Vote to dissolve public access TV for Green Bay, Appleton could alienate a non-YouTube population
Natalie Eilbert
Every Sunday, Kathleen Ciske, 96, would tune in to Spectrum Channel 4, bowl of popcorn in lap, to watch the government council meetings in Green Bay, Oneida and cities surrounding her Fox Crossing home.
She enjoyed knowing how government worked and would watch the sometimes five-hour meetings with all the fanfare of a Packers game. Then, in late May, she encountered a blue standby screen emblazoned with the following text:
“The channel is currently experiencing technical difficulties. We are working with the provider to resolve the issue. Thank you for your patience.”
Nearly four months later, the blue screen remains.
“I do miss it so much. Looking at the screen, it’s the same all the time. It says ‘Thank you for your patience’ and I’m thinking, it’s running out,” Ciske said.
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Ciske is part of a generation that is less likely to have access to smartphones, Wi-Fi or computer screens but nonetheless appreciates public access television for its transparency of local government. But in the absence of the station, the city of Green Bay is considering a vote Tuesday evening that would dissolve Spectrum Channel 4 and use the approximately $10,000 required to fix the public access channel on higher-priority items like Ransomware security monitoring.
In addition to Green Bay and Fox Crossing council meetings, Appleton City Council also aired on channel 4. While the various cities post both committee and council meetings on YouTube, only council meetings appear on TV.
Despite the limited programming of the channel, if public access television gets the chopping block, can government transparency for all taxpayers be achieved?
Mike Hronek, the city's information technology director, asked the Protection and Policy Committee last week to decide whether it would be more advantageous to discontinue Green Bay Public Access Television Channel 4 than repair its malfunctioning equipment.
The station has used an encoder since 2014 to convert videos to a streaming service for TV, but the Time Warner Cable equipment malfunctioned, according to Hronek. When he spoke to Charter Communications, also known as Spectrum, he learned that replacing this piece would cost about $6,000.
Between government council meetings, the channel airs another filler station, what Hronek called a showcase channel. The showcase channel satellite moved to a new location four months ago. For the city to buy a new satellite dish or use an alternative streaming option would cost another $4,000 to $5,000.
"The council meeting was the only content on the Green Bay Public Television Station and it was seen six days after the fact," Hronek said last week. "My thinking is we're sticking money into a losing purpose, plus there's a lot of other equipment associated with that TV station. ...We never really know when something's gonna break."
Every government meeting is made available a few days after the fact on the city's YouTube channel but for Ciske, it's inaccessible. Ciske has macular degeneration, a vision impairment that deteriorates the part of eye responsible for light. It's a common enough condition in people, especially women, over the age of 60, and affects around 11 million people in the United States.
For Ciske, who uses a camera that projects text from her computer onto a tablet, watching a video on YouTube is far too cumbersome. She must watch on her 55-inch screen to understand and orient herself to the proceedings. And the thing about macular degeneration is it gets worse over time. Ciske has had to inch her chair closer and closer to the screen to get a full sense of the program over the years.
"That's why I want them to hurry up and fix it," Ciske said. "I want them to settle this up while I can still see."
But at the Protection and Policy meeting, committee members based their vote mostly on the recommendation of Hronek, who doesn't think, for all the maintenance and monitoring required, that public access TV is worth saving. Save for City Council member Craig Stevens, the committee voted to dissolve the channel.
Council member Kathy Lefebvre, who sits on the Protection and Policy Committee, said she plans to vote Tuesday to dissolve the channel because she'd like to see the city spend money on more ongoing issues such as keeping the city safe from outside hackers. She also raised questions about how many customers were actually viewing channel 4.
Hronek said that Spectrum has never provided the city's IT department with the number of channel 4 viewers, though it has asked before.
While he agreed on putting money in strengthening cyber security, council member and Protection and Policy Committee member Mark Steuer presented an ethical consideration for those without access.
"There will be people who fall through the cracks, who don't have access," Steuer said. "I don't know when, as a city or a society we decide when we're going this direction and then others just have to get on board or not on (the issue of) transparency."
Hronek presented the situation as a natural step as technology has evolved.
"We change with the times, where we utilize the internet and streaming, not the TV station," he said. "We're duplicating an effort and we're going toward a modern viewing of the video."
Still, Ciske hopes that they will vote to keep the public access channel. It's something she and other people in her circle get a lot out of watching together.
"I just enjoy learning about how government works. I don't know what to tell you." Ciske said. "It's my excitement for the week. Let me tell you, some of the things that happen at these meetings are better than any of the popular programs I see."
Natalie Eilbert is a government watchdog reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert.
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