Baileyville cable stations battle > Town considers copyright rules for public, private entities

BAILEYVILLE – The town soon will have copyright rules to guide its local cable access station.

The new Baileyville cable committee is working to establish guidelines and operating rules for the town’s only public access channel, known as Channel 10.

“A program produced with the town’s equipment is the town’s program,” Town Manager Jack Clukey said Monday night at the Town Council meeting. The councilors agreed.

Baileyville’s other local cable broadcaster, known as Channel 8, is operated by St. Croix Video Productions, a private company.

There apparently has been a back-room battle over how the two channels should divide the local programming. The back-room discussion moved to the public arena Monday night, when the town councilors discussed local programming.

At issue was whether the town’s public access channel should compete with the private local access channel by broadcasting the same public activities such as basketball games, Town Council meetings and other public events.

Mike Boies, recreation director, said he did not put programs on Channel 10 in order to compete with Channel 8. “We put it on when it’s convenient for us to put it on. We don’t mean to be in competition or to undercut any other channel,” he said Monday night. “When I have time, and I update the crawl line, I’ll put something on. I don’t know what’s on the other stations, nor do I have time to go and check what’s on other stations.” He said he would be able to provide more and better programming in the future. A crawl line is text that appears on viewers’ TV screens when they switch to the stations.

Boies forecast that there might be a time when two cameras, one belonging to Channel 10, the other to Channel 8, would appear at the same event. “If a volunteer wants to go and take a camera, I say go ahead and go for it. If there happens to be another business there at the time, well those things happen,” he said.

Councilor Tony Tammaro said he did not believe the town should “cut in” on Channel 8’s business.

“If we can help Channel 8, we should do it. We shouldn’t do anything to tear it down. … If we can keep these two stations going without any arguments or fights, etc., I feel that we all are stepping in the right direction,” he said.

City Councilor John Morrison said that although the private cable station may have production and video skills superior to what volunteers might have, he believed events such as basketball games, town meetings or council meetings, should be broadcast over Channel 10. He said that did not preclude Channel 8 from carrying the same programming. “To say that we can’t tape a basketball game because there’s a private enterprise doing it, I guess I have a problem with that,” he said.

Morrison argued that even though the program might appear on Channel 10, he did not believe it would preclude Channel 8 from also carrying it. “We shouldn’t be dictating to that private enterprise,” he said. He said he did not believe it would create a problem if both the public and private stations attended the same basketball game.

But Chairman Doug Jones disagreed.

“It’s like the sewer lines. If the sewer lines gets plugged in town, and we know it’s on private property, XXXthe town doesn’tXXX dig it up because we don’t want to be in competition with private contractors. I look at this television thing the same way. We don’t want to be in competition with a private operator, that is, trying to make money,” he said.

Morrison said he also believes that if town volunteers taped a program it should appear on Channel 10. He said there was a recent experience in which a volunteer taped the recent Labor Day parade, and the taped presentation ended up on Channel 8.

“Not right. Shouldn’t do it. That was town equipment and town cameras,” he said.

Councilor Charlie Towns said he was told the tape was given to St. Croix Video Production so background music could be added to it. Jones said he believed the tape should have been given to Boies who should have decided how to handle adding music to it.

Jones forecast that during the upcoming budget hearings, the future of cable television will be discussed. He said there could be a move to use the $10,000 the cable company pays the town in franchise fees on a local qualified video production service to provide programming for the town. “Now that wouldn’t be the town,” he said. The cable committee recently conducted a survey that showed that those surveyed seemed to prefer that a qualified video production service handle public programming.