[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening, everyone. My name is William Hewig. I'm the Cable Counsel for the city of Medford. And I'm here to assist and conduct a cable television public hearing pursuant to the requirements of the Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 166A, which require a public hearing prior to granting cable television licenses or renewal licenses. Accordingly, it's 6 PM now, and I call our public hearing to order. I'm going to turn the meeting over at this time to Steve Smurty, who is the Communications Director for the City of Medford. Thank you.
[Steve]: No problem. As Bill said, I'm Steve Smurray, I'm the Communications Director for the City. This is our Cable Licensing public hearing. You're going to hear today from Kevin Harrington, our Station Manager at MCM, as well as our Cable Counsel, Bill Huig. We're going to have a brief presentation, a brief video, and a brief slide deck that Kevin's going to do. And then we're going to have a brief Q&A if there are any questions. Please use the React hand up emoji. It's in the bottom of your screen on the toolbar with the little heart. And then you can just click the hand up, and we'll call on you. Or you can put your questions in the chat. I also want to now read into the record of the Notice of Cable Television Public Hearing that was published in the Boston Globe on October 24th and October 31st. Notice of Cable Television Public Hearing. Please take notice that the City of Medford, Massachusetts, as issuing authority for a cable television license under MGL, Section 166A will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, November 13th at 6 p.m. The public hearing will be held virtually on Zoom. The purpose of the public hearing will be to determine whether to issue a cable television license to Verizon and Comcast. All applications, reports, statements, and license drafts to be considered at the hearing that constitute public records under state law are available for public inspection during regular business hours and for reproduction at a reasonable fee. Members of the public are invited to attend and be heard on the topic, A, whether the current cable operator is in full compliance with its currently existing cable license, and B, what are the Town's future community cable-related needs. Okay, and I think I already introduced Bill and Kevin, so now I'm going to hand it back over to the chair, Council Bill Hewitt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Steve. And good evening once again, everyone. I usually like to begin public hearings relating to cable renewal by giving you an overview of the process, a very brief overview of the process, beginning with good news and bad news. I always start with the bad news first. And the bad news is that a lot of the things that people come to a cable hearing for are looking for in the renewal of a cable television license are not available to us. Those specifically include reductions in cable rates, programming changes, or anything related to broadband, the provision of broadband or internet services by either the cable operators. Unfortunately for us, those are not on the negotiating table. This is by virtue of a number of regulations of the FCC and federal and state statutes that govern the procedure that we're undertaking at the moment. So, although we welcome comments on any of those items, because they will be passed along to the cable operators, please understand that we cannot negotiate for any of those and we will not be able to produce any changes in any of those for you with the renewal license. And now for the good news. What can we get? Well, the main thing we get from renewal cable licenses or initial cable licenses are funding support for public access purposes and for the community or the city's cable-related needs. And that funding support comes in two categories. One, it's annual funding support for the annual operating budgets of the city's access provider, MCM, in the form usually of a percentage of gross annual revenues. And the second form that these funding support comes in is something called a capital and equipment grant, which is sometimes on an annual basis or sometimes spread out or sometimes at the beginning of the license or at the middle of the end of the license. But it's a large funding grant that allows the community and the access provider to acquire equipment and other capital needs that might arise over the course of the license term. And the other thing that we can get and do get from cable television licenses, apart from funding support, is what I call side benefits, such as, for example, technology upgrades. For example, the prior upgrade from 650 to 780 megahertz. the installation of fiber optic lines, and now, most recently, the provision of HD channels for PEG surfaces. All of those were provided by renewal of licenses, and some of them were provided in the middle of a renewal term. But we can get and request those, and we will be requesting HD channels for PEG during the two license renewal negotiations we will be shortly undertaking. The other thing that we can get is we can continue to get free public drops and free basic service provided to public buildings and school buildings throughout the community. And we have a long list of those public buildings that currently get that service, and they will continue to do so. In addition to that, we get certain types of additional services, such as senior citizen discounts, which we'll get from one of the licensees, but not all of them. So that's the idea of what we will be negotiating for, what we can get, what we can't get. I will tell you we have two licenses