DALTON, Mass. — Attorney William Solomon gave a presentation during the Cable Advisory Commission Meeting on Thursday evening. 

 

The commission was re-established to negotiate a new contract with Charter Communications. The last time the town had a contract was in 1997 with Time Warner Cable, which was purchased by Spectrum in 2016. 

 

During the commission's January meeting, it voted to recommend hiring Solomon for the negotiations. Although Solomon does not usually charge less than $225 an hour he agreed to charge the town $200 an hour for his service because he enjoys the work. 

 

Solomon has worked for other cities and towns in Massachusetts on contracts and negotiations for cable contracts.  

 

During the meeting, Solomon discussed with commission members what their priorities are, what the station is currently working with, and the best next steps. 

 

Although there are challenging negotiations ahead, the interests between the cable company and the station align. These people in big companies, like Charter, get to know the communities even though they are covering a large area, he said. 

 

"People tend to get to an agreement that just makes sense for both parties because most of our interests are aligned. The better community television is, the better cable TV program that the cable company has," Solomon said. 

 

"And so sometimes when they get larger, you have to remind them of that but that's why we're going to take this approach of figuring out what we need and sitting down fairly quickly with Charter and meeting each other."

 

An important part of these negotiations is to meet with a Charter representative in person to highlight the importance of the station to the community, and discuss its past, present, and future goals, he said. 

 

"It's really important and the key to negotiating a good license is expressing what it means to the community and how important it is, so that the government affairs representative of the cable company feels that," Solomon said. 

 

"... It's also based on the Cable Act, which goes back to 1984 when they put a 5 percent cap on the franchise fee and they have all the provisions, but that act incentivizes both sides to figure out what's important. It officially gives the responsibility to the town, the franchise authority, to figure out what its future cable related needs and interests are."

 

The Community Cable Association currently has one channel, 1301. Dalton residents also have access to Channels 1302 and 1303 on Pittsfield Community Television.

 

In cases where the station wants to play Pittsfield programming, such as the 4th of July Parade, it is no longer able to switch broadcasting to 1301, as it was previously able to do.

 

With the amount of programming the station has, one channel should be enough, station manager Michael Sinopoli said. 

 

High definition would be a priority in the negotiations, Solomon said. In a perfect world, they would like to have three channels, including Pittsfield with a switch overriding for Dalton content, and possibly a second channel on the Dalton side. 

 

The town has a municipal fiber network connection for municipal buildings. Richard White agreed to work with Sinopoli to look into if there is available municipal fiber to return the programming signal to the station and what it would take to have equipment connected to the municipal fiber and determine the channel and video return possibilities.

 

The commission plans to negotiate for a share of gross revenue, capital funds, funding for fiber-optic cables, which will enhance its connections, and updated equipment needed to handle this upgrade. 

 

To determine what the station gets in capital funds, it should have a capital plan, Solomon said. This would include "the future cable-related community needs and interest, and the cost if it" so, officials will need to figure out what those needs and interests are. 

 

There was an outage a few months ago that blew out the Community Cable Association's moderator. Fortunately, there was a working spare to maintain broadcasting. 

 

The equipment at the station is no longer made so if this working spare breaks it will be unable to broadcast.

 

Dalton Community Cable Association's system still runs on analog. What Solomon would like to do is demonstrate to Charter how this is an immediate issue that needs to be addressed. 

 

Solomon said he believed it would be in the town's best interest to get a 10-year contract, which is the maximum allowed under Massachusetts law.