NEW CABLE PACT PROPOSED; CITY, TCI OFFICIALS PLEASED WITH PROPOSAL

A complete systems upgrade and a new educational channel are two provisions in the city of Cape Girardeau's proposed new franchise agreement with TCI Cablevision.

City and TCI officials say they are happy with the package. The cable television provider has had a rocky relationship with Cape Girardeau viewers and city officials.

Michael Maguire, chairman of the city's Cable Advisory Board, said the board is recommending that the City Council approve the franchise agreement. The Council is scheduled to set a date for a public hearing on the agreement at Monday night's meeting.

The systems upgrade provision, which will be carried out in two phases, calls for the installation of a digital compression system and distribution agreement by April 17, 1998.

The first phase of the upgrade must provide at least 36 additional channels to the existing capability of roughly 40 channels.

If the first phase of the upgrade runs past the April deadline, TCI would be fined $500 per day until the upgrade is completed.

The second phase requires TCI to increase the system's signal strength to at least 450 megahertz, and all stations that broadcast in stereo must be rebroadcast in stereo.

Currently, TCI's signal is not equal throughout the city. The new franchise agreement would require the signal strength to be uniform.

With digital compression technology, cable companies can squeeze more channels onto existing coaxial cable.

In April, members of the cable committee and city staff visited TCI's Berlin, Conn., facility to view a digital compression system in operation.

The combination of digital compression and a higher signal strength throughout the city would give "the potential for several hundred more channels," said Jim Dufek, a member of the cable committee and a mass-communications professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

Technology now in place can compress 12 channels onto every existing channel in a cable system, he said.

"There's technology now in research and development that goes as high as 22-to-1, possibly 24-to-1," Dufek said. "That technology is not in place at this time that I'm aware of."

The 1995 franchise agreement between TCI and the city had called for installation of fiber optic cable. TCI protested that the installation would be too expensive.

TCI still has to install the fiber optic cable under the new franchise agreement, said City Manager Michael Miller, "but over a longer period of time."

Roger Harms, general manager of TCI's Cape Girardeau office, said the design for installing the fiber optic cable still has to be drawn up.

Once the system upgrade is complete, TCI would be required to provide an additional Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) channel at no cost.

Once the new channel is on line, the existing PEG channel -- Cable Channel 5 -- would be used solely for public or governmental programs, and the new channel would carry educational programming.

TCI also would have to tie the new channel into city hall, the city's current PEG studio, the Ron Duff Studio, Cape Central High School, the Show Me Center and Grauel Language Arts building on the Southeast campus, along with the Cape Girardeau School District's new vocational-technical school and two additional sites.

"By that time, the schools may well want to tie into that," said Maguire. "With the upgrade at the vo-tech school, it may be a natural for them."

Miller and Harms said cable customers should be happy with the new agreement.

"I think it's great," Harms said. "I think the city's going to get the best of two worlds, and our customers also. I think we all benefit from it."