www.JerseyCityTVNews.com

"THE STATE OF THE LOCAL ACCESS CHANNELS

IN JERSEY CITY - SPRING 2001"

Most of the local cable television programming that formerly served the citizens of Jersey City has been eliminated. This is due to a combination of several factors, all of which have contributed to keeping the residents uninformed and "information poor".

Comcast, the cable operator, no longer voluntarily produces certain local programs it had in the past such as the candidate forums, election night coverage, local sporting events at Cochrane Stadium and other venues and other informational and variety programs. Instead, Comcast now provides this "local origination" programming by way of its "CN8-The Comcast Network", on Channel 8, which is a multi-state regional commercial network which provides little, if any, programming produced in or about Jersey City.

Simultaneously, there has been a total failure by our elected officials to begin producing local programs out of City Hall with the $150,000.00 equipment grant provided by the cable operator several years ago. Despite the provisions of the cable franchise agreement, the City has defaulted on its obligation to assume the actual physical control and operation of Channel 1, the Municipal Government channel, and has left same to Comcast.

Following federal deregulation in 1996, the cable operator was no longer required to make its Jersey City studio available for citizen's public access productions as it once did, and as another cable company, Cablevision, continues to do in other parts of the County. Comcast maintains the portable equipment and editing system for public access use at below required levels, utilizes this equipment for its own purposes, and fails to publicize or have any organized training program for the use of this equipment. Channel 51, the designated public access channel, is utilized by Comcast to run MTV 2, formerly "The Box" , when local programming is not run. On other systems, there is enough locally produced public access programming to schedule around the clock. On other systems, local government has set up an independent, non-profit entity to run the public access channel, in the way of a community television station. This is the preferred model.

Further compounding these sorry circumstances is the failure of the public school system, which "shares" the use of Channel 1 with the City, in particular the "Media Arts Magnet" special curriculum program at Snyder High School, with its recent second million dollar upgrade, or any of the colleges or vo-tech schools, to provide any significant or meaningful community programming. So far this semester the faculty and/or students at Snyder H.S. have turned out 2 or 3 episodes of its "Connections" program, a discussion show featuring the Board of Education, and one "special" on the occasion of Black History month, which is an extremely low output considering the resources at hand. Council President Tom DeGise, who claims the support of Bret Schundler in his bid for mayor this year, is a guidance and/or career counselor at Snyder.

Unlike 1993, before Schundler, the most important events in the City, the Mayoral and Council debates in 1997, were not televised. Channel 1 became "Bret TV" for a time, featuring a continuous re-run of programs produced by and about the Mayor, until the press, citizens and some elected officials complained. "The Council wants the local channel to function the way it did under the cable franchise of the previous owner, Cable Television of JC. Then located on Channel 3, the local channel showed a variety of programming, including interviews with council members, news programs, reporter roundtables and programs featuring local sports personalities, writers and community activists." (JJ 2/11/98)

In 1996 Gregory J. Corrado, Assistant Business Administrator, was in charge of the City Hall "Discussion Group" concerning the Comcast franchise renewal. The members of the group included Council President DeGise, the mayor's Chief of Staff Tom Gallagher and Corporation Counsel Paul Mackey, Esq. Mr. Corrado has also served on the Public Library Board of Trustees. A friend of the Mayor and former restauranteur, he filmed a movie on the premises of the Main Branch. Unfortunately, none of them possessed the special expertise to properly deal with the cable operator, and failed, in this instance, to bring in an outside consultant who might have enabled the City to get a better deal from the cable operator. Other cities around the country have received fully equipped studios, mobile TV production trucks and operational grants. Following deregulation, Comcast removed the TV production truck which had once exclusively served the City.

