Community Video Report (Summer 1974)

12:cabletv Metro cable The FCC has finally responded to the Arlington County application for a cable television certificate of compliance, and the only surprise was that it took so long for it to do so. In a June 20 letter to Lee Lovett, counsel for Arlington Telecommunications Corporation (ARTEC), which is the company holding the franchise contract, FCC Cable Bureau Compliance Division Acting Chief Abraham A. Leib listed the items the staff considers in excess of the current federal rules. During the two years since the FCC cable rules and clarification were passed, the Commission has made it clear that provisions which many observers initially considered to be “minimum standards” are in fact to be considered ‘‘maximums,” not to be exceeded except when the applicant can show cause why a given provision should be waived. This matching-up process between the federal regulations and local ordinances has been the cause of the great outcry from municipal officials, as they have seen local laws struck down come time for a cable agreement to receive federal certification. Arlington’s franchise agreement, the first to be completed in the Washington area since the passage of the federal rules, has been identified as a model by many citizens and government authorities, because of extensive provisions for community programming and access. It was widely believed that the FCC ruling on this certificate would set a precedent if it allowed provisions to exceed the federal maximums. The objections, which fill four pages of dense type, fall into four categories: e a host of provisions for community access, government use, and educational use of the cable channels, as specified by the County’s ordinance and the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which is the contract or franchise between the County and ARTEC. @ provisions that requires payment of a license tax on gross receipts of the cable system, as well as other fees; e a clause which provides that, after the initial ten-year franchise term, the company can have the option to continue for another ten years, subject to approval by the County Board; e the prohibition by the County for ARTEC to offer any ‘“‘Pay TV” services without Board approval. The letter gave ARTEC 30 days to respond to the objections. In each case, the wording suggests that alterations be made in either the ordinance or the franchise agreement. ARTEC has already submitted a request for an extension to 60 days, according to Lovett. He expects to have a document ready by the end of August for the Commission staff. “We have three alternatives on each point,”” Lovett explained. ‘‘We can show that the provisions of the ordinance and certificate substantially comply with the Commission rules. We can show that the facts are such that they justify a waiver of the FCC rules. Or we can seek an amendment in the ordinance to satisfy the FCC staff.” In almost every case, says Lovett, the first two alterratives will be sufficient. “There may be a few things that require changes in the ordinances,” he allows. Such changes may not be forthcoming from the Arlington County Board, however, according to Charles Hammond, head of the County's Public Utilities Commission and the chief spokesman for the local government on cable matters. “There is no likelihood that the Board will amend the ordinance or certificate to meet FCC requirements,”’ says Hammond. He says that Arlington County went through an exhaustive process to arrive at this policy, and that they intend to stick to that policy. ‘‘The FCC rules merely give a guy a chance to make a buck. I don't think that’s our primary obligation, unless the operator can meet basic demands for what this community wants from cable.” Indeed, the County feels strongly enough about some of the basic issues that it could ARTEC faces FCC hassles conceivably go to court, if it came to that. “The FCC staff report is an extremely narrow interpretation of the rules,’ said Hammond. “It comes dangerously close to federal pre-emption in matters of purely local preference.”’ Lovett, too, said that he thought ARTEC would take its case to court if necessary, but he seems considerably more optimistic about the prospects of rapid FCC dismissmal of the staff objections. He feels that most of the objections can be met by further explanation. For instance in the area of access channels and provisions, the Commission’s concern, according to Lovett, is to make sure 2, system isn’t lying “fallow.” Thus, Arlingto \’s requirements, which are considerably more stringent than the FCC rules, would merely need justification on the basis of how ARTEC and the County plan to utilize these channels. Hammond feels that much of the support materials could have been included in the initial application, but that there will still be a number of items that cannot be resolved with supporting documents. “ARTEC may be treating it too lightly,”’ he said, perhaps this is because ARTEC’s president is Lovett’s law partner, former FCC chairman Frederick Ford. There is potential for conflict between ARTEC and the County to respond to the FCC, especially if ARTEC requests County amendments to the ordinance and the County refuses. “T can’t imagine the Board telling the public that there will be no cable in Arlington because they feel they can do a better job of regulating than the federal government,” said Lovett. The County, however, might disagree, according to Hammond. “If ARTEC persists in requiring changes in the ordinance, they’re missing the point. It’s cable or no cable in Arlington.” Both camps agree, however, that the basis for Arlington’s case is that virtually all the requirements being singled out by the FCC were drafted in 1971, before the FCC federal rules were passed. “It’s not like we’re Johnny-come-latelies,”’ Hammond points out. “We wrote our ordinance provisions at the same time as New York City. The only difference is that they had an operating system before the 1972 rules and we didn’t.” When the response is filed in August the Cable Bureau staff will make a recommendation to the full Commission regarding the Arlington application, including requests for waivers of the rules. ARTEC would then have the opportunity to appeal to the entire Commission, and to the courts, if necessary. & Leslie Smith (left) and Dwight Sommers of Arlington hold up their $4,000 check from Arlington County's Community Initiation for Citizen Improvement, which they will use to start a video access project. King Center to undertake video access in Arlington County Arlington County’s first community access project is underway at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in south Arlington. The project is receiving its initial support from a $4,000 grant it was awarded by the County Board through the Board’s Citizens’ Initiatives for County Improvement (CIC program. CICI is a program whereby local, nonprofit organizations can receive grants-in-aid for qualified innovative projects. To qualify, the proposed projects must be important to the particular neighborhood or other section of Arlington, have some lasting value, offer an example that others can follow, and be open and available to all interested persons. Arlington is scheduled to be cabled and let a franchise to ARTEC in March 1973. However, the FCC has not yet issued a Certificate of Compliance and in fact, in June sent a letter to ARTEC raising a number of objections to the provisions contained in the Arlington agreements [see Metro Cable Round-up]. These objections will further delay the initiation of Arlington’s cable service for at least two years. This is not too long, however, to educate and train citizens of the County in the uses and potential of cable and public access, which is the major motivation behind the video access project at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. The project began last fall as the outgrowth of a talk on Cable TV given by Ken Showalter at the request of John Robinson, Director of the Community Center, during a high school carreer night at Drew School. Several of the students and other community center members met afterwards to discuss cable and public access. “‘Hands-on’’ use of equipment was arranged by Showalter a graduate student in Antioch Colege’s Media Studies program who was also teaching a video course at Drew Elementary School. The first tape made was a Christmas Gospel Music Concert which had a large audience from Green Valley, as well as from the general Black community in Arlington. This was followed by several tapes made during Black History Week and a_ rock concert which included “‘live’’ feedback to the audience on large monitors. Thus, the community became aware of “Cable TV’. The next step was to get equipment for the community center so that they could do their-own. ‘‘things” without having to rely on borrowed machines a proposal written and submitted to the CICI program, and the grant was awarded in June. The group has decided. to focus on a number of different media in addition to video, partly because of the uncertainty of the cable process. The project participants hope to use still photography, oral history on tape recorders, a newsletter, and possibly film as a catalyst for community awareness and social change, as well as videotape as a training ground for public access. The major single effort during the coming year will be the production of a documentary on Black history in Arlington County. Other tape will be made—among other subjects— artistic and cultural events, community meetings, lectures, and public information sources. Plans are to begin training workshops on the use of equipment and the potential of cable for any.interested Arlingtonians in the fall. Baltimore cable office faces $$ cuts The Baltimore City Board of Estimate has scaled down a budget request of the Mayor’s Office of Telecommunications, which is directing the city’s evaluation of cable television as well as other communications issues. Telecommunications director Marvin Rimmerman reports that the Board approved an overall operating budget of $111,000, up from $80,00 in 1974. That budget, which includes neither a S'/2% staff raise nor a capital budget for radio hardware, must cover all aspects of the office’s work. Rimmerman had requested another $80,000, most of which would have gone for cable-related projects. Unless these funds are restored by the Mayor from discretionary funds, Rimmerman says, the Office will be forced to rely on outside funding for many of its cable projects. Some projects currently underway include: e an interactive TV demonstration project at the Baltimore City Fair during September, with assistance from the NCTA, Cable Television Information Center, and hardware manufacturers; e investigation of the 911 national emergency numbers in Baltimore; e a possible demonstration project funded by the Department of Commerce on information needs of Baltimore citizens using telephone technologies; e a training project for the fire department using video cassettes produced by the community college in Baltimore. Rimmerman emphasized that the Office is focusing on the potential uses of cable television, even while utilizing existing technology, since there is no cable grid in the city, yet. The Johns Hopkins Metro Center’s study of cable economics in Baltimore is nearing completion, according to project director Dr. Catherine Lyall. The final report is due at the Mayor’s Office by late August/early September, there, Telecommunications Director Rimmerman will add a commentary before publec release, targeted for October. The $34,000 study was funded by the National Science Foundation in order to develop a computer model for cable economics in urban areas, using Baltimore as a case study. Since Lyall and five graduate students working on the study were only funded to devote one-fifth of their time to the project, the results are only partially satisfactory, she said. The final figures “will provide general economic bounds for cable in Baltimore”’ said Lyall, and can be used by the city in the franchise process. But the real value of the study is the computer model, which can be used in other urban areas. Rimmerman added that “the quality of work in the Hopkins study will determine to a large extent the city’s focus on cable later this year.” The difference, Lyall said, between the Hopkins-developed model and many currently in use in industry is that Hopkins’ input data is “highly disaggregated’’—that is, cost figures vary almost block by block. This is much more crucial in urban areas, than in rural cable systems, from which most existing data is drawn. Hopkins has applied for further funds to continue to refine the computer model and to test the economic impact of the FCC cable rules on the viability of urban cable. Lyall said that she thinks that in many cities like Baltimore the rules act as a deterrent to cable viability, but little data has been developed to prove the contention.