An open letter to Leased Access Programmers and Regulators:

Federal Law says that Leased Access Programers must be treated the same as ‘non‘-leased access programers regarding technical issues. Based on past FCC rulings, some cable operators feel that has given them technological veto power when Leased Access Programers seek to employ innovative ways to deliver live programing which have not been used in the past by others on their systems.

Most cable companies use expensive fiber optic cable or satellite or microwave links to deliver their live ‘non-leased access programs’ including their own in-house local-origination programing to their headends for distribution. It is often news or current events oriented. Many cable operators require leased access programers to use the same old, expensive methods for live delivery as they do or provide the programs to them on tape. But improvements in technology now offer more efficient and affordable live program delivery methods by use of the Internet *. However, many cable operators are attempting to prohibit Internet-delivered programming altogether, a clear violation of Net Neutrality, even though it delivers broadcast-legal signals to their insertion points. They claim that if they don’t receive other programing over the Internet, they can prohibit us from using it too. By doing this, the cable operators place a false barrier-to-entry into the marketplace.

We all know that mere carriage on a cable system is no guarantee of success. High viewership and ad revenues are. Live programing can deliver larger audiences and higher revenues. But you can’t succeed in any market if you can’t get in to the market. Far too many Leased Access Programmers are relegated to compete in the marketplace of ‘day-old goods’ rather than ‘fresh goods’. Tape, rather then live feeds. Cable Operators deliberately and without technical justification too often restrict our program delivery methods and thereby guarantee that our products will be ‘stale’ when viewed.

Allowing cable companies to stop their competitors (we are also their customers) from employing new and innovative program delivery methods is a major conflict of interest that clearly demands swift, aggressive and independent enforcement with penalties for violators. Currently, complaints to the FCC can take years to resolve, lagging woefully behind the pace of technology, also resulting in few penalties for the violators. Justice delayed is justice denied. If the FCC staff would simply enforce the current laws in a timely manner, most new laws and lawsuits would be unnecessary. Until then, Leased Access Programers should seriously consider petitioning the courts for a Writ of Mandamus or lobby for new Congressional remedies.

What industry, other than cable, in this country, gets to dictate to it’s competitors what technology they can employ in their private businesses?

The status quo is inhibiting innovation and efficiencies and is grossly anti-small business and anti-localism by depriving local viewers of independent, diverse points of view on issues affecting their economic, spiritual, social and political lives. The fastest way for the FCC to bring about more localism is to enforce the rights of Leased Access Programers to use any method of delivering broadcast quality signals to the insertion points that they choose.

Furthermore, this issue is very much about de facto Internet censorship of an entire class of information (i.e. cable news) including freedom of the press. Remember we are the press too.

The bottom line is this. .. this is all about fear, power and money. The cable giants don’t want to see happen to their cash-cow News Channels what has happened to the daily newspapers in this country at the hands of the Internet Bloggers. In there own words, they want to hold back the ‘flood gates’ of leased access. They like the concentration of power in their hands as much as their bully pulpits (not to mention their profits), with seemingly little concern for what Congress intended or any resulting harm to fair competition or the public.

For the most part, Congress seems to be afraid to take them on because of the heavy hammer they wield via their news operations and they clearly have more power now than in 1996. Kudo’s to the FCC for at least making an attempt to enforce the will of congress. Please don’t stop now.

Jerry Kenney
Kenney Broadcasting Corporation
2640 Spruce Creek Blvd. E.
Port Orange, FL 32128
386-788-6386
386-212-1369 (mobile)

* http://www.streambox.com

In an email Charlie Stogner asked me to share my experiences putting together the live election returns for our lease access channels.

I had purchased an “old” tv studio about two years ago…most of the inventory ended up in the garbage. A keeper of the equipment was an Videonics MX1 and an audio mixing board.

First, I got with the local phone company, they were very receptive to the idea of placing an internet connection in the county courthouse. We ended up with a two T1 lines paired, which gave me 1.5mb up and 1.5mb down…dedicated. We needed all this so we could communicate with our “broadcast” equipment at the two cable headends. We did not use full screen video, we used 320X240 and centered it to the bottom of the screen and placed an advertising banner above the video screen for the phone company. (The phone company traded the ad space for the two T1 lines) We also sold the ad space on the right side of the screen and kept the left side of the screen for self promotion.

WE use Scala InfoChannel5 as our playback units at the headends. Scala picked up our internet feed without any real problems.

We also streamed the election return on our website. We used a hosting company for the streaming and they seemed to work very well. Although we did get one disconnect to the cable headeands. I’m not sure if it was the Scala Players or the hosting company. I’m leaning toward the players.

Anyway, we showed up at the court house about 4 hours ahead of broadcast for set up. We had the following equipment:

Videonics Video Mixer
Audio Mixing Board
2-laptop computers….one was for palyback of sponsorship commercials and the other was to monitor the scala players at the headends (this was very important).
3 cameras
Mics
router
Desktop computer for sending the Windows Media Encoder feed to the hosting company.

All in all it went pretty smooth. Our small community has never had anything like this done live before. We received loads of complements and 25 paying sponsors. We made the splash I wanted to make with this Live Election Returns on TV Camden.