Tribune/Debra Reid - Charter Communications executives George Jostlin and Manny Martinez had difficulty explaining their plans for public education and government television stations to SNCAT producers, consumers and activists on Thursday.
Charter executive director Manny Martinez gave this explanation to the Sierra Nevada Community Access Television (CAT) and other business and government representatives in a meeting Thursday. Martinez and George Jostlin, Charter's director of government affairs and public relations, said they needed to clear Reno channel 13, Sparks channel 15, public acccess channel 16 and Washoe County channel 17 from the analog tier to make room for higher-end programming.
"We have to move these channels to a digital tier," Martinez said. "To stay competitive, we were forced to provide consumers with high-definition programming.”
The move to the digital band will require up to 9,000 basic cable customers without high-definition programming to rent a digital converter box for $5 a month.
Charter said it will offer a 90-day free trial of the boxes with an additional 30-day, money-back guarantee if they are not satisfied.
Andrew Barbano, leader of Resurge.tv, a consumer group of viewers and public access show producers, said Martinez and Jostlin refused to commit to an advertising budget as an outreach to seniors and other county populations that take advantage of the PEG channels on their analog televisions.
However, the Charter representatives did propose a 20-percent discount to Reno customers who claim an economic hardship. The discount would also be available to Sparks and Washoe County residents.
Even with 70 more days of the channels remaining on analog, Barbano said Charter "has not moved at all ... thereby destroying most of the audience" by requiring customers to pay for what federal law mandates to be accessible and affordable rates for public information.
"What I did get out of them," he continued, "is that 20 percent of 150,000 people, 75,000 in Washoe County ... about 30,000 customers will not be able to get the public access programming unless they buy the box.
"It looks like the only thing that's going to get their attention is a lawsuit because after all two hours of backslapping today, they haven't moved an inch," Barbano said.
The move to the digital platform would mean a huge savings by not rebuilding pipes to accommodate an increasing growth in bandwidth, Martinez said.
But some at the meeting expressed other challenges to the move. Bunchie Tyler of the National Alliance of Mental Health said it would be difficult to teach the mentally ill how to even use the remote controls and settings the digital boxes would require, and that even the additional $5 per month could be a hardship.
"You could teach them how to use it one day, but forget it the next day," Tyler said.
Tyler also was concerned about the rate increase.
"I don't want a box and I don't want to pay for what I'm not getting," she said.
Jostlin said Charter's decision is the result of "technology changing."
"Do you think we'd be successful unless we offered (higher end programming)?" Jostlin asked.
Martinez and Jostlin said there's no way to track how many people currently view the PEG channels. Les Smith, SNCAT executive director, said about half of the people in the city have at least watched some type of public access channel in passing when the city calls with surveys about sewage and asks residents about their source of information.
The proposed movement of the PEG channels is not related to Charter’s and other cable providers’ federal mandate to convert all but the "must carry" channels to the digital tier by Feb. 26, 2009. In 2012, cable will become completely digital.
SNCAT, which facilitated Thursday's meeting, has no legal standing in the issue.
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