Cord-cutting threatens cable access programming

Jake Spitzack
Staff Writer

Access to televised city council meetings, candidate forums, school performances and community news is being threatened by the cord-cutting trend – people cancelling their cable television service in favor of purchasing video streaming subscriptions.

Town Square Television, a nonprofit of the Northern Dakota County Communications Cable Commission, which serves West St. Paul, South St. Paul, Lilydale, Mendota Heights, Inver Grove Heights, Sunfish Lake and Eagan, is projecting a 7% decrease in revenue this year alone due to the trend. Like other cable access stations, it has been funded by mandatory fees paid by cable providers since the 1970s.

Cord cutting has caused some major cable companies to stop cable TV operations in the state and focus more on providing broadband internet and telephone services. The problem is that broadband companies are not required to pay fees to city and county cable commissions. To restabilize budgets for public education government programming and allow networks like Town Square TV to spend less time fundraising and more time covering local news, a bill – the Equal Access to Broadband Act – is currently making its way through the state legislature. If approved, it will allow cities to collect fees from broadband providers for using public streets and rights-of-way to sell their services to homeowners. The bill would also ensure that broadband internet service is made available to every home in every city in the state no matter how difficult it is to install. In Minnesota, more than $650 million in federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Act funds is available to help broadband companies build out broadband in towns across the state.

“It’s very possible that cable TV as we know it now will be winding down in the next few years, and everybody will be a broadband company,” said Town Square Television executive director Jodie Miller. “You can see that Comcast and all the other big cable providers are offering streaming products in tandem with their cable service, and they’re putting devices in people’s homes so they can watch video without a cable box. So that’s the trend and this [proposed bill] is really just continuing or restoring the funding that we’ve always had.”

Even if the bill passes, it likely would take at least a year before Town Square TV and others would see cash inflow from broadband providers. That’s why they’re continuing to seek other sources of revenue, which hasn’t been as successful as hoped.

“In 2023, we had a very ambitious goal to get 28% of our revenues through earned revenue sources [fundraising], and we achieved about 15%,” said Miller. “This year, our goal is 41% of our budget to be coming from those earned revenues.”

Miller and South St. Paul Mayor Jimmy Francis testified in support of the bill before the House Commerce Committee in mid-March, and in early April spokespeople from the Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators (MACTA) presented information to the House State and Local Government Committee.

“It has shaken down to be a partisan bill,” said Miller, a MACTA committee member. “In the two votes that have happened so far, all the Democrats have voted yes, and all the Republicans have voted no. The Democrats have the majority in the House and the Senate, but the Senate majority is only one senator, so we need to have every Democrat senator supporting the bill across the entire state when it goes to the Senate floor. It’s not going to be an easy task. The major opponents are the cable industry and the broadband industry, and they have the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce supporting them….
“It’s unfortunate,” she said, “that the state chamber signed on in opposition, but they don’t like regulation and they don’t like fees so that’s why they’re opposed.”

Opponents to the bill argue that the proposed fees will be passed along to streaming service consumers, which would ultimately raise internet costs. Currently, cable companies are required to pay a 5% franchise fee and a 2.25% public education government fee on their video production revenue to cable commissions. The latter is paid to networks like Town Square to support local programming. Commissions typically use the franchise fee to cover costs of staffing, equipment, programming, and the repair and maintenance of public rights-of-ways.

MACTA is heading up the bill in partnership with The League of Minnesota Cities, which represents morethan 800 member cities. Miller said the bill has support from 135 public, education and government stations across the state, many local chambers of commerce, the League of Women Voters, school districts, nonprofits and a handful of other organizations. Sen. Matt Klein (District 53, DFL) and Rep. Rick Hansen (District 53B, DFL) are co-sponsoring the bill and other local legislators have pledged their support, including Sen. Sandra Pappas (District 65, DFL) and Rep. Mary Frances Clardy (District 53A, DFL).

“Currently in northern Dakota County, both CenturyLink and Comcast are using the streets and rights-of-way to sell their private services, but CenturyLink is not paying any franchise fees or public, education and government fees to the cities, and Comcast is only paying on the rapidly declining portion of their cable TV portion of their bill,” said Miller. “Meanwhile, Town Square Television is distributing our video with no paywalls for everyone to watch online, on their phones, on their iPads, and we know that we have many, many viewers who are not cable TV subscribers any longer…. It [the bill’s approval] would be a true lifeline for us to go forward. It would basically allow the tradition that we’ve had for 44 years to continue on into the future.”

Miller has worked at Town Square TV since graduating from college and has been executive director for 30 years. The Northern Dakota County Communications Cable Commission was formed in 1982. Five years later it established the Northern Dakota County Community Television Corporation to manage the public access station. In the early 2000s, that was renamed Town Square Television.

The Town Square team has 12 fulltime employees and its programs air on channels 14, 15, 16, 18 and 19. It covers a wide array of local programming including Game of the Week [sports], government meetings, election candidate coverage, community events, concerts and its Insight 7 news show. As a public access network, anybody can visit its studio at 5845 Blaine Ave. E. in Inver Grove Heights to check out video production equipment and create their own show to be aired. Likewise, people can edit prerecorded content at the studio or submit a completed program. Programs are accepted first-come, first-served and aren’t discriminated against based on content. For more information, call 651-352-6100 or visit townsquare.tv.
The studio features conference and office space, a recording area with new cameras, five editing suites with the latest software, portable camera equipment, newly updated control room equipment and more. Courses and workshops are held to teach people how to create shows. One popular public access show that airs weekly is “Scenes from a Hat,” a comedy improv show.

Town Square also has a production truck for covering news in the community and works with clubs such as Two Rivers Tech Warriors to help cover school programming and organizations like The Uptake, a nonprofit news organization, to cover meetings at the State Capitol.

Next year, the Town Square staff hopes to upgrade its master control center so it can offer closed captioning, stream its five cable channels on demand as well as on the current channels, and integrate with other streaming platforms like Apple TV and Roku.

For more information on the Equal Access to Broadband Act, which is included in the House Commerce Committee Omnibus Bill (HF4077), visit mactamn.org/policy-advocacy/
legislative-advocacy.

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