Woodstock’s town board held a public hearing last week on a new franchise agreement with cable television and Internet provider Spectrum. The previous agreement with Spectrum’s predecessor, Time Warner Cable, called for the town to receive five percent of the operator’s gross receipts in quarterly payments. That deal expired in 2021.
The new proposed 15-year agreement with Spectrum’s parent company Charter Communications calls for the same five percent franchise fee. It requires the company to make a public-access channel available, but in its current form does not set aside funding for that purpose.
Supervisor Bill McKenna said that the funding was being negotiated.
Woodstock resident John Ludwig asked whether anyone was trying to get a better deal for the residents. “Do we have somebody, an advocate who’s knowledgeable about this, perhaps an attorney? Who’s in there talking to them and negotiating and trying to get the best possible deal for the town,” Ludwig asked.
McKenna said no, the town didn’t have such an advocate, but that the agreement was still under negotiation. “It’s not uncustomary to get something in return for doing this,” he said. “And one of the things that we talked about was the possibility of them running a better line [to the town offices] that didn’t come up through the woods, and that was pretty expensive. They weren’t too keen on that. And I said, Okay, well, let’s talk about redesigning the television studio. So that one’s on the table right now.”
Producer Fanny Prizant wanted more specific commitments.
“The TV station is being run by Ellen [Povill] and myself, and we don’t get paid,” she said. “Today I spent like two hours. trying to set up the whole thing because everything came down. And so I was there for a couple of hours trying to bring it up. And I was successful eventually, but it took me two hours.”
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