In early 1998 the City Council passed City Ordinance 98-012 which renewed the existing franchise for 15 years. As part of the contract, Comcast paid the City a one-time grant of $150,000.00 to purchase television production equipment - or "for other purposes.". It also dedicated Channel 1 for use by the City for the purpose of televising non-commercial governmental and educational programming produced or provided by the municipal government or its agents. There was also a provision that Comcast provide a personal computer based character generator to be installed in City Hall. Its use by the City was to be for cablecasting of non-commercial public announcements and information only on said "City Channel", and that the City would have complete responsibility for all messages generated on that equipment. Comcast was also required to install dedicated return lines from City Hall and the studio at Snyder High School to permit live or taped cablecasting.

There was an 18-month "transition" period following the ratification of the renewal, at the conclusion of which the City would have operational control of Channel 1; i.e., that a "master control" system with the personal computer based "character generator" would exist within City Hall. In addition, it was anticipated that a studio with several cameras would be installed for governmental and educational productions utilizing the $150,000.00 grant. In addition, the City receives an annual franchise fee amounting to 2% of gross revenues, approximating $150,000.00 from the roughly 45,000 subscribers.

The City failed to ever install the master control system or character generator system. It reneged on the operation of Channel 1 to Comcast, which maintained the status quo of minimal governmental programming. Continuing to air on Channel 1 is a bland, uninspiring and non-original mix of continual re-runs of certain politician's shows and items like "Dance Vista", a program produced by Tom Horan, the Mayor's private videographer, which exclusively features the Kennedy Dancers, a school run by Mr. Horan's wife. Mr. Horan is also a TV instructor at Snyder High School. The channel line-up, the listing of the shows to air, is often not properly updated and runs for more hours than the programming itself.

Channel 1, under the auspices of the cable operator because of the breach of contract by the City, failed to provide an important public service - to provide information of emergency situations. When the City experienced the pollution of its water system on 2 occasions, no messages were ever sent warning people not to drink the water. The master control and character generator which would have allowed the City to generate its own emergency alerts to its citizens on Channel 1 was never installed in City Hall where municipal employees would have had 24 hour access to it.

In the fall of 2000, the City finally purchased $44,000 worth of television production equipment from the $150,000.00 grant by Comcast. Unfortunately, this equipment has remained under the exclusive control of the Mayor's office, unavailable to the council, educators or civic activists.

At about this time an expertly produced commercial began running on local cable featuring the Mayor in which he publicized the Jersey City Homecoming event. As far as production values went, this was a big improvement over the earlier "Bret TV". It is believed that the newly purchased equipment may have been utilized in its production. Letters to the City Council President Tom DeGise, a supporter of the Mayor, concerning this equipment have gone unanswered.

Prior to the January 2001 public hearing concerning the three D.E.P. proposals for the development of the perimeter of Liberty State Park, Mayor Schundler recorded a commercial featuring himself and his daughter speaking on behalf of proposal 3, the Waterpark. This was improper issue advocacy by the Mayor, especially when no equal time was afforded to the citizen's groups espousing proposals 1 or 2. (see NEIGHBORHOODS FIGHTING CITY HALL TO PROTECT THEIR QUALITY OF LIFE- Waterpark for Liberty State Park),

Channel 1 is currently administered by the Mayor's senior adviser, Jose Arango, who succeeded Darren Bloch, the Mayor's Director of Communications, and like all those before him, possesses no special expertise in running a community television channel and has certainly demonstrated none, judging by the circumstances and by what appears on the screen.

City Hall continues to air the Council Caucus rather than the actual public meeting. This was recently defended by Council President and Mayoral hopeful Tom DeGise, who was worried that if the public meeting was televised, there might be a loss of control over the proceedings and the council members would have to spend more time defending their positions, causing the meetings to run longer. In contrast, the neighboring towns of Bayonne and Kearny, like many others around the State and country, record and air the public council meeting. Other towns have set up non-profit corporations to administer studios, portable equipment and training for the public access channel. Some even have more than one public access and/or educational access channels running around the clock.

This is another example of Schundler's dictatorial style by limiting access to information.

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