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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1996/07/22 - ADMIN - Minutes - Community Technology Advisory Commission - Regular1 Minutes Cable TV Advisory Commission Meeting St. Louis Park, Minnesota 7:00pm July 22, 1996 at St. Louis Park City Hall, First Floor Conference Room CATVagd.722 d8 1. Call to order 7:05pm by Chairman Browning 2. Roll call Chairman Bruce Browning; Commissioners Ken Huiras, Mike Ganyo and Joel Brand; and Reg Dunlap of City Staff. Joined later by Commissioner Dobie Hunegs and John McHugh of City staff. 3. Minutes Motion to approve by Commissioner Huiras, seconded by Commissioner Ganyo. Approved 4-0. 4. Adoption of agenda (add public comment if necessary) Add item 6. D. Reports 5. Old business A. School District request for funding: update Commissioner Brand summarized his presentation to the City Council, mentioning that the Council asked a few questions and then approved the request including the criteria for future funding. Mr. Dunlap will notify the School District administration of the new requirement. B. Paragon annual filings There was no comment from the Commission; Mr. Dunlap said he would follow up with Paragon on several staff questions about the filings. 6. New business A. Annual subscriber survey review Chairman Browning summarized the survey requirement; that the survey was annually done in the spring; was moved to November at Paragon's request in 1995, and the franchise ordinance was amended to reflect the change; that the survey was suspended until "further notice" at Paragon's request last fall after they submitted programming survey summaries; and that Paragon has not budgeted for the survey in 1996 because they thought the survey was no longer required. He said he was concerned about the value of an annual survey, and opened the floor for discussion. Commissioner Brand said that the customer service questions were important when Nortel operated the system, but that he's been able to reach Paragon right away when necessary, and that he's even had the converter box reauthorized right over the phone using their menu system. He said that the programming preferences section in the survey could be more specific, and that pointed 2 questions about competition would be important for Paragon to know about. Mr. Dunlap said that the purpose of a survey was to assure a correlation between available channels and subscriber satisfaction with those channels, and to measure customer service satisfaction. Commissioner Ganyo and Commissioner Hunegs supported the need for a survey at some point. Mr. McHugh said new channels have been added recently, perhaps without survey data, and that the list of programming choices has increased and will continue to increase dramatically. Commissioner Huiras said that they probably already have done surveys about viewers interests in other cities, and maybe all we need to do is ask for the information. Mr. Dunlap said that questions about computers in homes and Internet access could be included. After further discussion, Commissioner Hunegs made a motion to recommend to the City Council that Paragon resume the annual subscriber survey in 1997, and that the Cable TV Commission should participate in the design of the survey, as called for in the franchise ordinance, since the last survey was conducted in the spring of 1994. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Huiras and passed 5- 0. B. Publicity for the Cable TV Commission Mr. Dunlap described a cable program that would highlight Boards and Commissions and profile several members, to recruit volunteers for future openings. A cable commissioner could be one of the guests. The reaction was favorable with some specific suggestions offered, like interviewing the Chairs of Commissions to describe recent accomplishments. C. Encouraging programs and services Chairman Browning said he was always interested in better use of the PEG (Public 33, Educational 32 and Government 35) channels, and asked Mr. McHugh about the number of public access users. Mr. McHugh said class registrants, equipment users and program producers are always listed in the newsletter, which is going to be ready for mailing soon. He also said that the annual Fall Open House would be held on a Sunday, October 27, because Sundays have been successful for other City events. Commissioner Brand said that it would encourage better programming if we had better facilities, that the Belt Line Blvd. studio is subpar compared to the new School District studio, and that he'd like to see some way to cooperate and use the better studio. D. Reports Commissioner Brand asked that the minutes show that monthly programming reports, were received from Community TV 33, Paragon Channel 34 and Civic Channel 35. There was brief discussion about a complaint that adult programming is not fully scrambled. Chairman Browning offered to call Mark Hammerstrom of Paragon Cable for more information. 3 7. Communications: Chairman Browning None 8. Communications: Paragon Cable None 9. Communications: City staff Mr. Dunlap said that the Telecommunications Conference he attended in Charlotte was very helpful, and that the FCC rules regarding telephone companies offering video services would be issued in early August. 10. Other Commissioner Brand asked Commissioners to monitor Channel 6 programming for discussion at the September meeting. 11. Adjournment Motion made by Commissioner Huiras, seconded by Commissioner Hunegs, passed 5-0 to adjourn at 9:07pm. Minutes submitted by: