When they negotiate on behalf of residents, Amherst officials need to bring their “A” game. A watchful and engaged citizenry expects it – especially when the party across the table is a corporation with a stock market capitalization of nearly $161 billion.
On Monday, the Amherst Select Board took an unusual step, at the 11th hour, to intervene in another panel’s negotiations with Comcast, the company that provides cable television service to 7,045 customers in Amherst.
Amherst’s 10-year contract with Comcast expires Oct. 15. It fell to the Select Board this week to decide whether to accept terms of a new 10-year deal with Comcast, reached after protracted talks between the company and the Cable Advisory Committee.
Under the decade-long contract soon to expire, Comcast was required to provide $450,000 in capital funding for Amherst Media, the organization that trains citizens in media technology, covers civic meetings and shapes original local programming for subscribers. The cable committee got Comcast to raise its capital investment to $1,125,000. That’s more than twice as much as before, but the panel wanted even more – $2,205,000.
Amherst Media has said insufficient funding leaves it unable to provide what the community demands, due to antiquated gear. Jim Lescault, its executive director, called in a letter to the editor for the Select Board to support the Cable Advisory Committee’s revised request that Comcast invest $1,663,000 in capital funding over the next decade. He praised the panel for “not backing down.”
Both current Town Manager Paul Bockelman and former interim Town Manager Peter Hechenbleikner had different advice. They recommended the town accept the contract on the table this week, citing the need to compromise and noting gains.
We applaud the Select Board’s wish to see whether the town can do better. Two members will join with Bockelman and Peter Epstein, an attorney representing Amherst, at a meeting with Comcast next week. The goal? “Movement from Comcast,” Bockelman told reporter Scott Merzbach.
These contracts run for quite a while, so now is the time to push the issue. When they enter into these agreements, communities like Amherst provide access into a lot of homes, securing a long-term customer base for the cable provider. That’s valuable. In exchange, the town has a right to bargain for the best terms it can secure.
The agreement would continue to steer 5 percent of gross annual revenues from the local system to support what’s known as the “PEG” channels – the public, educational and governmental channels people associate with traditional cable access. The cable panel and Amherst Media remain unhappy, and for good reason, that these channels are not available in the high definition viewers now expect.
Though Comcast is able to pass expenses on to subscribers, there can be consequences in doing that – lost customers. While the cable monopoly was once unassailable, people today have new ways to connect to programming, as more and more offerings are streamed over the internet, bypassing cable systems. It is probably only a matter of time, perhaps before the next pact expires in 2026, that the media landscape will evolve to the point where cable companies no longer seek these kinds of contracts.
With the current deal set to expire in days, there isn’t much time left for negotiation. But we’re glad to see the Select Board – the community’s chief policymaker apart from Town Meeting – taking extra steps to advocate for town residents.