that are coming up for renewal during the next year, 2025. The first one will be Verizon, which is up on February 2nd, 2025. And the second one is the Comcast license up for renewal on July 30th, 2025. The other thing I'll let you know is, because we'll be dealing with this during our negotiations, the Comcast license can be renewed for up to 10 years, and I'm recommending that we renew it for the longest possible term, so that we have a continual income stream upon which we can depend for access and community cable-related purposes. Verizon, however, will only renew for five years. So we'll renew for five years, and then we'll renew for another five years, presumably in the middle of the Comcast term. That said, as you earlier heard, the purpose of the hearing is to do two things. To help your negotiators in the city in ascertaining the city's future community cable related needs. And we seek your help and your assistance and your input for that. And the second thing, the second purpose of the hearing is to provide a compliance audit for both Comcast and Verizon. Our Comcast, or is Comcast, and is Verizon, are the two of them together in current compliance with their licenses. We seek your assistance here to tell us if you have complaints about service, about customer service, about billing practices, or about signal quality. for either one of those two operators, because those would constitute violations of the license. And we would like to know that during the course of our negotiations. That will assist us in two ways. One, it'll perhaps give us a little bit of leverage in our negotiations. But more importantly than that, renewal time is the best possible time to get the cable operators to correct any issues or problems they have. Because they are seeking a renewal themselves, they will respond quickly to any complaints we pass to them. So keep that in mind, please. And if you have any complaints or issues with either one, please let us know either tonight or by communication to email or letter. to the City of Medford, and in particular to one of the two individuals who are with us tonight, Steve or to Kevin. That concludes my presentation. I'll now turn the floor over to Kevin Harrington, the station manager for MCM, who's going to give us some information in the form of a video and some slides about the benefits and the advantages and the services that MCM provides to the citizens and the subscribers of Medford. Kevin.
[Kevin Harrington]: Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. As I've already previously mentioned, my name's Kevin Harrington. I am the station manager for Medford Community Media. I took over in October of 2021, and I've been having a pretty exciting adventure since then. And one of the most invigorating elements of working at this station, other than all the fantastic members and folks that I work with around the city, is seeing how much potential MCM has, seeing how much room for growth there is. So for tonight's meeting, we put together a video that is meant to give you a sense of what this station, not only what it does, but what it can mean to the folks here in the community that participate in it. We interviewed some of our members. We produced this video all in-house at MCM. So I wanted to first shout out my production coordinator, Sarah. who's the other full-time employee here at the station. I want to also shout out our co-op student from the Media Tech shop of Medford Vocational Technical High School, Jonathan Malerba. I also want to shout out my previous production coordinator, Cat Darnell, who is now one of the two teachers at the Media Tech shop at the Medford Vocational Technical High School. She helped us out with this shoot as well. And so with all that set up out of the way, I'm going to now share my screen so that you can see the video we've created, and I will mute my mic briefly. And let me just confirm, Ken, you should be able to see a white screen. Looks good, okay. And now I'm gonna mute my mic and I'll let this take it away. Coming to Medford Community Media, I think one of the things that grabbed me right away were the people.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I'm Laura Duggan and I've been a member of Medford Community Media for about six years. The show that I do here is called Looking Back at Medford History.
[Terry Carter]: My name is Terry E. Cotter and I manage elder services and special programs at the West Medford Community Center.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: I'm Steve Bertorelli, and I'm the host and creator of the Stevie B Show here on Medford Community Media.
[Terry Carter]: I was drawn to Medford Community Media because we wanted to make sure that folks who couldn't attend our program physically would still have an opportunity to see it, because we thought it was not only a program for our immediate catchment, which is the West Medford community, but really for the city of Medford.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: Well, back in the 90s, believe it or not, in 1995, I went into the studio, which was on Canal Street here in Medford, that we're looking for people to join. And since I'm an actor, in my spare time, I always wanted to learn about production, television, and I always wanted help with, you know, behind the scenes, with camera work and directing. And I also wanted to host my own show. And I've enjoyed every minute of it.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And we have probably aired at least 60 interview shows for that program. It's been a lot of fun doing it. And in addition to the show I do here, I've done three movies based on my one-woman plays.
