A determined city staff is victorious - Whitewater's community channel is back on cable TV

Whitewater Community Television is pleased to announce that Channel 990 is back on the air on Charter Spectrum’s cable TV system.  The PEG (public, education, and government) access channel had been experiencing difficulties of one sort or another since late 2019.  For Zachary Popke, a long-time employee who was officially promoted to run the city’s Media Services department in June, it was a moment for rejoicing.  “I treated myself to a nice dinner when I saw the channel finally come on air,” he said.

Zachary Popke, former Media Coordinator, City of Whitewater

Resiliency and determination are two words that come to mind after talking with Popke.  And lest you think that making a cable television station work is just a matter of plugging in a couple of cables and “voila,” Zac’s story will knock that notion right out of your head!

It all began in late 2019, when the station’s old Leightronix broadcast server started acting a little funny.  The picture looked rough and would cut in and out.  Finally, in the middle of 2020, it quit altogether. 

Whitewater Community TV is mostly funded by the video service provider (VSP) fee the City of Whitewater receives from Charter Spectrum for the use of city streets, plus some money from the city’s general fund.  As a small town with a population just shy of 14,000, the fees do not amount to very much.  In 2019 VSP fee payments totaled $90,000; it’s just enough to manage a small PEG access media center.  The city is also home to the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. The city’s population nearly doubles when the student body of almost 11,000 is taken into account.   UW-Whitewater also has a cable television channel that is heavily used for sports coverage and award-winning student work.  Popke is excited about a new collaboration with the university that will result in the city’s PEG channel carrying UWW-TV student-produced programming.

The new Watch 5 cable channel gets some press in 1993 featuring the first long-time Whitewater executive director, Karen Reinhardt. The channel was later brought under city management.

Whitewater Community TV began in 1993 as “Watch 5.”  It was initially led by part-time coordinators, most notably Karen Reinhardt, who is credited with invigorating the station and moving it from the Old Armory to the White Building, and Alan Luckett, who succeeded Reinhardt in 2000.  Luckett forged strong ties with the school district, specialized in coverage of concert performances, and continued working heavily with the non-profit community, as well as with the city.  In 2006, the city made the position full-time by increasing the VSP fee the city was collecting from Charter Spectrum from 4% to 5%.  Luckett managed the station for another nine years until 2016.  During his tenure the channel moved to channel 13 and then to analog 98 and digital 990.  Today the city’s channel is seen on Charter Spectrum cable channel 990 only, although TDS is planning to offer cable service in the city beginning in 2024 and will also carry Whitewater’s PEG access channel.

Alan Lucket presents an audio workshop at the 2023 WCM Annual Conference in Madison. Luckett is now director of Janesville JATV.

Historically, the station provided video production training to the public, but this mostly ended after Luckett’s tenure when the city redefined the media director position to manage not only the TV station, but also public relations, social media, and city website maintenance.   Dedicated part-timers, including Popke, became responsible for day-to-day management of Whitewater Community TV.

When the broadcast server died in the summer of 2020, the budget for the media department was not able to accommodate an equipment purchase of $10,000 or more.  Besides that, the city was halfway through its biannual budget year and it did not typically allocate new money to projects at this point in the calendar.  On top of that, it was clear that not only the server, but also the outdated analog modulator that connected Whitewater Community TV to the cable company was far past its useful life and needed to be replaced.  The city approached Charter Spectrum about upgrading this transmission equipment and the company quoted a price of $10,000 for a digital Drake encoder.  Between the two items, the city was looking at a bill of well over $20,000.  An impossibility.

Former City of Whitewater Communications Manager Kristin Mickelson

So, Whitewater Community TV was no longer on cable TV.  To see city council meetings, viewers were directed to watch the livestream on Vimeo.com or go to the city’s CivicPlus website where Vimeo videos were embedded.   The station continued to cover local events and post them on the city’s Vimeo page.

