Minutes_Cable TV Teleprogramming Commission 7 7 09MINUTES OF CABLE COMMUNITY TELEPROGRAMMING COMMISSION MEETING
July 7, 2009
CITY HALL ANNEX - 2nd FLOOR CONFERENCE ROOM #2
MEMBERS PRESENT: Jennifer Tigges, Sr. Carol Hoverman, Pauline Maloney, AI Vincent.
Burton Everist arrived at 4:42 p.m.
MEMBERS ABSENT: George Herrig. One seat is vacant on the Commission
OTHERS PRESENT: Jim Barefoot, Mediacom
Craig Schaefer, Loras College
Jill Specht, Loras College
Craig Nowack, City of Dubuque
Ms. Tigges called the meeting to order at 4:05 p.m.
Acceptance of the Agenda
Upon a motion by Ms. Maloney, seconded by Sr. Hoverman, the agenda was accepted as published
by a vote of 4-0.
Approval of the Minutes of the May 12 and June 2, 2009, Meetings
Upon a motion by Mr. Vincent, seconded by Ms. Maloney, the Minutes of the June 2, 2009, Meeting
were approved 4-0.
Public Comment
There was no public comment.
Access Equipment & Expenditures
Mr. Nowack presented a request on behalf of Dubuque Community Schools and Gary Olsen for
$4000 to purchase a recorder that will record school board meetings and other productions in HD.
Mr. Vincent moved to approve up to $4200 for this purchase. The motion was seconded by Sr.
Hoverman and approved 4-0.
Loras College/Channel 17
Mr. Schaefer and Ms. Specht discussed the possibility of Loras College taking over the day-to-day
operations of the shared educational access channel, Channel 17. Mr. Schaefer mentioned being
contacted by Merrill Crawford, the City's previous Cable Franchise Administrator, about this prior to
the adoption of the current cable franchise agreement. He noted that the franchise agreement
identifies Loras College as one of four access origination sites in the city. Mr. Schaefer and Ms.
Specht discussed the advantages and disadvantages of Loras operating Channel 17 and noted that
other colleges manage access channels.
Mr. Vincent moved to consider the proposal and have it appear on the agenda for the next meeting.
The motion was seconded by Sr. Hoverman and approved 4-0.
Mediacom Cable Report
Mr. Barefoot reported that most of his recently requested equipment has arrived and is in the process
of being installed. He is still waiting for the encoding station. Mr. Nowack reported that he spoke with
ECS today and learned that there are some issues with the Matrox drivers working properly with the
latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro. ECS does not want to install the system until it is stable
enough to run correctly.
Mr. Barefoot just received a video copy of the Washington, DC, awards presentation that he and Gary
Olsen recently attended and said it would be airing soon. He said that he and Tyler are now mostly
caught up with the backlog of programs that need encoding. He also said that a daily reboot of the
Tightrope playback server seems to help alleviate some of the recurring problems he has been
experiencing.
Cable TV Report
Mr. Nowack said things are going slower than he would like, mostly because of the Video Producer's
injury. Right now background checks are being conducted on the intern and he hopes that this
person will be able to start sometime next week. Anew project requested by the City Manager that
they are now working on is a show explaining some of the larger capital improvement projects from
fiscal year 2009.
Adjournment
Upon a motion by Mr. Vincent, seconded by Sr. Hoverman, the meeting was adjourned at 4:55 p.m
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