[Terry Carter]: Well, my experience in working with Medford Community Media has been globally a really, really good thing. We started out with Patrick Gordon back when he was the station manager. And he was always available, always gave us access to the best equipment, and coming to do the shoots over at the community center. And when we went through, You know, the changes that we went through with COVID and coming into working with Kevin, that just continued. It was almost seamless.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: Staff here, from you to Kat to Sarah, have just been so helpful and so encouraging to me.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And it's very well run by their station manager. I will give him an absolute 100% vote of praise because I like working with him. He's a lot of fun.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: You guys have been so helpful to me, and you've always been someone I can always talk to whenever I have anything personal to say, and you guys are top-notch. I can't thank you guys enough.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: How would it be great to grow? Well, if they had more staff, they could do more outreach in the community, for sure, cover more city events. And also, they might have enough staff to actually teach classes on how to edit, how to film.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: More classes, I think, to learn more about the technology, from Photoshop to Adobe, and learning how to be a director behind the scenes.
[Terry Carter]: I would want to see MCM continue to, you know, kind of build its portfolio of artistic programming, as well as to interact even probably more with the new Arts Center that we have here.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It can only grow if you get more staff. I am amazed what they can do with just two.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: As much as I love this studio, I think that the station, it should have a new location for it because it's right where its location is, possibly somewhere near Mefford Square.
[Terry Carter]: And always to have the facility to do more programming in the studio that maybe needs a little bit more room or that maybe is a little bit more challenging from a technical standpoint and would require some different equipment that perhaps the station doesn't now have.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, I think this station is very important because whereas Medford no longer has a local newspaper, it provides a lot of coverage on various programming that's going on around the city and meetings that happen.
[Terry Carter]: Medford has a pretty significant elderly population. So being at home and being able to click on to the two public access channels as well as the educational channels and government channels is really important to folks who can't get around the way that they used to.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: public access. If you want to make a show whether it be about politics or even gardening or any other thing you can come and do a show here. Plus you have government where you see city council meetings, you get to see what's going on in the city of Medford, what's happening and that's another thing.
[Terry Carter]: I also think it provides an opportunity for young people who are interested in the media to come and learn and use the equipment and be trained in terms of editing and different aspects of television production. And really, beyond maybe the offerings that the school has, Medford High School has itself in media arts, it's really the only place where this can be done on a significant level.
[Kevin Harrington]: I really love that this is a place where grown-ups or young folks alike can come here and make something they want. They can be creative. They can create something fictional, non-fictional, and just exercise that drive.
[Terry Carter]: I think what Medford Community Media means to me on a personal level, it's the ability to extend relationships. The relationship that we as a community-based organization have with our local constituency, with the greater city. and with, you know, with individuals who are interested in the kinds of things we do with our programming. So I think all of what we do at the community center is relationship driven.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: I kind of came out of my shell. I discovered acting and it was something that I really love to do and it introduced me to so many friends that I have, friends for life pretty much.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: This station has become very important to me because it's allowed me to express my creativity and use it to create projects. It's really added to the quality of my life and because the staff up here is very friendly and warm and welcoming. I really get a lot of personal satisfaction and excitement about every show that I'm preparing. And when I watch it on TV, you know, it gives me a real charge. It really does.
[Fn_5UfmqiiU_SPEAKER_06]: One thing I will never forget was when I was doing my cable access show, and I was at a place in Medford called Amici's, which is a pizza place. And I was eating my lunch, and these three kids came up from a local school and said that, you're the guy on the show, right? Can we get your autograph? And I'm like, no one has ever asked me for an autograph in my life. And I really, I just, I signed some paper plates with a marker, you know, but it's, it feels good to know that people are watching you. The, the, the feedback that I've gotten is so generous and so positive and, uh, I love doing it. And thanks to the station in a way I've came out of my shell.
[Terry Carter]: Having this relationship with MCM is really, really important to me personally because I have a great personal relationship with Kevin Harrington and with the staff that he brings to do our shoots. Kat Darnell, before she became a Medford teacher and instructor, she was instrumental in a number of the things that we did here at the station.
