Jerry and Plainfield cable subscribers. What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture?

Plainfield 'cable' subscribers appear about to get the shock of their lives, if a bill passed by the Assembly yesterday is also OK'ed by the Senate, as seems likely.

And what have you heard from Assemblyman Jerry Green about this? Nada.

I say 'cable' in quote marks because the bill will impact not only traditional COMCAST cable subscribers, but also VERIZON customers, as well as LANDLINE PHONE COMPANY customers (see NJ Spotlight coverage here, and Ledger coverage here).

The bill, which passed the Assembly 66-7 with 4 abstentions and three not present, will relieve Plainfield and NJ subscribers of the following consumer protections --

• OUTAGES: Credit to consumers for outages over four hours would be abolished;
• BILLING ERRORS: Law requiring correction of billing errors is lifted;
• DISCRIMINATION: Law ensuring against discrimination or refusal of service is lifted;
• SLAMMING: The prohibition against switching a consumer's phone company without permission would be lifted;
• RATES: Cable and phone companies would be free to raise rates on basic services at will (they must currently be approved by the BPU).

The state's Ratepayer Advocate, who opposes the legislation, holds that 3 million households with basic cable and 1.4 million with basic phone service (local area and emergency calls only) will be left to the tender mercies of the telecom companies (see here statement here, in PDF; and video of an NJN interview here).

And there's a special kicker for MUNICIPALITIES: telecom companies would no longer be MANDATED to provide PUBLIC ACCESS CHANNELS, such as our Comcast and Verizon ones, to local communities.

I don't know if Assemblyman Green voted FOR the measure (the roll call wasn't posted yet when I looked online; see the bill here). If he did, he owes his constituents a full explanation of his support for killing these consumer protections; if he didn't support the bill, why hasn't he been crowing from the rooftops?

Approval by the Senate is the last step to the stripping of these consumer protections.

Here is contact information for the 22nd District's legislative team --

• Sen. Nick Scutari
  1514 E. Saint Georges Ave., 2nd Floor, Linden, NJ 07036
  Phone: (908) 587-0404
  Fax: (908) 587-9312
  
  
• Assemblyman Jerry Green
  17 Watchung Ave., Plainfield, NJ 07060
  Phone: (908) 561-5757
  
  
• Assemblywoman Linda Stender
  1801 East Second St., 2nd Floor, Scotch Plains, NJ 07076
  Phone: (908) 668-1900
  Fax: (908) 668-9962
  

---

• Legislature:  "A3766: Marketing competition and consumer choice act"
• Ratepayer Advocate:  "Statement on S2664" | "YouTube: NJN Interview"
  
• LNJ Spotlight:  "Legislature looks to deregulate telecom, cable companies"
• Ledger --
• 2/17/2011:  "NJ Assembly passes bill to deregulate telecomm industry"
• 1/31/2011:  "NJ Senate panel clears bill decreasing telecom regulation"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Plainfield cable TV starts 7th week without active programming

Today marks the beginning of the SEVENTH WEEK without regular programming on Plainfield's cable TV stations (channels 34/FIOS or 96/Comcast).

There has not been any regular programming since September 7, when two hard drives failed at the time of a 'brownout' in the City Hall Annex, which was detailed on the Cable TV Advisory Board's blog (see here).

Advisory board chairperson Lamar Mackson advised a week ago that the consultant, who was owed approximately $2,300 by the City, had been paid, and the new hard drives were set to be shipped two weeks ago tomorrow.

"Once they are here and installed," Mackson said, "the station will be up and running."

Checking this morning, I still find the scrolling message advising programming is down and will resume 'as soon as possible'.

The city's website has no mention of the problems with or status of the cable TV station or when regular programming might resume.

Should you stay tuned?

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Democracy in Plainfield: Should it be doctored?

There has been considerable comment by Plainfielders on the length of Council meetings, which are beginning to noticeably affect the speed of the legislative process.

Like it or not, this is how democracy works. Should it be 'doctored'?

Repeated comments by Olddoc (see here and elsewhere on his blog), as well as mentions by other bloggers (Bernice, Maria) and private comments by various and sundry to Council members have underscored the issue.

Council President Annie McWilliams acknowledged the difficulties in a recent email to Courier reporter Mark Spivey (see his story here), but argues that there is important work being done by the Council through its committees that helps clarify and advance the legislative process and which the public deserves to be aware of.

McWilliams' idea of a 'second agenda-setting' meeting each month -- basically for the committee reports and discussion -- would go a long way to ease the situation, I think. Hopefully, the Council can make it through the remainder of the year (and the budget process) and consider a fresh approach when it sets up the 2011 meetings calendar.

That is the kind of 'doctoring' that could do some good.

There are other 'doctoring' proposals that I think are more problematic.

In response to a query by Maria Pellum on the lack of Council minutes, Council President McWilliams outlined a proposal for dealing with the backlog and handling future minutes (see her post here).

Part of her suggestion is a two-step process which would include bare-bones minutes in a speedy manner, with amendments to include Councilors' explanations of their votes to be added subsequently. In the meantime, she suggests that the videos of the meetings are available for the public's review.

Which leads to other 'doctoring' proposals that are also in the air.

In response to my post (see here) on the status of returning Plainfield's cable channel to active programming (after being down since September 7), reader Steve Kilduff wondered --

...it would be great if the council meeting videos were available in a YouTube type setting where they could be indexed by agenda sequence. Watching 3 to 6 hours of a council meting on PCTV is deadly and not a real option for a working person who has an interest in a part but not all of a meeting.

to which Cable TV Advisory Board chairperson  Lamar Mackson responded --

...[i]n response to Mr. Kilduff's inquiry-the Department of Media has been working on a new website specifically for PCTV 96/34 which will offer programming, Video-on Demand, schedules etc.

In the case of recordings of the overlong Council meetings, it certainly would be good to have an easy way to navigate them.

The problem is that videotapes are just not up to the task.

Editing them down to segments would be very costly and time consuming.

What is needed is a quicker, easier and less expensive method of getting the recorded meetings in the public's hands, and that requires some more up-to-date technological thinking.

There are systems marketed that allow for direct-to-DVD recording of meetings, where the Clerk can insert 'chapter headings' for agenda items, presentations, public comments, etc. and have the finished product available for the public or broadcast on the local access channel THE NEXT DAY.

No consultants to pay to videotape meetings. No minutes to amend for Councilor comments on their votes. No worries about 'editor bias'. No endless hours of tape editing. No weeks delays for broadcast.

Plus the DVDs are available for the public at a small fee, basically the cost of a copy.

Messy as the way democracy works itself out in Plainfield is, the record of it should be full, unedited and permanent.

Thanks to advance in technology it is now easy and cost-effective.

Isn't it time for Plainfield to make the investment?

---

• Doc's Potpourri:  "The public be damned!"
• Courier:  "Plainfield's marathon meetings spur thoughts of calendar change"
  
• Positive Change: "Overdue minutes: Taking responsiblity, proposing a plan"
  
• Plainfield Today: "Plainfield cable TV may be up again soon"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Plainfield Cable TV may be up again soon

Though Plainfielders will still find the scrolling notice of 'technical difficulties' on the City's cable TV channels (down since September 7, see my previous post here), I am told the problem may be fixed shortly.

Lamar Mackson, chairperson of the Cable TV Advisory Board, confirmed yesterday that vendor mmm

The stations (channels 34/FIOS or 96/Comcast) have not had regular programming since a September 7 two hard drives failed at the time of a 'brownout' in the City Hall Annex, which was detailed on the Board's blog (see here).

Mackson advised that the consultant, who was owed approximately $2,300 by the City, has since been paid, and the new hard drives were set to be shipped last Thursday.

"Once they are here and installed," Mackson said, "the station will be up and running."

Meanwhile, he said, the Advisory Board has questioned the adminstration's point person, IT Director Chris Payne, about the amount of money spent on the consultants and what exactly Plainfield was getting in return.

'You will find,' Mackson said, 'that while we are supposed to have been getting 'editing' services, no videos of Plainfield's City Council meetings have been posted to the city's website since the April 5 meeting.'

'We are exploring options to improve that situation -- and at a potentially considerable cost savings to the city,' Mackson said.

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• Plainfield Today: "Cable TV station down for over 3 weeks. Who knew?"
• Cable TV Advisory Board Blog:  "PCTV 96/34 downed by equipment failure"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Plainfield's cable TV station down for over 3 weeks. Who knew?

Plainfield's cable TV station (channels 34/FIOS or 96/Comcast) has been down for over three weeks. Who knew?

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.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Down the rabbit hole with Plainfield's cable TV advisory committee

In Trenton, Gov. Corzine said New Jersey faces a $1.2B deficit because of the economy.

In Newark, several mayors gathered to sharpen President-elect Obama's focus on urban problems.

In Plainfield, Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs put out a basket of snacks.

For the members of the Cable TV Advisory Committee.

It was another night down the rabbit hole in Plainfield, as I attended the Cable TV Advisory Committee's meeting.

The committee -- which for a good portion of the meeting was outnumbered by visitors -- seemed dispirited and frustrated.

There did not appear to be an agenda. There is no current chairperson.

At some point after the meeting's desultory start, a door opened and Mayor Robinson-Briggs entered, wordlessly, placing a basket of cello-wrapped snacks on the table and then leaving.

