Auburn expects new cable access agreement in July

AUBURN — City officials said Monday they are not trying to take over Lewiston-Auburn’s cable access channel, just trying to make it operate more efficiently.

Denis D’Auteuil, Auburn’s acting assistant city manager, said he is working with his Lewiston counterpart, Deputy City Administrator Phil Nadeau, on a new interlocal agreement governing how Lewiston-Auburn’s cable access channel, Great Falls TV, operates.

D’Auteuil told councilors Monday he expects to present a draft of the new agreement later in July.

“We have only just started to review it at the staff level, and I wanted to give you that update,” he said.

City Manager Howard Kroll presented a plan earlier this month to take over daily management of the channel. The city would eliminate one of two positions at Great Falls TV and concentrate more Auburn-themed content. Kroll said Lewiston is not interested in more content, and his plan would reduce Lewiston’s costs $67,000 per year to $25,000.

Great Falls TV is the the local-access cable channel housed on Auburn’s Central Maine Community College campus. It provides programming for three channels on Time Warner Cable: local government programming on Channel 7, community programming on Channel 11 and educational programming on Channel 22. The station currently uses something called a “PEG” model — equal shares of Public access, Educational and Government programming.

Ed Desgrosseilliers, chairman of the cable TV’s operating board, said last week that he was afraid Auburn was trying to make the channel all government, all the time.

Kroll said that’s not true.

“I want to see more opportunities across the board for the P, the E and the G — not just the G,” Kroll said. “Hopefully, Phil and Denis can come together with something both city councils can endorse.”

A live feed of the Channel 11 programming and an archive of previously aired shows is available for viewing on demand at the station’s website, greatfallstv.net/webstream.htm. The biggest share of the station’s content is government meetings from Auburn, Lewiston and the town of Lisbon.

Subscribers to Time Warner Cable pay a 2.5 percent franchise fee to the cities. Of that, 40 percent is devoted to Great Falls TV operations.

[email protected]