CITY MIGHT BID OUT CABLE TV OPERATION

Cape Girardeau city officials want more control over the operation of the cable television access channel.

The City Council plans to seek bids for a producer-programmer to operate the cable access channel. The council is expected to vote on the idea Nov. 6.

The city's Cable TV Committee recently offered to oversee operation of access Channel 5, but the interim city attorney opposed the idea.

The attorney, Eric Cunningham, suggested the council seek bids in an effort to get a third party to operate the channel.

Councilman Richard Eggimann said the third-party operator could be paid with money from the franchise tax paid by TCI Cablevision of Missouri, which operates the local cable system.

The franchise tax generates some $154,613 for the city a year.

Cunningham said the city couldn't allow a city advisory committee to run the channel because it isn't a legal entity.

"All decisions, including day-to-day programming matters, would still have to be made by the City Council," Cunningham said in a private memorandum to the council.

Cunningham said the city also would face liability problems if it let the advisory committee manage the channel.

"Maintaining an office, developing and producing programming, addressing requests for programming, and many other functions involved in operating a television channel, could go well beyond the abilities of any advisory group," he said.

Cunningham said it makes sense to hire a producer or programmer to operate the channel. "The city doesn't want to have to own cameras and hire producers and all of those kinds of things," he said.

TCI currently contracts with Ron Duff Video Productions to show council and school board meetings and put other programs on the channel.

But currently there are few local programs on the channel, which shares air time with C-SPAN.

City officials and the cable committee want TCI to move C-SPAN to a different channel and free Channel 5 exclusively for local access programs.

Cunningham said the Cable TV Committee could help develop the bid package for hiring a third-party operator.

Michael Maguire, a local lawyer and chairman of the committee, welcomed the suggestion.

Maguire said the cable committee offered to run the channel only because committee members didn't think the city would be willing to spend money to hire someone to operate it.

"We always saw ourselves as back-up," he said.