Finals Week

12/10 7 hours
12/12 8 hours
12/14 8 hours, total 184.5 hours

Since I only had finals on one day this week, I spent a lot more time in the office. A lot of it was spent with the brochure and the girl who came in to take pictures. Apparently she is a photojournalism student at CMU and had to take something like 200 pictures that were supposed to be able to tell a story just by looking at them. So she came in and took a lot of pictures around the studio, but since we didn't really have much going on I'm not sure how she's going to tell a story with the images. Hopefully we'll get a copy of them though, because I need more images to add to the brochure and there's bound to be something useful in a batch of 200. When/if we're going to get them... the girl said that she'd send a dvd with the images but it's really hard to count on people who have no real ties with your organization. She came in last Friday and then again on Monday, and the semester ended on Friday so it seems like it would be possible to get a dvd soon. No luck thus far, so maybe over break or the beginning of next year? I did get the opportunity to explain the background and purpose of public access television to the photographer though, which was good because it helped someone else understand the importance of what we do, and it made me feel good to know that I can explain it in such a way that it makes sense to other people and proves that I've learned something over the last few months.

The big issue this week: PA 480.
-The uniform franchise agreement that's been causing so much trouble. It's not the fact that it's a uniform agreement, because the rates at which the cable companies must pay is comparable to what it was before. It's the fact that it negates any other agreements or franchise compromises that were in existence, even though some still had between another year to 10 years left on the agreements. Which means that some townships may actually be losing money because the old agreements are now negated. Additionally, PA 480 is giving more power to the big cable companies. This is a bad thing because what the FCC created to give the common people a voice through Public Access Television, they are now rendering powerless to retain negotiation and funding abilities. That is, the cable companies now all have a uniform franchise agreement, which means that the individual communities or consortiums that used to have the power to negotiate now only get whatever the companies decide to give. The power has been taken wholly out of the hands of public access and given to the big companies who don't care about the people.

The bigger issue this week: ALMA and PA 480
-Charter has been sending out the uniform agreements to each of our member communities, which they were in turn supposed to send to us so we could finish filling them in and get everything all worked out. And if I haven't mentioned before, Alma has been giving the consortium a really hard time about everything from the old Gratiot coordinator retiring to not wanting to share the Gratiot facility. For some reason, even though they're members of the consortium, they don't really want to act like members, which is a strange thing that I don't really understand still. The main problem this week, and oh my gosh was it a problem:
----Charter sent Alma the uniform franchise agreement. Instead of forwarding it to us to take care of (which would make sense, because one of our main purposes is to serve as the legal protection for the members) THEY SENT A LETTER TO CHARTER SAYING THAT THE AGREEMENT WASN'T FILLED OUT PROPERLY. There are multiple problems with this action:
1) the parts that weren't filled out by Charter were SUPPOSED TO BE FILLED OUT BY THE COMMUNITY
2) the other 3 communities to send the agreement back were fined $20,000 for delaying the franchising process by some board or other run by the state of Michigan.

Herein lies the problem: Alma didn't follow the proper procedures and send the letter to Charter. Because they're a member of ours, this reflects poorly on us. Also, because they're a member of ours we may get hit with a very large fine which we don't need. And Charter made a point to email the letter they were sent to Jan and ask what it was all about in a tone that indicated they were none too pleased with the situation. COMMUNICATION ISSUES GALORE. When a very irate Jan called to explain the situation to the people down in Alma, they were rather surprised and actually started to cooperate with us (which is a bigger surprise). Hopefully there is no lawsuit, as our lawyer sent Charter a letter almost immediately that retracted the Alma letter; now it's just "wait and see". What a way to end the semester...