Then in 2021, federal ARPA funds were made available to help cities deal with pandemic-related expenses.  The pandemic had made live video coverage of meetings essential and interactivity with the public a top priority.  The city used part of its funds to upgrade its council chambers with a new sound system, three PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) remote cameras, and a Black Magic ATEM mini switcher that could output a signal in several ways, including one that would work for livestreaming through Vimeo.  After searching the world over, IT Manager Tim Nobling found a broadcast server called DV Play made by a Bulgarian firm to interconnect with the Drake encoder Charter Spectrum had specified.  The affordable cost of the service, however, proved to be its biggest drawback.  “We may be the only American customer,” said Popke.  “I can’t find anyone else who uses them.” 

Kristin Mickelson was the PR and Communications Manager for the City of Whitewater at the time.  She contacted Charter Spectrum in April 2021 to involve the company in the city’s upgrade plans to make sure they would be compatible with the cable system.  No response was received.  In June, Mickelson reached out to Charter Spectrum again, asking to be included in whatever upgrade process they had.  This time the company told the city it would need to do a site survey and the city would need to fill out some forms.  The city dutifully complied.  By the end of June, the city’s upgrade was complete, the Drake encoder purchased from Charter Spectrum, but there was no response yet from the company, and no programming, live or otherwise, was going out over cable TV.

Months went by.  In late November 2021 Charter Spectrum told the city the upgrade would be made “a priority.”

Then in January 2022, eight months after the city first contacted Charter Spectrum about collaborating on the upgrade, the company emailed a contract for the city to sign saying the work would be completed within six months. 

At that point, City Manager Cameron Clapper and Mickelson wrote their Assembly representative to ask for help. 

Whitewater’s PEG channel is an important line of communication for many residents. When live access to public meetings via the channel is unavailable, local government transparency is limited and it is much more difficult to keep residents up to date on local issues. Further, these limitations are negatively impacting the very cable subscribers paying fees to support the service.

It is incredibly disheartening to dedicate time and resources to improvements that better enable the City of Whitewater to provide greater public visibility and access to local government processes only to be neglected and ignored by a private company seemingly bent on avoiding its corporate social responsibility.

The City of Whitewater is asking for your assistance in reaching out to Spectrum and compelling them to swiftly complete the needed upgrades in Whitewater. Until Spectrum is held accountable for its lack of response in these matters, cable subscribing residents will suffer a lack of timely access to valuable information pertaining to their local governments and overall communities.

Throughout 2022 there was no further action.  City Manager Clapper left and his successor, John Weidl, took over in October.  By the end of 2022 both Nobling and Mickelson, who had been on leave for part of the year, left the employ of the city as well.  Popke became the de facto station manager in January 2023 and was officially promoted to Media Coordinator in June.  He had been hired in 2014 when he was a senior in high school by Luckett. “Alan taught me everything about video,” said Popke.  “He took a chance on me.” 

Whitewater City Manager John Weidl

At the start of the new year, with new IT Manager Tim Neubeck in place, Weidl decided to prioritize getting the channel up and running.  He reached out to Charter Spectrum and the company assigned a project manager, who told the city the Drake encoder would be installed that month.  A “72-hour soak test,” a test that checks the signal strength, was scheduled to begin on January 19.  But inquiries about the test results were met with silence, and later Popke learned that the test was delayed because the project manager was out sick.  In mid-February, Charter Spectrum informed the city that more equipment would be needed to get a proper signal.  The company instructed the city to buy a dedicated monitor to watch the outgoing cable signal and a Blackmagic Design monitor/graphics card to output the station’s broadcast signal in SDI to the Drake encoder.  Neubeck purchased the items, and another soak test was scheduled for early March.  Throughout the month work continued on the signal. 

By April, the channel still wasn’t on the air, but a meeting on April 6th between technicians from the city (Neubeck, Popke, and Tim Turner from DigiCorp) and three engineers from Charter Spectrum resulted in a breakthrough.  The group made changes to the software and the hardware used by both the city and the company that finally corrected a framerate issue with the video.

