Given the anger from the previous two meetings, one would’ve logically thought at least five angry men would come up and whine and bitch against Comcast. In fact no one came and spoke their minds!
…Except for one gentleman from another part of town who is apparently self employed and is “enthusiastic in telecom” to only find his LinkedIn account at the time, the only “telecom” reference professionally was telephony at the help desk level. He said publicly he’s a “systems engineer that works at home” full time. This individual who identified himself as “consumer” stood his ground that the cable TV franchise system was so broken he called the franchise fees “a tax” not only that but pissed on the quality of the PEG programming. While it may be true, he compared the PEG channels to a mid 2000s TV series being shot on filmy DSLR. I thought the Betacam, SVHS and all the digital tape stuff was supposed to destroy the medium that made media fake in my opinion. (Conjecture at best on this topic… Broadcast video grade at 60fps is the only medium I’ll support :))
He even suggested the programming should be reduced to a single channel for the “technically inclined” viewers. A bit snubby at best. He spoke and gave “ideas” (i.e. non-concrete, risky and not proven outcomes, and providing suggestions with very little knowledge on the subject.) He gave a bunch of talking points supporting his argument, and even had the audacity to attempt to make a followup comment after the hearing concluded!
Your’s truly came up next.
I am going to not talk about myself but relay what I learned in those questions that if I didn’t come up, the public would be left in the dark of the black smoke known as Democracy in Doubt.
- The Town Council is the Franchising Authority of the Cable TV Franchise Agreement
- Because the Town Council is the government of the Town of Merrimack, N.H. (noticed how I got lost?)
- How the hell that 7 elected members can be a government and it’s legality – the video can speak for itself.
- The Town Manager’s employer is the Merrimack Town Council. How does that look on a resume?
- The Town of Merrimack’s executive management was apparently unaware that could serve as a mediator after consumers would contact Comcast prior. This has been an S.O.P. for years in other towns!
- Accounts receivable to Merrimack meant Comcast had gave back money because of some interest involved.
- I defended the Public Access, but not only that requested that it should be fully funded at the 5% max and suggested if they invested in themselves, the quality of content would improve, since social media is leading to Too Big to Fail Culture and now content creators must pay to play to get seen especially in the civilian content such as Facebook and YouTube (the meeting minutes erroneously stated Hulu which I didn’t say, as that platform doesn’t allow freelancers or independents a platform.)
The handouts also had some bad spelling referring to Harron Communications, spelled in the form of the big bird (Heron instead). I hate to be so obsessed about minor details, but if they don’t catch spelling errors, then what else is going in at the Town Hall?
At this point, the Town Council closed the public hearing. However, letters and emails could still be received by October 10th. The following day, the public notice on the town’s website disappeared, leaving a vague signal if missed the chance to speak even further?
It went through.
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