[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: pull my husband in occasionally. He and I have just found this to be such a positive thing in our life, an excitement. And my friend Ruth, who's on a lot of projects, and Irene, who comes occasionally, adds a lot to the quality of our life, and it's exciting. And I think because we're having such a good time, I'd like to think everybody out there is also having a good time.
[Kevin Harrington]: Okay. Thank you, everybody. That was our little MCM video we put together. And so now I would like to pivot to a slide presentation that we prepared. So bear with us again. We're just going to get the screen share going over here. And how's that look for everybody, Steve and Bill? You can see that okay? Yeah, it's good. Fantastic, so this is a pretty short presentation. I don't want to belabor it too much but this is basically just going to highlight the Estimates for what what we're going to need going forward what we're going to want going forward By kind of projecting what we what our budget is this year and then what it would look like next year and that we would hopefully replicate that for the Coming years after that for the for the length of licenses and then also some of the capital expenses that we're going to look at So this table here is just to give you a glance at what fiscal year 25, which we're in right now. This is what we're doing. We have the two full-time roles for the MVTHS co-op. That's technically one role, but it's two students who alternate. Weeks because there's a shop week in an academic week. We have stipends set aside so there's our personnel and then our expenses are 50k a year as of right now and so we're looking about two hundred and eight thousand four hundred twenty four and And this fiscal year 26 that we're projecting here is if we kind of expanded the team to what I would hope to do. So I would love to have, because we are a PEG station, we have public access, educational access, and government access, I would like to have a production coordinator for each of the three letters in PEG we currently have. Sarah Pendenza as our production coordinator, so she could be in the gov spot and then we would have two other production coordinators. As of right now, we're estimating this role at the highest step for the CAF that it's in, so basically the highest possible in the salary grade, just to overestimate slightly, you know what I mean? You don't want to, you'd rather overestimate than underestimate. just to make sure that you kind of have the wiggle room, as it were. But I want to remind everyone that the figures are all, these are preliminary estimates, right? Nothing is set in stone. This is just what we're kind of working on right now. I would also want to add a role for a meeting coverage videographer. I have a few people that cover the booth, including Sarah a decent amount of the time and myself, and I would want to have a dedicated role where we could pay somebody to cover the booth and we could keep myself and Sarah here at the studio to help our members with those studio productions. So then that total would come up, it would be an increase in our personnel totals, bring it up to $279,889.86, and bring our total, again, estimated fiscal year budget to $329,889.86. Some capital projects. I won't go too deep in the weeds on these unless people have follow-up questions. I would love to answer and talk shop about any of these. But I'll just hit a couple of the big ones. And again, this is trying to estimate in the next 10 years what we would want to spend our capital on. We have a second page of this, by the way. So studio lighting upgrade would be the big one and will be the one that I would want to do the soonest. Lighting system in the studio is adequate for the moment, but it doesn't really allow for a lot of control of individual lights It's kind of they're all on or they're all off So we want to give people more creativity and freedom to use lighting and lighting cues And also just to make sure that we have up-to-date equipment And then we have a couple of things. The Alden Chambers, we've recently completed an audio upgrade, which was ARPA funds, so that was separate from what we're working with here. But the video camera system, the switching system, and how it integrates with the broadcast, we'd want to upgrade that. uh... on the sooner side and then a couple of things including uh... an eighty upgrade for the rooms two oh one into a seven city hall and you can carry the rest of them are all pretty uh... self-explanatory studio camera just meeting cameras in the studio care of field camera media camera can bring out the field pretty pretty self-explanatory but i was like to make sure that that tv lingo is a kind of skin glossed over and then here we have a couple more items including replacing the iMacs. We have some iMacs for our editing computers that have been workhorses for a long time, but they are from some from 2015, some from 2017. They are showing their age. So we're going to want to get those redone either with up-to-date iMacs or possibly replacing them with PCs. We would also, the studio relocation I want to mention, this is a very, very Broad guesstimate because if the high school is replaced in the next 10 years, which I know a lot of folks are hoping to have that happen, I believe there's a whole committee trying to plan on a possible. school renovation and what have you because we're on high school grounds that would affect us greatly so just want to have that project set aside so that if for some reason we can't access this current space for however many months or even a year we would have