But if you thought that would be the end of the saga, you would be mistaken.   At the end of April, Charter Spectrum told the city that the next phase of the process would begin!   

A new group of Charter Spectrum engineers now took over.  They told the city that channel 990 would be back on the line up in three months on August 1st.  If you’re counting, that’s two years and three months after the initial request in April, 2021. 

But August 1st became August 3rd.  The signal was being received, but it was not going out over the subscriber network.  On August 4th, Charter Spectrum told the city a new team had been assigned to the case.  They discovered that the previous team had not placed a new piece of equipment into service that would relay the signal to the subscriber system. 

Finally, really and truly, on August 9, 2023 at 7:30 am Whitewater Community TV burst onto the cable system on channel 990. 

Popke talked about the stress he was under during 2023 as the person responsible for getting the station up and running for the city, but he knew he had to keep going.  “After the station finally went on the air, I suddenly became conscious of all the stress I was carrying in my body, and I had to take some time off.  My worry the whole time was that it was somehow my fault that the connection wasn’t working.  I talked with Tim Neubeck and Tim Turner and they told me there was nothing more I could do.  The city manager is a very no-nonsense person and he wanted to know why it wasn’t working.  Both Tim, our IT manager, and my supervisor, Chief of Staff Taylor Zeinert, told him there was nothing more the city could do but wait.  When we found out it was an error on Charter Spectrum’s end, I felt vindicated, and so relieved.”

City of Whitewater Interim Media Coordinator Matt Gibes

Popke stepped down last week as the coordinator of Whitewater Community Television to search for a position that pays more for its responsibilities.  Matthew Gibes, currently a part-time Media Producer at Whitewater Community TV, will be filling in full-time as the interim Media Coordinator.  The city has posted the position. Popke is confident that the center is in good hands.  “I feel Whitewater Community Television is going to be well run with Matt as the interim coordinator, and I wish my successor, whoever that may be, the best of luck.”

“I am a big believer in public media,” said Popke.  “It’s important to have hyperlocal coverage.  It’s not physically possible to attend everything that happens in a community.  The only way to keep up is through public media like Whitewater Community Television.  We are compensated to be at events and meetings, and we do a good job covering them.” 

Popke recommends checking out a community’s local public access TV channel before moving in.  “You can find out so much about a community by watching the local PEG station.  You can find out why it is worthwhile to live in that community.  You can see their events, look up old meetings, see what’s happening at the schools, learn some history.  I think a PEG channel demonstrates that a city is alive.”   

Popke is not planning to go far.  “I will continue to work with Whitewater Community Television as a private resident.  It’s community TV.  I plan to use the resources, use the expertise, and borrow the equipment.  I think the best way to encourage people to use a PEG access center is to do it yourself.  I have a couple of program ideas that I didn’t have the time to do while I was working, but now I will!” 

The City of Wausau comes up with a funding formula to televise government and important community coverage

Monitoring the action from a portable control room at the curling championships.

Wausau Area Access Media (WAAM) is one of the oldest PEG (public, education, and government) access television centers in the state.  But for a nearly two-year period it barely existed.  Then a decision by the City of Wausau eleven years ago breathed new life into it.  The community wanted its local coverage back.  Ever since, WAAM has been providing the kind of programming its residents want to see.  Despite a smaller budget, it is producing more community coverage today than it ever did before.  It will soon be celebrating its thirtieth year.  What happened?

It all began in 1993, when the city signed a 15-year franchise agreement with Charter Communications that included a typical 5% franchise fee, a “PEG fee” of 63 cents per subscriber per month, and two PEG access channels.  The PEG station itself was established in 1995 with revenue from the PEG fee.  With the city chipping in 10% of the franchise fee, WAAC operated a robust media center over the next twelve years on an annual budget of between $100,000 and $120,000 per year.  Its two PEG channels were filled with public access shows produced by residents and local non-profits, high school sports, church services, candidate forums, meetings and more.  At its height, more than 150 programs were produced annually, over thirty community organizations were submitting programs, and between ten and twenty people were taking television production workshops every year. 

