Activist wants in on LV cable TV talks

A group supporting public access television is accusing local government officials of shutting them out of the cable television franchising process.

Citizens for Public Access Television Vegas (CPA-TV) planned an afternoon news conference today to criticize Clark County and City of Las Vegas negotiators, who are hammering out a multimillion-dollar franchise agreement between five government entities and Prime Cable.

Presently controlled by the Greenspun family, owner of the Las Vegas Sun, Prime Cable is being sold to Atlanta-based Cox Communications Inc. in a $1.3 billion deal announced in May. The Greenspun family will have a minority interest in the cable operation when the deal is completed in the fall.

Representatives of CPA-TV, who say they voice the interests of several community-based groups who need access to a cable television station to tell people about the work they do, believe they are being left out of the negotiation process for political reasons.

They contend that censorship is at the root of the decision to bar the group from negotiations and that the government entities are violating two county codes if a public access station isn't provided to them.

The franchise negotiators for the city and county say that isn't true.

Jim Spinello, manager of franchise and legislative affairs for Clark County, and David Roark, manager of real estate and assets for the City of Las Vegas, say the public will be allowed to comment on a new franchise agreement as soon as it's completed.

Tentatively, the county is planning public hearings on the agreement the week of Sept. 7 while city officials plan to solicit public comment on Sept. 21. Other city councils are expected to have hearings as well.

The county and the four cities negotiating a new franchise agreement -- Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City -- are putting together a proposal based on needs outlined by citizens and interested parties in focus groups conducted in recent weeks.

Roark said the public was consulted in the focus groups, which involved more than 70 people, and in about 9,000 surveys distributed at random to Prime Cable customers. As in all contract negotiations, the public is not included in drawing the details.

Roark said it's hard enough to get representatives of Cox, Prime and the five government entities to come to an agreement on the issues involved in the franchise negotiations.

At issue in the negotiations: customer service issues including the amount of late fees paid by subscribers and credits for system outages; and notification of neighborhoods when cable is installed in residential property. Franchise fees also are on the table and local government officials are trying to increase their cut from 3 percent to 4 percent.

In the previous fiscal year, that amounted to about $1.1 million in revenue to the City of Las Vegas.

Also under discussion are public-access stations for the government, for education groups and for the community. That's the sticking point for CPA-TV, which maintains the county is ignoring its own statutes by not having a public access channel for the community nor a cable communications advisory board.

Tina Schafer, director of CPA-TV, said she has been pleading with the Clark County Commission for more than a year to address public access television concerns. County statutes, she said, say an advisory board should be in operation and that board should be a part of the negotiations with Cox and Prime.

Schafer, who helped produce a weekly public affairs program called "We The People" on a public access channel in Reno, said the real reason her group is being stonewalled is because government officials fear the type of programming groups might air on public access channels. She considers public access a First Amendment right and the uphill battle she's fighting a form of censorship.

Schafer said government leaders often demonize public access advocates by telling stories about obscene materials presented on public access channels.

"They're afraid we're going to put a bunch of naked Nazis on TV," she said.

Roark said that while there are concerns about maintaining community standards for taste, those issues aren't paramount in the negotiations.

It's true that public access isn't paramount to the government negotiators.

Roark and Spinello said the top priority on channel access talks involves access for the government entities themselves. Spinello said his top access priority is maintaining Channel 4, Clark County's station, while Roark said the City of Las Vegas is most interested in securing its own station. Currently, the county makes Channel 4 available to other government entities, including the City of Las Vegas.

Roark and Spinello said their second priorities would be educational access for UNLV, the Community College of Southern Nevada and public schools. Public access is their third priority.

Spinello said there's no set value on a channel's access. The cable company, however, would potentially lose revenue for every channel dedicated to public access since each channel is one less that could be offered commercially at a profit. For a large cable operation like Las Vegas', that could amount to millions of dollars.

Schafer said her intent is to call attention to the public access issue to put pressure on the negotiators to reprioritize some of their goals.

She said she hasn't dismissed taking legal action against the county for the alleged violations of the codes.

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