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View letter
Charging that negotiations are moving at a snail’s pace, New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. is demanding that City Hall and Time Warner and Cablevision sit down and resolve the renewals of cable franchise television agreements.
In a letter to the Mayor, Thompson pressed the City to move ahead and urged that any new agreements with cable providers include the same, stronger consumer protections adopted by Verizon as a result of the Comptroller’s “Cable Consumer Bill of Rights.”
“I am extremely troubled by the apparent lack of progress that has been made in negotiating new cable television franchise renewal agreements,” wrote Thompson, the City’s chief fiscal officer and a member of the City’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee (FCRC), which must approve any new franchise renewal agreements.
You can view the letter and the Cable Bill of Rights at www.comptroller.nyc.gov.
The franchise agreements expired last September. Since then both cable providers have been operating under Temporary Operating Authority, which the Public Service Commission granted until March 16; it was just extended for another six months.
Currently, Time Warner has 1.4 million existing subscribers in New York and Cablevision Systems wires the Bronx and part of Brooklyn with 679,000 subscribers.
However, Thompson said both Time Warner and Cablevision have used the TOA process to delay good faith negotiations, and the City has done little to stop this from happening.
Additionally, both companies are refusing to negotiate new agreements with the City’s Community Access Organizations – which administer public access channels to provide education and government programming - and have stopped making critical payments to the organizations.
During City Hall’s negotiations with Verizon last year, Thompson successfully urged Verizon to agree to consumer protection provisions –such as greater transparency and accountability and a stronger focus on community access programming - contained in his Bill of Rights.
“The longer it takes for new franchise renewals to be negotiated, the longer Time Warner’s and Cablevision’s customers will be deprived of important consumer protection provisions,” Thompson said.
“It is imperative that the City do everything within their power to ensure that negotiations on the new franchise agreements be completed promptly,” he added, “and that such agreements include, at a minimum, the same consumer protection provisions and support for the Community Access Organizations included in the Verizon agreement.”
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