Election Programming and The FCC

Tune to KOCT - Channel 18, Thursday September 4th at 6 pm for a one-hour “live” Journalist Roundtable program. KOCT’s election season programming begins featuring a special Journalist Roundtable questioning Oceanside City Council Candidates. You’ll want to watch this special Journalist Roundtable and be an informed voter.

Our Guests will include:

Candidate Dana Corso, president of Alliance of Citizens To Improve Oceanside Neighborhoods (ACTION), says that she was a leading voice in speaking against Proposition E, which threatened to end rent control in mobile home parks.  She commented that as a councilwoman she will have a greater opportunity to serve the people and neighborhoods of Oceanside as a voice for the people that is currently absent in the City Council majority decision-making. 

          

                                           Dana Corso                                                 Gary Felien

Gary Felien, a current council member, is seeking re-election and he says he will continue to keep improving Oceanside. He says that as a result of his election in Nov 2010, a new council majority based on fiscal responsibility was formed and they immediately set to work to turn the city around from the dire straights the past majority had placed the city in. 

Candidate Chuck Lowery, an active Board Member of the Oceanside Charitable Foundation, says he wants to create jobs, and that he has the experience and expertise necessary to cultivate a thriving economic environment. According to comments he has made he will cut spending as he will fight tirelessly for balanced budgets. He said he cares deeply for the City of Oceanside and its residents.

          

                                       Chuck Lowery                                             Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern, an incumbent, is seeking re-election after a 6 year term. He indicates he has worked hard to bring positive change to Oceanside by championing issues that can make our city a better place to live, do business and enjoy our unique recreational opportunities.

Robert Tran is a first time candidate and an Oceanside native. He was born, raised and currently resides in Oceanside and said he is running for City Council to ensure that Oceanside continues to grow in all economic ownership sectors and that all taxpayers of Oceanside deserve a city that is fiscally responsible and is not in the hand of special interest groups or of personal interest. (Photo not available)

The host for Journalist Roundtable is veteran journalist Kent Davy and he will be joined on Columnist Logan Jenkins from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Currently the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Public, Education and Government (PEG) advocates have submitted a number of comments they hope the FCC will consider before they allow for further consolidation of big media entities. For example, American Community Television believes this potential merger will put PEG TV stations at risk saying “We request that the FCC protect PEG access television by rejecting the proposed transaction or conditioning the proposed merger on curing the various problems we have outlined”—Example cited included loss of channels, PEG closures in many states, lack of programming guide description and charging governments to provide PEG programming.

Access Humboldt has also filed FCC comments and they suggest that if the transfer were to occur the FCC should prohibit discrimination against PEG channels and ensure that PEG channels have the same features and functionality and signal quality as they do for local broadcasters as well as requiring PEG channels to be distributed on the HD tiers.

KOCT is and has faced many of the issues cited above: Cox Cable & AT&T will not post our program schedule which makes recording KOCT programs via their DVR’s time consuming and complicated. And AT&T’s DVR won’t even record the PEG channels manually!

Over the past 20 years there have been more & more media  mergers and less requirements for public interest programming—this despite the fact that these communications giants use the public right of ways to conduct private business for a profit. It is not to much to ask that out of the thousands of channels they provide that they not only allow a few channels to be dedicated to the communities they do business in but to actually support those entities by treating them with the same level of support they do for the commercial channels. And in fact, according to grandfathered local franchises and the new state franchise they should already be doing so!

I am hopeful the FCC will not agree to the merger of these two communications giants without an agreement of better support for the many small community PEG channels across the country like KOCT-YOUR community channel.