quality, functionality, or accessibility. The bill's provisions do not apply to companies operating under a certificate of video franchise authority (e. g. , AT&T).

The law imposes a number of requirements on cable TV companies with regard to community access, including supporting community access operations. By law, a nonprofit organization can petition DPUC to assume responsibility for these operations, with continued funding from the company.

The bill restores funding for town-specific access programming. Specifically, it requires that if the company or organization that operates community access (1) supplied original programming from a locally-run operation and (2) funded town-specific programming, it must continue to fund town-specific funding in the same proportion to funding for original programming from locally-run operations as it did as of January 1, 2008. Thus if half of a company's 2008 budget for local programming was spent on town-specific programming, it would be required to spend half of its future local programming budgets for town-specific programming.

Under current law, DPUC must allocate half of the money in PEGPETIA to local and state cable TV advisory councils, PEG programmers, and PEG studio operators. The bill limits funding to local PEG studio operators who DPUC require to file annual community access provider reports. By law, unaffected by the bill, DPUC must allocate the other half of the account to school boards and other educational entities for education technology initiatives. The account is funded by a tax on cable TV companies and related companies.

Yea

Nay

(03/19/2009)