The East Hampton Town Board is negotiating with Cablevision, hoping to make local public broadcasting available again to customers who have lost their service, while avoiding threats of legal action that have been leveled by other townships.
Cablevision began broadcasting its two public channels, LTV Channel 20 and EGTV Channel 22 in East Hampton, and several others in a digital format in September, so that people without digital televisions or do not have cable boxes for older TVs can no longer receive them. All television signals had been sent in an analog format previously.
At a meeting with the East Hampton Town Board last month, Cablevision’s director of public affairs, Joan Gilmore, said the company will provide one cable box, free of charge, to any customer who has lost service in order to restore LTV and EGTV accessibility.
The two local broadcast channels air locally produced programming and government meetings. Cablevision, the East End’s sole cable television provider, is required by federal law to provide them as part of their licensing agreements with each township.
Town attorneys in Riverhead and Southampton Town have suggested that even with the offer of a free box, the loss of service on the public access channels is a violation of the company’s licensing agreements with the towns. Riverhead Town has already begun legal action against the cable company, and Southampton Town is due to discuss their consideration of legal action again next week.
“We’re not jumping to that level yet, I don’t think,” East Hampton Supervisor Bill McGintee said. “Cablevision will provide the one box, so that’s a start that I think will help most if not all of our residents who want to watch LTV or the government meetings. But we’ll see how things evolve here—we may hear something different, and it may become something we need to address.” —MW
on Jan 6, 2009