The following is an excerpt of
the article that discusses the concerns about CAN TV’s future and the Comcast
renewal negotiations.
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Despite the joy of the
show and its volunteer staff, there are fears that “Chic-A-Go-Go” and many of
the other CAN TV programs may be in jeopardy.
A city contract with
Comcast, the cable company, is currently up for a ten-year renewal. Comcast has one of three cable franchise
agreements with the city. (The other two
are held by RCN and WideOpenWest.) The
sticking point in negotiations between cable providers and the city is often
public-access television, which is rarely profitable for cable companies. So far, Comcast has been hesitant to pledge
its full, continued support for CAN TV.
Instead, the company has opted for a three-month extension, which began
in March, on its negotiations with the City Council’s Committee on Finance,
with an option for an additional three months to be granted at the discretion
of the city’s Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection. As a
result of the extension, the financial future of CAN TV remains unclear. Austen suspects that Comcast may be buying
time to lobby the city in an attempt to downgrade its funding commitment to
public access. (A spokesperson for the
company declined to comment on its negotiations with the city.)
According to Barbara
Popovic, if Comcast downgrades their funding agreement the station will also
receive significantly less funding from RCN, a smaller provider. The contract between RCN and the city, which
was negotiated in 2012, includes a “most favored nation” clause that guarantees
the company will provide no more public-access funding than Comcast does. “If both Comcast and RCN downgraded their
funding agreements,” says Popovic, “seventy-five percent of our operating
budget would be affected.”
The suspicion that
Comcast may downgrade its support is not without precedent. In 2009, legislation in California allowed
Time Warner to cut its funding to Los Angeles’s fourteen public-access
stations. (Time Warner is in the process
of merging with Comcast.)
“We don’t want to
become California,” Austen says. With
Gordon Quinn, artistic director of Chicago documentary studio Kartemquin Films,
and a few other dedicated activists, Austen has formed the Committee for Media
Access. The group is organizing a call-in
campaign to bolster public-access support from aldermen.
Austen insists that for Comcast, the issue is “not a lack of money” (by
revenue, Comcast is the largest communications company in the world). Productions costs are low, and Austen and
other CAN TV producers are not paid.
“They just don’t want to have this extra stipulation to provide us with
funding,” he says.
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