to budget in renting space somewhere lugging all the gear out and then, you know, eventually coming back into our new spot. And then a production truck van is a wish list blue sky item. I would love to have a van, even if it's not kitted out as a production van with a built in switching system and the ability to live stream. Just even having a branded van that we could, you know, not put so much wear and tear on our personal vehicles. And also it would be branded. We would have a little bit more. You know, name recognition, driving around town, that kind of thing would be nice. So that about completes the slides. So I'll stop the screen share there. And I will hand it back over to Bill, I believe. And I believe you're muted at the moment, Bill, if you don't mind just unmuting your microphone. Yeah, still muted. All right. How's that? There you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect. All right. Um, let me get that little, OK, I'm back. Thank you for that presentation, Kevin. That was extremely helpful. And it was a great video showing a lot about your program with MCM and the benefits that are so apparent to not only the members of the community, but also to your staff and the folks who work for you. And the numbers that you gave us, of course, are preliminary in nature. This is the product of the ascertainment process we're involved in. So our task is to determine our future needs, both on an annual operating basis and also in future capital. And we're putting that together now. And that will serve as the basis of our negotiations with the two cable operators. The next thing on the agenda is to read into the record any letters or emails we have from any members of the public. At present, we don't have any. But I'm inviting any of you who are out there watching to do so, to send us letters or email messages and tell us two things. One, what would you like to see in the cable television licenses for Comcast and for Verizon as they get renewed in the year 2025? And two, do you have any complaints about the compliance with their licenses of either on the part of either Comcast or Verizon. And again, the types of compliance complaints that are helpful for us to know are if you've had problems with customer service, for example, being put on hold for a long time. if you've had problems with signal quality, and if you've had problems with billing or any financial issues. If you have, let us know, because that's an important part of our negotiations with each one of the cable operators, and it will assist us greatly if you let us know any difficulties, problems, or complaints you may have. And now we're going to turn the public hearing over to members of the public who may be in attendance, may be watching, and may wish to have questions or comments for us. And for that, I'm going to turn the meeting back over to Steve, who's going to call on any members of the public who wish to speak. Thank you, Steve.
[Steve]: Thanks, Bill. I just also want to reiterate if you do have any letters or emails or you want to get in touch with us in any way regarding our cable licensing, you can either email me, which would be the easiest way. My email, I will also put in the chat, but it is ssmirti, S-M-I-R-T-I, so two S's. at medford-ma.gov. You could also send us actual letters in the mail and address them, attention to myself at Medford City Hall, room 202, 85 George P. Hassett Drive, Medford MA 02155. As I said at the start of the meeting, if you have a question, you can either put it in the chat or you can use the hand up emoji and I will ask you to unmute and you can ask a question. So are there any questions out there? Okay, I don't see any, so I think I will send it back up to you, Bill. And I would just reiterate again, if you're watching this later and you have a question, please feel free to email myself or Kevin, and we'll get the answer for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill. Thank you, Steve. Members of the public, those of you who are watching or who will watch, there is still an opportunity for you to participate. You don't have to just watch tonight and you don't have to just listen tonight. You can watch this video. It'll be posted on the town's website and it'll be available for review by you. And if those of you who do so in any future point of time, do that, please do communicate to us with any issues you would like to see addressed by cable operators and or what you would like to see in the future community cable related needs for the City of Medford. This is your license. The folks you have before you are your servants. They are here to enhance your life in the City of Medford by providing with public cable access and and interfacing, allowing citizens in the city to interface with their government, with their fellow citizens, with the town's history, and with the programming that MCM has and will offer to you. So please do participate. Please let us know if you have anything you would like us to know. We will be beginning our negotiations with Comcast and with Verizon later on in the fall. As I mentioned earlier, the Verizon license is up first. It's January. The Comcast license is up in July. So that's the time frame in which we will be operating. And what I'd like to say now is thank you. Those of you who watch, those of you who will participate in the future, please continue to participate and to keep us within the loop because we depend on you for assistance as we begin to prepare for negotiating the renewal licenses. Thank you all, everyone. Good evening. And the public hearing is now closed.
[Kevin Harrington]: Thank you, everyone. Thanks, everybody.