The laptop presentation by the city's public information officer (PIO) was interrupted more than once by committee member Dottie Gutenkauf over errors --

• a missing 'R' in the word 'PRESENT',
• inconsistent spelling of the Mayor's last name (with or without a hyphen?),
• was another person's last name spelt correctly ('I'm not sure.').

I was stunned by the PIO's attempt to brush it all off by saying that the presentation was meant for the committee only and was not being put up for public viewing.

That makes it better?

It wasn't hard to see why the committee feels frustrated --

• the ball evidently was dropped by the person who said they would see that the committee got a list of its own members and none was forthcoming;
• the list of grant monies for PCTV74 that the PIO was supposed to provide also was not gotten;
• the members weren't even sure everyone had received a notice of the meeting.

Some kvetching was done about perennial issues with Comcast -- prices, channels. But I have been unable to find out whether the Robinson-Briggs administration ever gave the committee a charge to review the Comcast franchise, a process which was to be completed by this past July and seems not to have been done.

To have to have a discussion about lighting and sound issues with regard to prototyping taping Council meetings only revealed the technological abyss at our public access station.

I left the meeting during this discussion. It's no wonder the committee is dispirited.

Meanwhile, the snacks were untouched.

---

-- Dan Damon

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Time to lay down the law on Channel 74?

Plainfield residents have not been well-served by their Public Access Channel in recent years.

That could begin to change tonight at the Cable TV Advisory Commission's meeting -- especially if members of the public come out. The meeting is at 6:30 PM this evening, in City Hall Library, 515 Watchung Avenue.

Much of the programming has been recycling of old -- and sometimes VERY OLD -- material.

The only recent material appears to be a promo piece for the new boxing gym at East 5th and Roosevelt. Otherwise, the freshest programming is supplied by outsiders like the Union County Freeholders Forum.

When the Administration proposed an ILSA (interlocal services agreement) between the City and the PMUA recently for editorial and other help with getting the City's message out, City Administrator Dashield told the Council the agreement was necessary because of all the time it took the public information staff to edit tape for Channel 74 -- 12 hours of editing for one hour of tape, he said.

Well, if the staff was complying with the law (the Federal Cable and Telecommunications Acts of 1984, 1992 and 1996, to be exact), this wouldn't even be an issue. Which leads one to wonder if the staff even knows the law regarding Public Access Channels.


PUBLIC ACCESS: AN OVERVIEW

In the 1960s, as cable access was sweeping the country, cable companies strung their wires (coaxial cabling) literally everywhere -- using telephone and streetlight poles and draping them across streets, parking lots and other public spaces.

Eventually, communities wrung from the cable companies the right to have free access channels of three sorts -- Public Access, Educational, and Government, hence 'PEG' -- in exchange for running all that wire along the public right-of-way.

The laws cited above enshrine the responsibility of the cable operators to provide local communities with equipment and sometimes training to enable residents of the communities to produce their own programming and show it on their own local cable channel(s). And the local government is SPECIFICALLY BARRED FROM CONTROLLING OR EDITING THE CONTENT OF PUBLIC ACCESS PROGRAMMING. (The ONLY exception is that it can refuse to broadcast material deemed pornographic or slanderous.)

Plainfield has two channels granted in the current franchise agreement -- an Educational and a Public Access channel.

So, you might ask, why isn't Channel 74 being RUN as a Public Access Channel? And isn't it about time that it was?

When PCTV-74 was set up as a result of the most recent franchise agreement, Comcast provided grants for the purchase of thousands upon thousands of dollars of equipment for the station. This was of two sorts: equipment needed for the operation of the station, and equipment to be used by the public to produce content.

That included such items as videocameras, lighting equipment, editing software and copying facilities. All of which should be readily available to the public for its use. One problem is that we don't even know where the equipment is or whether all of the original equipment is still in place (there were rumors in the early days of the Robinson-Briggs administration that a good deal of the movable equipment had simply vanished).


PLAINFIELD'S CABLE ADVISORY COMMISSION

I have heard rumors for months now that the Cable TV Advisory Commission feels hamstrung about getting anything going with Channel 74 for a couple of reasons --

• that the Administration wants to control all decisions relating to management, production and broadcast scheduling; and
• the staff complains of how long it takes to edit submitted tapes.

The truth of the matter is that the Administration should certainly not involve itself in matters the law reserves to the public -- specifically, what can be produced and the editing of community-produced material.

The Cable TV Advisory Commission is in the perfect spot to assert the public's rights and to begin to ensure that they are honored by the Administration.

How to get started?


BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

• Inventory the existing equipment and compare to the original equipment list, replacing anything needed;
• Join the NJ public access channels user group (no need to re-invent the wheel when others have already don it);
• Follow best practices in setting up a membership and training program (see links at end of post) so the public can begin to exercise its rights under the law;
• Since the City's website is so unwieldy, the Cable TV Advisory Commission could set up its own BLOG (free and easy) and keep the public informed on a regularly-updated basis, without waiting for someone else to update the City website, and lastly
• Once a membership and training procedure is in place, set up a public forum for all interested individuals and groups to let them know how things are moving forward and what THEY need to do.
  

A final word: The Cable TV Advisory Commission is, like ALL municipal boards and commissions, subject to both the 'Sunshine' law (Open Public Meetings Act) and OPRA (Open Public Records Act), meaning its meetings must be regularly scheduled and noticed and its records must be available to the public.

It can begin to establish that necessary bond of trust between the Public Access Channel and the community by --

• Publishing its legally-required schedule of regular meetings;
• Putting out its contact information so the public can make inquiries, and
• Publishing its minutes (here is where a blog is perfect), so the public can see what progress is being made.

With these few simple steps, Plainfield could be on its way to having a truly world-class Public Access Channel and everyone could begin to take real pride in PCTV-74.

---

• Membership: "Troy, MI: Public Access FAQ" -- An overview of a well-organized Public Acess Channel's structure.
• A Public Access Channel Website: "Santa Barbara Channels" -- And a well-organized Public Acess Channel's website.

-- Dan Damon

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About that PCTV-74 online schedule

Several readers wrote that they got error messages when trying to open the PDF file of PCTV-74's schedule that is linked to from the cable station's page.

I post a copy of the schedule I had downloaded to my hard drive a few days ago late last night. You can find it HERE.

If you are not familiar with printing documents from the Scribd website, look at the top of the little document window for an icon for "iPaper" -- on the left side. Click on that and choose 'print' from the drop-down list and you'll get a copy just like the one originally posted to the PCTV-74 website.

Ain't technology somethin'?

-- Dan Damon

Plainfield Cable TV: Keeping you up-to-date

Plainfield's website may be off the life-support system and finally breathing -- fitfully -- on its own, but the same cannot be said for the city's public access cable TV station, PCTV-74.

PCTV-74 has been on my daily email list since the beginning of CLIPS, and the mail has been dutifully delivered (whether or not anyone reads it) for going on three years now.

Until recently.

I began receiving 'bouncebacks' a couple of weeks ago, but paid them little mind.

It's a common problem with email lists -- AOL periodically has hissy-fits and bounces tons of emails; people change addresses without notice; and corporate filters (as in one large Plainfield organization) periodically force recipients to reconfirm.

Finally, though, I decided to do a little digging.

Checking the city's website for PCTV-74 info, I found that the email address has been changed. Easy fix. (No, you're not supposed to ask why a city operation's email address is on a public service like Gmail.)

Looking further, I find their program schedule (a PDF file, see here -- NOTE: 11:18 PM Sat.: the PDF file on the city website appears broken; see copy posted online HERE). The downloaded schedule has a heading of "July, 2007", but further checking reveals the document was actually edited in October -- though no one bothered to update the page header (consistency, after all, is the hobgoblin of small minds).

So, the cable station's information on the website is only five months stale.

In Plainfield communications, that's up-to-date.

---

• City Website: "PCTV-74 Page"

-- Dan Damon

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PSO Children's Concert in PCTV-74 loopland

Plainfield's public access channel -- PCTV-74 -- may be suffering from a dearth of community-supplied content.

That might explain the very frequent replays of the Plainfield Symphony Orchestra's free children's concert from April 15, 2007.

The concert -- pleasant enough in itself -- has been airing quite regularly for the past couple of weeks --

• Monday to Friday: 10:00 - 11:00 AM
• Monday to Friday: 5:34 - 6:34 PM
• Saturday: 3:34 - 4:34 PM

Besides running the station, the city is supposed to be encouraging community programming by --

• purchasing and maintaining equipment to be available on loan to the community to tape programs,
• offering training workshops for community organizations and individuals interested in producing programming, and
• making use of all media -- newspapers, radio, web, flyers, etc. -- to promote availability of training, equipment loan and how to submit programming.

Now that the website is (sort of) fixed, you can at least access the station's contact information. However, if you click on the link to the PCTV-74 Schedule you will be startled to find that you are not taken to a web page, but to an Excel spreadsheet -- which you will have to download, save to your hard drive, and then peruse by opening Microsoft Office.

All those who do not know or have access to Excel, please raise your hands.

You may stay after class and help wash the blackboards and clean the erasers.

---

More info --

• City of Plainfield: "PCTV-74"
• PSO: "The Plainfield Symphony Orchestra"

-- Dan Damon

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