I must confess I'm not a regular viewer, but I do check the station out from time to time.
Over the past couple of weeks, I would get a slide-show of various Plainfield scenes and contacts, with a crawl on the bottom of the screen: "Due to technical difficulties, PCTV's regularly scheduled programming is down. Programming will resume as soon as possible..."
Turns out the system has been down since a 'brown out' on September 7th took out two servers.
Now, I'm not an IT pro, but this is mystifying as servers are supposed to be protected from power surges and 'brown outs' AS A MATTER OF COURSE.
Why the servers are down, how long they will be down, and what is being done to get the station back in functioning order are mysteries at the moment.
Will have to do some more checking.
Meanwhile, you can get an idea of the programming you are missing by checking the PCTV schedule (here, PDF) or its page on the city's website here.
-- Dan Damon [follow]
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My sources tell me that the issue with the station is that the contractor which is responsible for providing technical support has reached his cap or limit regarding his contract. If you do a little digging you'll find this to be true.
Most service contract have limitations. Unless of course you pay for a better one. What is inexcusable here is that with the 4% franchise fee we all pay to Verizon or Comcast should prevent this from ever becoming an issue. In the 2009 audit of the budget I think it showed around $120,000 from cable fees that went into Plainfield's general fund.
More than enough to pay this contractor to fix the problem! I see a theme here. Everything is not the Mayors fault. The council once again can and should vote to fund PCTV operations so we don't have to be the laughing stock of the county regarding our public channel.
Citizens have been complaining about the quality of programming for years regarding PCTV. If the council believes in transparency which I believe the majority do, it would be the perfect tool to let the sun shine in.
Who knew and who cares. I seems to be a venue for Jerry and Sharon getting elected too often and is boring as all heck. Let's use the money for something else, like more police.
I do notice the proliferation of "See What Sharon has done" photo ops. Maybe this is a ploy to limit the viewing of council meetings and further keep the community in the dark!
And here we have a new IT expert getting big bucks.......
Typical of Plainfield, we pay for no service and no talent.
The cable TV station is a waste of time. The videography is amateurish at best, most of the still photos are of Mayor Robinson-Briggs and the graphics look like they're done by someone who has just learned basic Powerpoint.
Once again, Plainfield shows itself to be a low-rent city in every way.
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