In a unanimous vote Tuesday, the Fort Wayne City Council approved a grant from the city's Cable TV Fund to the CTV Consortium.
The agreement comes following months of discussion spurred by Purdue University Fort Wayne's decision last summer to close its cable access station, which aired programs including PFW musical and dance performances and lectures by visiting writers, scholars and celebrities. The agreement approved Tuesday aims to restore that programming and create new content by reviving the defunct channel.
Access Originator Grants are funded through franchise fees billed each month on cable bills. According to city ordinance, Fort Wayne budgets two-fifths of all franchise fee dollars from Comcast as “access dollars.” Of those, 80% are divided equally between “institutions which originate public, education and government access on the Comcast system.”
Late last year, the Cable Fund Advisory Board approved an Access Originator Grant proposal from the Allen County Public Library to have Lifelong Learning take over the channel, but that request was tabled and revisited during the board's Jan. 15 meeting.
At that meeting, the Cable Fund Advisory Board decided to adopt CTV Consortium's proposal instead. CTV Consortium is comprised of Purdue Fort Wayne and Ivy Tech.
“To characterize the board's decision, I feel they felt CTV was a more vibrant educational aspect for the channel,” said James Haley, the city's chief information officer. “Allen County Public Library was definitely a safe and solid choice. It's done a great job with the city of Fort Wayne's hosting for many, many years, and they'll still be available if the CTV Consortium does not work out.”
Haley told the council there's about $150,000 in grant funds set aside for the new channel, but Tuesday's approval only grants the CTV Consortium $50,000. It also stipulates CTV Consortium must return to City Council in May or early June to receive the rest of the money.
“We understand the passion is there, but we just didn't want to give them all the money at once,” said Councilwoman Michelle Chambers, D-at large, who serves on the Cable Fund Advisory Board. “We're asking for next steps, like building the consortium and getting the engineer hired.”
The other access channel originators are the Allen County Public Library, Channel 10; Fort Wayne City Government, Channel 18; and Fort Wayne Community Schools, Channel 20.
During last week's Cable Fund Advisory Board meeting, Art Herbig, associate professor of media production at PFW, said the point of reviving the channel and bringing it back to the university is to bring back its educational component.
“College access television provides a space for people to create and learn to create in an environment where there are others around who are there to teach them and there to help them,” Herbig said.
“We have been providing that space for a very long time, and one of the things that got lost on our campus somewhere along the line when the station was turned off, was somebody forgot over at Purdue that we have this huge educational component of our university that was there teaching students to do this,” he said.
dgong@jg.net
2020-01-22 06:03:09Z
https://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20200122/cable-access-gets-new-life-with-funding
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