Video Competition Act causes the media center to close

It all came to a shocking end in December 2009 when the Mayor of Wausau, Jim Tipple, announced that the city was closing the center.  In short, this happened because of the Video Competition Act enacted by the state legislature in December 2007.  This law, similar to those being passed in other states at the time due to pressure from AT&T, moved cable TV regulation to the state level, but allowed local governments to require cable companies to honor certain provisions negotiated in local franchise agreements:  the number of PEG channels, the franchise fee (and the negotiated rate), and a continuation of PEG fees that supported media centers – except that the law ended PEG fees after three years.  This provision ultimately caused the closure of several media centers across the state and forced the downsizing of many others.  But in Wausau’s case, Charter Communications refused to pay Wausau’s PEG fee for even three years.  The company claimed that since the local cable franchise term ended on April 14, 2008, it did not have to honor the terms of the Video Competition Act that extended the PEG fees.  Wausau spent an agonizing year and a half pursuing its legal options to force Charter Communications to pay the PEG fee – about $65,000 annually — but failed. 

So, while other Wisconsin cities continued to receive PEG fees through early 2011, Wausau’s payments stopped right away in early 2008.  The city was able to continue operating the center for another year and a half, but by the end of 2009, a serious citywide budget shortfall scuttled the idea of allocating more of its franchise fees to the station in 2010 to keep it afloat.  At the time Mayor Tipple said, “We realize this is a tough decision, not only for the City of Wausau, but for the entire community.”  John Jordan, the coordinator of the media center, called it a “major loss for the community,” and said, “The city does not want the channels to go dark, but it can no longer fund them alone.”  Jordan’s position was officially eliminated on January 31, 2010.  The Wausau Area Access Channels (WAAC, now WAAM) office was now closed.  A message board continued to operate.  Church services brought in by residents were scheduled by David Dickinson and Kris Berge (today the coordinator of WAAM), who worked a few hours each week.  City council was still carried live and repeated.  All other activity was stilled.

 WAAM rises from the ashes

Then on August 13, 2012, the Wausau City Council voted to support the station again.  While the allocation of $47,000 was less than half of what the station once had to work with, it was a promising start. 

Dickinson and Berge have been working hard over the last ten years to build up the capacity of the media center. Lately, Dickinson has been transitioning into retirement and working fewer hours.  Between them, they put in between 20 and 30 hours per week along with five part-timers who help with productions.  “During a normal week, everyone’s hours typically add up to less than 40 hours,” said Berge.   Today, WAAM is a part of the Community Development Department and the city chips in $57,000 a year to cover station administration and all city-related production work.  The remainder of WAAM’s $71,000 budget is earned.  WAAM charges $30 per person per hour to cover all non-city productions.  The budget includes a regular allocation for capital investment that rolls over if it’s not used.

 Berge minimizes the amount of time spent on administration, scheduling, and post-production work so the hours can be poured into production.  The schedule is packed. 

Efficient meeting coverage that meets ADA requirements

WAAM covers about thirty meetings every month including ten for the Marathon County Board and twenty for the City of Wausau as well as a couple of regular meetings for the Wausau School District. 

Both the city and the county have upgraded the technology in their primary meeting rooms by installing four HD PTZ (remote control) cameras and a Tricaster switcher that is portable, but normally stays near the meeting room.  The set up enables one person to create quality multi-camera coverage and since both the city and county use the same set-up, staff can work either site equally well.  WAAM covers school district meetings held at the Longfellow Administration Center with single camera coverage that is streamed live and replayed later.  Viewers can see nearly all meetings live on cable and since 2018, on YouTube.  Replays are typically scheduled twice each week until the next meeting of the committee is held.  Viewers can also review meetings on the city’s website where a page features video-on-demand (VOD) videos produced by the station.  https://www.wausauwi.gov/your-government/public-access-media/video-on-demand. 

