Though Cox Communications subscribers may not have noticed much change to their monthly cable bill, since January they’ve been paying an extra fee.
It’s called a PEG fee, which stands for public, educational and governmental access, and it amounts to one-half of 1% of the total bill. For the average Cox subscriber, that’s a mere increase of about 50 cents per month.
For the city-parish, however, which collects the pass-through fee from Cox to help cover the capital cost of running government access channel Metro 21, the PEG fees are generating $55,000 per month, or about $385,000 so far this year.
It’s a modest windfall, but city-parish Public Information Officer Dennis McCain—in charge of Metro 21—has big plans for spending it. McCain wants to revamp the Metro Council chamber’s audio visual system, upgrade the cameras and recording equipment, relocate the control booth from which council meetings are recorded, and, eventually, build a television studio on the top floor of the governmental building.
“I want the best for the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish,” says McCain, a former WBRZ newsman who has been running Metro 21 since its inception in the 1990s. “I want our people to be informed about everything that goes on in this parish.”
But while some applaud McCain’s plans—Councilman John Delgado, for one, thinks building a TV studio for use by local government is a “wonderful idea”—others are wary.
Mayor Pro-tem Chandler Loupe questions why the city-parish would need its own TV studio with so many existing facilities around town. Mayor Kip Holden’s chief administrative officer, William Daniel, agrees, pointing out the funds could be used to help wire Baton Rouge to become a so-called digital city.
“We have an opportunity with these fees to get ready for the future and turn Baton Rouge into a digital city,” Daniel says. “That’s what this money should be used for, not building a TV studio on the top of City Hall.”
Actually, the Federal Communications Commission is pretty clear that PEG fees can, indeed, be used by local governments to build TV studios, regardless of whether that is the best use of them. PEG fees can also be spent on equipment purchases and other capital expenditures associated with providing free cable channels to local governments and/or the public. The only thing they cannot fund are operating expenses.
Most municipalities impose PEG fees on their cable providers as a standard aspect of their franchise agreements, and most cable providers, in turn, pass those fees on to their customers. Baton Rouge is no different in that respect. What’s new here is that for the first time this year, Cox—which has the lion’s share of cable TV subscribers in this market—is collecting PEG fees and remitting them to the city-parish.
For years, Cox did not collect the fees. That’s because until relatively recently, Cox was the only cable provider in this market, and PEG fees were not part of Cox’s original franchise agreement. Under the terms of that deal, Cox ran Metro 21 for the city-parish essentially free of charge.
In 2008, however, AT&T’s UVerse entered the market as a telecommunications provider, and in granting it a franchise, the city-parish imposed PEG fees. In 2011, EATEL moved into East Baton Rouge Parish as well. Its deal also included PEG fees.
That’s when Cox—feeling itself at a competitive disadvantage for providing a free service to the city-parish without recompense in a suddenly more competitive market—asked the Metro Council for an amended agreement. That new deal went into effect this year, and according to its terms, Cox remits PEG fees to the city-parish, which, since July, has been running Metro 21.
Practically speaking, running the station is just a technical thing. Programs for Metro 21 are now loaded into a computer system, which is housed in the public information office instead of at Cox Communications’ headquarters. The programs are then arranged in a digital queue to broadcast at the correct time and are transmitted via fiber optic cables from the fourth floor of the governmental building.
Even before the amended agreement, the public information office already was producing most of the content for the channel. For years, McCain’s office has shot and edited programs like the Buddy Amoroso Show and District 6 Back to School. It also has coordinated coverage of public meetings from governmental bodies like the Metro Council, school board, planning commission and library board, among others. The whole idea is to give citizens a close-up look at government, without the filtering influence or distractions of the news media.
“I personally feel like I’m privileged to work in the best local government in the U.S.,” McCain says. “I want to showcase everything that they do.”
Buying the latest technology with PEG fees can help the public information office do a better job showcasing local government, McCain says. Now that his office is not only producing content for Metro 21 but, effectively, serving as the channel’s control-room operator, it can benefit from the PEG fees that are coming into the city-parish coffers every month from cable providers.
But how much capital equipment does Metro 21 really need? That is the question at the heart of the debate over how best to spend the funds. So far this year, McCain’s office has spent just $53,000 or so on computer hardware—specifically, encoders and decoders—needed to run Metro 21.
Now that the channel is up and running, however, there aren’t any other major purchases critical to the channel’s transmission; only purchases that could make the channel’s product look better.
McCain is the first to admit he wants new and better stuff, conceding his office has a considerable pot of money from which it hopes to draw. According to the finance department, the city-parish currently has a $462,000 fund balance from PEG fees that have accumulated over the years. But he insists better equipment will translate into better communication to the people of East Baton Rouge.
Currently, McCain is working on a plan to enhance the Metro Council chambers, technologically speaking. Within the next six months, he hopes to relocate the control room at the rear of the council chamber to another space in the governmental building, and buy new cameras and better audio equipment. The upgrade will also require purchasing additional computers.
“We haven’t done anything with the control room in 10 or 15 years, so it’s long overdue,” he says.
Once the council chamber renovation is complete, McCain says he hopes to use PEG fees to build a TV studio on one of the unused floors atop the governmental building.
He envisions a studio where elected officials could hold media briefings, and also where council members could record their own half-hour shows—a practice currently done from the dais in the council chamber.
“Why would I want to do this? Because I want to do it right,” he says.
Delgado, the District 12 councilman and one of several on the council who hosts his own show, is all for the idea.
“To me, those shows and the council show and everything else we do is public outreach; so if we could get an actual studio in place, it would be great,” he says. “I think it would really help in our ability to reach out to the public.”
Not everyone in city-parish government agrees, however.
“How much do you need to get the public message out?” muses the director of one city-parish department. “Having TV shows run on cable 21? I don’t see it.”
Loupe agrees. He is one of the few council members who does not host a show, and he admits he doesn’t see the value in it.
“We don’t need to be in the business of building studios,” Loupe says. “That is something we should contract out.”
Others on the executive side of the building also take issue with McCain’s plans. Daniel says he is dead-set against the idea of a new TV studio. He also was opposed to giving the city-parish control over Metro 21 to begin with. He does not believe the city-parish should take on the responsibility of running a cable access channel.
“I don’t think the local government should be competing against private companies to do something that private companies can do better,” he says.
Daniel proposes the PEG fees instead be given to the information services department, which could use the money to wire the governmental building for better high-speed data connections.
“We ought to be using this money to provide more access for government- to-government communications and for making our digital information available to the general public,” Daniel says. “Telecommunications is changing, and part of the intent of the PEG fees is to prepare for that.”
McCain says the information services department does a great job, but adds that its mission is different from that of his office, which is to inform the public. That’s a message he intends to communicate to the council in the weeks to come as he makes a pitch to them for capital expenditures that will make them look better.
“I think we look better than most,” McCain says. “But I’m not going to be satisfied until we’re perfect.”
