CARRABASSETT VALLEY – With a long history of providing unique television to the community, WSKI-TV 17 plans to continue despite the challenges of this past year.

“We think we do community television in the best possible way to serve our community,” said owner Nadine McLeod Wednesday.

Recent questions raised about the station’s legal right to use channel 17 by Scott Hogg led McLeod to seek the advice of Tony Vigue, a board member of the Community Television Association of Maine, she said.

“Federal statutes do not expressly prohibit commercial advertising and programming on public access television. It’s not typical, but is not prohibited,” he said he told both McLeod and Hogg when they asked about general guidelines for public access stations.

The history of the station included ad placement on channel 17 before public access channels were started, she said.

SKI-TV originated this way: An antenna was placed atop Sugarloaf so that condominiums could receive three Bangor stations. That led to the decision to put up its own station and McLeod became the station supervisor in 1979, she said.

When Larry Warren started Longfellow Cable, he asked Sugarloaf to let WSKI be added to his cable menu. The station offered a unique product with weather and trail conditions for skiers, she said. It was a big service not available on satellite that each cable company after Longfellow’s has kept in their lineup, she added.

“When the mountain faced bankruptcy in 1986, the station was shut down and we came back and offered to keep it running,” she said.

Because they offered a local community channel, at some point it was assumed they were Carrabassett’s public channel, she said.

“In terms of whether or not they did anything illegal, I don’t think so because there was no precise agreement between the town and WSKI over channel 17. No one else has construed the historical relation between the town and WSKI as being illegal. No law has been broken. Regardless, the issue is gone,” said John McCatherin, who leads a new committee organized to research whether the town wants to run a public access channel and what that would entail.

Basically, the contract or franchise agreement between the town and the cable company spells out what can be done with the public channel assigned to the town, Vigue said.

The town’s franchise agreement with Time Warner states that the cable company will provide a channel for public access, said Town Manager Dave Cota on Wednesday. The town has never run a public channel itself, he has said previously.

Time Warner offered the town the option to take channel 22 for a public access channel.

During the winter of 2006-2007, Hogg was a guest host on the channel’s morning report program but did not produce his own show, McLeod said. When the winter season ended, she no longer needed that segment, she said.

“He has never been denied access. He’s never asked. Nobody has ever been denied access,” McCleod said.

About a year ago, Hogg did ask to purchase the business, but she declined, she said.

An attempt to reach Hogg on Wednesday was unsuccessful.

WSKI-TV and Time Warner recently formed a partnership, McLeod and Time Warner representative Peter DeWitt said last week.

The town’s public access channel committee voted unanimously last Monday to a research sample of about 10 questions to be sent randomly to voters and taxpayers, McCatherin said. The survey should be out within the next few days and will help the committee determine what the community feels are the needs for a channel.

The committee will meet again April 24 to look at the results, he said.