Two years ago, the City of Wausau purchased closed captioning equipment.  “The city sees government transparency as very important, and our insurance provider recommended that we invest in closed captioning in order to conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),” said Berge.  The ADA requires that city governments “communicate effectively” with people who have disabilities, but at the same time, city governments “are not required to take any actions that will result in a fundamental alteration or in undue financial and administrative burdens.” (28 CFR ss. 35.160-35.164) 

The City of Wausau decided that the best option was to invest in captioning equipment that would automatically caption programming live, as well as caption recordings.  To the extent possible, all city meetings are now captioned live, while meetings held outside city hall for the county and school district are sent through the captioning system after they are recorded.  “It’s not possible due to Internet and routing issues to do live captioning from the remote sites at this time,” said Berge.  The live YouTube streams are live captioned by YouTube. And while the Enco Encaption 4 equipment can only caption one meeting at a time, it’s not a problem according to Berge, who loves the system.  “We can do as many files as we want to offline so we could offer captioning on all of our programming.”  The system aligns well with WAAM’s continual effort to minimize the expenditure of staff time by interacting seamlessly with its Cablecast broadcast server.  “All we have to do is check a box and the program is sent through the captioner and back to the Cablecast server.” 

The hardware cost $55,000 for a ten-year lease and the yearly maintenance fee is $5,000.  Charter Spectrum is passing through the captioning on both channels after some problems doing so on one channel last year.  TDS, the city’s other cable provider, also carries the captioned programming.  Federal law requires cable companies to pass through any closed captioning on programs.

Residents and reporters like WAAM’s trusted government coverage

Like all local PEG cable channel holders, Berge has no idea what the viewership level is for WAAM’s local channels, but he is able to count VOD views.  Meetings have been streamed live on YouTube since 2018.  When something is more controversial, views of meetings spike.  “We were getting thousands of views for meetings about facemasks at school,” said Berge.  Given the highly partisan political environment today, Berge sees WAAM playing an important role in helping to bring people together over gavel-to-gavel meeting coverage.  He said, “It is important to show the whole story and not just one side or the other so that people have a known, trusted reference.  When they watch a news story, they can always double check what actually happened at the meetings.”

Because it’s so easy to view WAAM’s coverage of meetings, Berge thinks the local press writes more stories about them than it might otherwise.  “It seems to me many of the local reporters rely on our coverage.  If it’s something important and the livestream doesn’t work, I get emails that say something like, ‘I need this by noon.  Could you post the footage?’”  The local press also posts excerpts from WAAM’s meeting coverage.  “I’ve noticed our footage or stills in their reporting.  Sometimes they leave the WAAM bug in and sometimes they crop it out.  It’s always fun to see them use it, but we’d like it if they would credit us.  It would help promote our channels and help people realize the value of what we do here. We have talked to reporters about it, but there is a lot of turnover and it’s hard to make all reporters aware of our wishes.”

Wausau churches heavily use WAAM to reach their congregations

Reporters aren’t the only group that are reliant on WAAM programming.  So are those who depend on WAAM to attend church.  “If I miss a service, I get voice mails from church goers.  My favorite one was the call I got from a woman when I was at the office. She said, ‘The service is not matching the bulletin for this week.  I think it’s last week’s service.’  I told her, ‘I haven’t gotten the new one from that church yet.’  She said, ‘I am a nurse at a nursing home, and I have 18 people here that are pretty mad that they can’t see the new service.’  

