Does Omaha need six channels to broadcast public access programs on cable TV?That is the question that will be raised Monday at a meeting of the Cable Television Advisory Council.
Cox Communications is asking the City of Omaha for the right to reclaim three of six community access channels. According to Cox, six channels are available but users are only creating enough programming to fill just over one of them.
Cox's proposal would cut the number of community access channels in half to use them to provide customers "with enhanced services" such as high definition channels and additional programming.
WOWT (Cox Channel 8) reported on the issue earlier this week. Cox Communications has lobbied a lawmaker in Tucson, Ariz., to propose a similar move in that city, one which would cut the number of public access channels by more than half.
Two of the six channels up for review are The Knowledge Network of Greater Omaha (TKN) (Cox Channels 17 and 18). Jim Adams of UNO Television is appealing to viewers of programs on the Knowledge Network to come to Monday's meeting at 4 p.m. in the Douglas County Civic Centerto show support for the programs they watch.
The programming in question on TKN includes specially-produced shows such as "ICU Learning English," "Hola Amigos," "La Otra Cara De La Moneda," and the student productions, "The Coach Kemp Show" and "The Omaha News."
The Knowledge Network also provides University of Nebraska at Omaha students, Omaha Public School students and Metro Community College students with the opportunity to gain hands-on television production experience. Westside High School's student-produced news program has proven to be particularly popular, according to viewing habits tracked through the "Viewer's Choice" option.
6 comments:
First of all, we don't live in the city, and don't have Cox service, so I can't comment as a viewer of public access cable (why do images of Wayne's World come to mind?) nor of a Cox subscriber nor Omaha resident, technically.
However, I've seen the news reports and listened to the interviews on KIOS, and it is my distinct impression (not to try to start another left v. right red v. blue fur or anything) that in this market, religious and conservative content is far more welcome on public access than is secular and progressive, ok, I'll use the L-word, liberal content.
One group in particular is trying to get content on the air (ok, on the cable) and I get the impression that they are getting totally cold-shouldered and downright stonewalled simply due to the position on the political spectrum of their content.
Oh well ...
Cox seems to be trying to score cheap bandwith at the expense of the public access.
Considering how vital these channels are to UNO and OPS in terms of their education efforts, I think this is a bad idea.
If Cox wants to cut the channels, then we should re-open the entire contract to a new round of competitive bids. I wonder if Cablevision or DISH would be interested?
Why can't Cox just ask to move three of the six channel to the basic digital tier? Digital channels take less bandwith, so that should solve most of their problem.
I hope they don't get rid of SCOLA.
Cox says they'll move SCOLA to a digital channel. EWTN (the Catholic channel), now on Cox 21 most of the time, would still be available on digital channel 279. Some seniors, persons on fixed incomes as well as those who do not wish to subscribe beyond basic analog cable would be penalized.
All of the community and public access channel producers would prefer to be on in prime time. Throwing them all into one or two channels (the educational consortium will get at least one channel) could get ugly. Who gets to be on at 7 pm and who is saddled with a 4 am time slot?
By being greedy about wanting to reclaim local access channels, Cox is blowing a sales angle. Satellite doesn't offer local access channels, so one argument to get cable instead of satellite is for the local content. So what does Cox do? It proposed to cut its local content in half! Dumb move!!
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