City finally getting its own cable TV station

(Updated at 6:45 p.m. to reflect clarifications from Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix)

It’s part and parcel of every cable franchise agreement. The franchisee, in this case Time Warner Cable, agrees to pay an annual franchise fee to the municipality that grants the franchise. Back in the day, when each municipality worked out its own cable television franchise agreement, that fee was based on penetration rates; i.e., the franchisee paid between 10 and 25 cents/month for everyone cable television subscriber within the boundaries covered by the franchise agreement. The city was then supposed to use those funds to operate a public-access cable channel.

It’s a little bit different today.

"The State of Texas issues and regulates the franchise agreements for cable franchises in municipalities," Kyle Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix told me today. "All the terms are dictated by the state-issued agreement and cities have to work within the terms of that agreement. In terms of the franchise fee, the city gets 5 percent of the gross revenues and a portion of that is committed for the PEG channel. These dedicated funds must be used toward the capital investment for the channel and not permitted to be allocated for other uses."

Be that as it may, there’s an item on Tuesday’s City Council agenda to spend $120,000 of those franchise fees "for the design and installation of a cable TV channel for the City of Kyle." That means sometime soon, perhaps before the end of the summer, Kyle residents who subscribe to Time Warner Cable can sit back in the comfort of their own homes and watch City Council and perhaps even Planning & Zoning and other commission meetings on their wide-screen televisions. I know that sends your hearts all a-twitter.

The presentation to the council notes it will be possible with this system "to deliver an Adobe Flash stream of the channel output to the City IT department for use on the City website."

The $120,000 will also cover the costs of training for the people at the city who will have to learn how to run a TV station, most importantly what to do to fill in the dead time during the Council’s one-to-two hour executive sessions that are a bi-weekly ritual.

The money is going to be used to add technical upgrades. Unfortunately, the microphones on the dais will not be upgraded, but perhaps the staff training will include instructing council members how to speak into their microphones, an ability that seems beyond too many of our current council members. However, the presentation does say "The chamber audio system will be upgraded with a new DSP (digital signal processor, which converts digital signals to analog and vice-versa) system to improve council audio and reduce feedback." Additional technical upgrades will include "four HD Pan-Tilt-Zoom cameras" that will be installed in council chambers, presumably one of which can be trained to capture the front of the person speaking to the council from the chamber podium.

"We haven’t finalized the camera positions, but are planning on one for the speakers," Hendrix said today.

"A six-button control panel will be installed at the dais to allow easy management of the presentation system," according to the materials provided to the Council. "New 19-inch wide-screen HDMI displays will be installed on the dais to replace the existing VGA displays. The existing projector will be replaced with a 65-inch LCD screen in a similar location. Two 65-inch displays will be added to make it possible for viewers in the Falcon room to see presentation materials. Volume controls will be installed in the break room and Falcon room to allow use of those rooms independently of the main chamber. Four new wireless microphones will be added to the system to complement the existing microphones."

I don’t know yet when the city’s channel will go on the air, although the presentation claims "The Installation of this system is estimated to take approximately one and a half weeks, with training to be done concurrently as systems are completed."

"We do not have a target date for the launch of the channel, but we would like to make that happen as soon as we can complete the installation of the equipment and coordinate with Time Warner," Hendrix said. "The trick will be finding the programming necessary to keep the station on the air when meetings are not scheduled.

"A requirement of having a channel is broadcasting a minimum amount of original content and meeting that requirement will include the city producing or acquiring programming," Hendrix added. "We are already working toward the development of videos about water conservation, waste reduction, composting, and other city services. We are using existing staff and university interns to develop this content."

I was also wondering what recording and playback capabilities are included in this deal. In other words, will the council meetings be recorded for playback at other times? Will it be possible to videotape at remote locations for eventual playback on the channel? Hendrix also addressed that issue for me.

"We are also planning on recording events and activities from areas other than city hall, but they will not be "live" with this package," he said, which means the city will be able to videotape events such as Chamber of Commerce addresses by city officials for later playback.