The cable company funding agreement expired in January.
When the Columbia City Council and the Cable Task Force urged the city’s public access channel, CAT3 TV, to hit the airwaves in October 2004, it was assumed that a new franchise agreement with area cable providers would allow the channel to stay in operation. Two years later, with no new agreement in place, the struggling station has reached out to the city.
The council unanimously approved a $10,262 loan to CAT3 TV on Monday to cover the channel’s operating costs for the next five months. About half the funds — $5,262 — will be paid immediately from the Council Contingency Fund; the remaining $5,000 will be paid to the channel once it files an expenditure report in January.
In a Sept. 8 memo to City Manager Bill Watkins, Cable Task Force President Christine Gardener outlined the channel’s predicament.
“Our volunteer base has been stretched tremendously,” Gardener wrote, “and we are doing everything possible to keep our doors open.”
CAT3 TV was the only channel to air city and county candidates debates leading up to the elections earlier this month. The channel also airs programming that helps local organizations and projects recruit volunteers. The station’s financial situation seriously impaired the channel’s ability to continue serving the community, Gardener said.
“If a piece of equipment breaks, then we can’t fix it,” she said. “This is really important to us.”
Mayor Darwin Hindman said CAT3 TV is “an important community asset” that provides residents with an artistic outlet. “This is such a creative community,” he said. “It’s full of people that want to get out and create.”
Under the current franchise agreement, the city’s two cable providers – Mediacom and Charter Communications – fund CAT3 TV’s $30,000 annual budget. According to Gardener’s memo, the channel would need more than $20,000 to stay in business through March, although existing cash could cover about half of that.
The cable franchise agreement sets the terms under which cable companies use the city’s utilities. The existing agreement expired in January but was extended one year to allow time to renegotiate a new agreement that would provide more funding for cable access programming.
The Cable Task Force requested the loan in anticipation of another extension in January.
City Attorney Fred Boeckmann said he expects negotiations to last into the beginning of next year.
“We’ve made some progress,” Boeckmann said, “but, we’ll probably be extending it again.”
He added that the next extension would not be for an entire year.
While higher cable access fees are being discussed during the contract negotiations, Boeckmann said there also were several other obstacles to a new agreement, but he declined to comment further.
Boeckmann said the council will wait to consider how and if the loan to CAT3 TV should be repaid, although he said it will likely be repaid from cable franchise fees once a new agreement is reached.
Hindman reiterated the importance of the negotiations between the city and cable providers.
“City support (of the station) relies on the franchise agreements,” he said.
Gardener said she expects that the new agreement, once it’s been negotiated, will allow CAT3 TV to expand its operations.
“Once the negotiations end,” Gardener said, “we’ll be able to do so much more.”