Cable Deals, cont'd

Grafton is not at all like Worcester when it comes to the process of negotiating with a cable company. Today's article in the T&G describing the current point in that process between Grafton and Verizon certainly illustrates that.

Where the process in Grafton is transparent and easily understood, the so-called process in Worcester is thoroughly opaque and pretty much in the secretive hands of only one person (the city manager). Where the concerns of the public access, educational, and government access channels are an important and openly addressed issue in Grafton, any specific attention on the PEG channels in Worcester appears to have been completely downplayed in any public discussion, and apparently omitted from the contract so that the city can use whatever funding they get for whatever they feel like spending it on... whenever they feel like spending it.

I sincerely hope that the city will, at some point, allay my fears that the community access TV station in Worcester is on the chopping block. I look forward to some point in Worcester's new cable contract faux process that will reveal what so far has been hidden, ...namely, what the community access station has to look forward to over the next five years of this new contract with Charter, as well as what lies beyond.

Quite frankly, the utter lack of any definitive public utterances from City Hall on this particular subject has reached the point where I, for one, find this whole thing mostly (and very offensively) indicative of there being something to hide. That something, of course, would be the type of fait accompli that would be sprung upon the public at the last possible moment, when it's too late for any prospect of doing anything about it.

Should that be the plan, this blog will most certainly be the current council incumbents' most persistent and aggravating critic and non-supporter, ...all the way through to the next city election.