PEG Community Readies Efforts to Encourage Passage of CAP Act
The public, educational and government (PEG) channel community plans to help lawmakers better understand the importance of PEG channels, in an attempt to push through legislation aimed at restoring fees from franchise agreements with cable companies that were lost to PEG channels, they said. The Community Access Preservation Act, S-1789, introduced last month by Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., called for flexible use of PEG fees and would order cable operators to provide support for PEG channels (CD Dec 11 p6). The bill, which was reintroduced and revised from previous versions, will likely meet backlash from cable operators, a cable attorney said.
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Wisconsin Community Media will undergo efforts “to make legislators more aware of how important and how endangered these stations are,” said Mary Cardona, WCM executive director. “We're dealing with a Congress this session that’s pretty famous for not doing a whole lot, but the important question is do legislators really understand why the CAP Act is so important,” she said. “Once we really get them to understand why it’s important, we'll get it passed.” In Wisconsin, independent nonprofit public access stations that rely mainly on dedicated PEG fees get hit the hardest, she said.
PEG stations in Wisconsin were affected by the 2007 passage of the Video Competition Act in the Legislature, Cardona said. That legislation “has made it much more difficult for community media centers to be viable.” As a result of lost funding, the West Allis Community Media Center was shuttered in 2012, and WYOU-TV, Madison, Wis., now operates from a local library, she added.
There’s much more familiarity about the bill in Congress, which was introduced twice before, said Bunnie Riedel, American Community Television executive director. Getting people to understand what the bill is about is key, she said: “A lot of these congressional offices use PEG access television.” PEG TV provides government transparency, especially at the local level, she said. This has drawn the attention of some members of Congress, she added.
If the CAP Act moves forward, it will encounter strong resistance, said Gary Lutzker, a BakerHostetler attorney, who represents cable operators in franchise negotiations. “This is a subterfuge tax increase only on cable subscribers,” he said, referring to the bill’s provision requiring cable operators to provide up to 2 percent of gross revenue for PEGs.
Riedel said she sees no reason for the cable operators to push back against the legislation. The cable industry has its hands full with the retransmission consent debate and the IPTV transition, she said. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t cost them a dime.” Cable operators point to their carriage of PEG access TV when they are trying to show potential subscribers the differences between their offerings and satellite TV offerings, she said.
The Internet has obviated any need for PEG channels, Lutzker said. Local governments have an outlet that reaches nearly everybody, “and that’s probably a greater percentage of local customers than the cable system,” he said. “While there might have been a need for … the local government taking cable operator property for its own purposes in 1984, that justification doesn’t fly anymore because they have ample additional outlets, more effective outlets for reaching their constituents."
The Internet can’t replace cable transmission of PEG content, said Riedel. “That’s not a solution across the board,” she said. “The commercial stations are putting parts of their content online in order to drive eyes back to the actual channel.” There are people who don’t have Internet access and, “even when they have access to the Internet, the question is ‘do they have broadband?'” she added.
The League of Wisconsin Municipalities passed a motion to support the CAP Act, and WCM will continue encouraging Wisconsin municipalities to back the legislation, Cardona said. In a few weeks, WCM also will launch a website aimed at making it easier to organize and promote community media and to raise the profile of community media, she said.