Bloomfield Community Television, the Township’s cable station, is celebrating 40 years of local storytelling this year. What makes the video production services and studio available is not tax dollars, a conclusion many first jump to, or donations from “viewers like you” as many who assume that station operates like PBS. What makes the community resource viable is Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) and Franchise Fees that are negotiated with cable providers who build and run their infrastructure in a municipal right-of-way.
PEG fees are eligible only for capital expenses related to video production whereas franchise fees can be used any way a municipality sees fit: public safety, roads, special projects, or anything in the general fund. As more cable customers “cut the cord”, the revenues from the fees are declining rapidly. This has prompted Cable & Community Relations Director Carrie LeZotte to launch an educational campaign aimed at the many ways these fees are utilized and the threat their disappearance poses. This spring, she traveled to Washington D.C. to see that the message reaches elected officials who serve BCTV’s viewing area.
“I made my first trip to ‘Hill Day’ in Washington, D.C. with the Alliance for Community Media, where we met with our elected officials in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, or more accurately, their staff,” said LeZotte. Those staffers represented the offices of U.S. Senators Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Representatives Haley Stevens, Rashida Tlaib, and Debbie Dingell. “Our goal was to focus on three main priorities: Stopping federal preemption of local rights; reversing the FCC’s 2019 In-Kind Rule which drains local resources from community television operations; and providing appropriate oversight of the current FCC to ensure it doesn’t harm local communities,” she added.
Efforts to educate and maintain current funding is not the be-all and end-all of this campaign. “Several states are reinterpreting what a video service provider is in the age of the internet and Michigan must do the same,” says LeZotte. One option she’s passionate about is reexamining the Metropolitan Extension Telecommunications Rights-of-Way Oversight Act that was signed in 2002. “The METRO Act was signed into law with the intention of making it easier to stimulate the availability of high-speed internet connections. As a reference to where this was in the life of the internet, YouTube wouldn’t exist until three years later in 2005.”
Amending the act to charge providers by the amount of feet of fiber they run, or Linear Footage Fee, and adding a Gross Revenue percentage returned to communities would bring the Act into modern day relevance. “Modernizing the METRO Act will give Michigan fair compensation for public rights-of-way usage, support local infrastructure, and mitigate revenue losses from traditional cable franchise fees. This proposed legislation will not replace existing franchise and PEG fees but help mitigate the declining cable fees revenue,” states LeZotte.
To learn more about LeZotte’s efforts, visit bloomfieldtwp.org/cable.