Urbana Cable and Telecommunications Commission Meeting

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA CABLE & TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION MEETING MINUTES DATE: July 17, 2014 PLACE: Urbana Council Chambers, 400 South Vine St., Urbana, Illinois MEMBERS PRESENT: CHAMPAIGN URBANA Peter Folk Dale Sinder PARKLAND U of I MEMBERS ABSENT: Giraldo Rosales, Karen Walker, Chris Foster, Chris Lukeman STAFF PRESENT: Jeff Hamilton – City of Champaign Jake Schumacher, Sanford Hess – City of Urbana 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Folk called the meeting to order at 3:35 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL Jake Schumacher called the role. With only two members present, the Commission failed to reach a quorum. 3. MODIFICATIONS/APPROVAL OF AGENDA Lacking a quorum, this agenda item was skipped. 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Lacking a quorum, this agenda item was skipped. 5. CORRESPONDENCE Jake Schumacher informed the Commission that AT&T U-verse representative John Quinn no longer serves the Champaign area. Our new representative is Jeff Adducci. He reported that Urbana received no cable complaints last quarter. Jeff Hamilton informed the Commission that Champaign received eight cable complaints last quarter, which was an increase over last quarter. 6. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Amendment of Commission Rules & Regulations Mr. Schumacher informed the Commission that the Legal Departments from both cities are still reviewing the Commission’s revised Rules and Regulations. He said that staff from both Cities will meet later this month to review City Code changes that may need to be made.  Mr. Hamilton reported that the Commission was established by City Code in Urbana and Champaign, and that changing the name of the Commission will require both City Council’s approval. 7. NEW BUSINESS A. Committee Reports - None B. PEG Reports/ Station Clip Reels i. UPTV – Mr. Schumacher reviewed the UPTV channel report for the Commission. UPTV had an increase of about 200 hours of new local programming and a reduction of about 400 hours of non-local programming. UPTV continues to work with high school and middle school students. A number of new local public access programs were added last year. UPTV was recognized with five regional and two national awards by the Alliance for Community Media (ACM). Jason Liggett will attend the ACM conference to accept the awards. ii. CGTV – Mr. Hamilton reviewed the CGTV annual report. CGTV’s local programming hours decreased last year, largely due to the loss of televised UC2B board meeting. CGTV hired a full time Multi Media Producer to produce programming and operate the channel. He reported that CGTV is preparing to upgrade to all high definition equipment mid-August. CGTV received two national awards from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors last year – one for a video and one for CGTV’s website. CGTV online had 8700 hits last year; a 16% increase from the previous year. CGTV produced 83 City meetings last year, a number of PSAs, candidate forums, and videos about City services. 8. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION – None 9. COMMISSIONER’S COMMENTS Chair Folk reported he recently tried to stream the local PEG channels on his Roku and Apple TV. He found it very challenging due to the different video standards being used. He reported it is easy to watch the channels on a computer via a web browser, but that watching on a TV is difficult. He hopes that new technical standard like HTML5 will make that easier in the future. 10. SET NEXT MEETING DATE AND ADJOURNMENT The next regular meeting is October 16, 2014. The meeting adjourned at 3:53 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Jeff Hamilton Telecommunications/AV Technician City of Champaign