Twelve churches have regular slots on the channel, one on Sunday and three during the week, including Diocese of La Crosse Catholic Church, Book of Acts Church, Grace United Church of Christ, Immanuel Baptist Church, Peace United Church of Christ, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Trinity Lutheran Church, St. Andrew Lutheran Church, and Immanuel Lutheran Church.  WAAM also produces some special religious programs for churches.  “We multi-cam record and edit three services for Zion Lutheran Church (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Easter Morning) and cover the Zion Organ Concert Series featuring organists from around the world.”

A reliable place to find polka

There are also the polka lovers.  Over the last ten or twenty years, it’s become harder and harder to find venues that host polka dances or even radio stations that play polka.  WAAM carries two shows produced by amateur community producers in Wisconsin that are fan favorites:  Lights, Camera, Polka and Jim Asplin’s Polka Potpourri.  Berge said, “I definitely get calls if the polka shows don’t run!”  Cable television is the platform of choice for many older adults.  Berge said, “Some of the ‘older generation’ have a hard time managing the Internet.  They feel better watching shows on the TV.  It’s a service we are happy to provide.”

WAAM covers premiere sports events 

While the top priority for WAAM is meeting coverage, it also relishes covering high-profile sporting events.  Berge said for him, it’s the most fun of all.  “I like doing live productions and troubleshooting to make it all come together.  The biggest event we normally cover all year is the Marathon Cup Hockey Tournament in December,” said Berge.  High school teams play four games over two days for the championship trophy.  Capturing the action involves a production crew of four, a remote switcher, and three cameras.  WAAM also covers the State High School Curling Championship that happens in February -- seven two-hour games on a Friday and Saturday.  The WAAM team also traveled twice this year to Stevens Point to cover a MMA (mixed martial arts) tourney.

But the biggest thrill of the year was being hired by the US Curling Association to cover the four-day US Curling Club Nationals that were played at the Wausau Curling Center in mid-March.   “The best of the best came to Wausau to compete,” said Berge.  “It was the first time we did something that big.  We had live viewers from all over the country -- and Japan!  We covered thirteen games and streamed them live on YouTube.  The association also allowed us to replay the games on cable TV.”

WAAM invites the public to submit shows 

While the budget no longer allows for training residents in video production, the public can submit programs for play on the community channel and there is a studio space at city hall if people want to use it.  “No one is in the office during the workday,” said Berge.  “DVDs from residents are dropped off at the front desk.  If someone does want to come in, they need to make an appointment.”

WAAM manager works for UW-Stevens Point at Wausau

Berge is the Theater Manager/Technical Director for UW-Stevens Point at Wausau so he can only dedicate evenings and weekends to WAAM.  “I went to school for mechanical design and drafting and stayed in the dorms at the UW in Wausau.  I started helping on theater productions and just never left.”  One day in 2003, John Jordan asked if he and David Dickinson could build a new set for the public access studio; it was for a weekly Hmong News show.  “I designed a studio set in the scene shop and that’s how I got introduced to public access.  I started working some hours there, got hired, and I stayed on.”

Because Berge covers many events held at the university theater, those of interest to a wider audience find their way onto WAAM’s channels including HANK Talks and A Walk in Their Shoes lectures.  WAAM also livestreams the Northcentral Technical College Graduation each fall and spring.  This year it also covered a local PFAS (long-lasting environmental contaminants) conference, a Central Wisconsin Regional Candidate Forum, and classical music concerts by the Wausau Symphony.

Lots of streaming platforms and a large suburban audience for WAAM’s cable channels

WAAM uses several platforms to reach audiences.  It’s now on two cable systems.  TDS began offering service to the City of Wausau last year and the exciting thing is that unlike Charter Spectrum TDS doesn’t downgrade the quality of the city’s programming to the old standard definition (SD) format; TDS plays the PEG channels in HD (high definition).  On TDS you can find the public access channel on channel 14 (HD) or 1014 (SD); on Charter Spectrum, it’s on 980 (SD). Wausau’s government channel is on TDS channel 15 (HD) or 1015 (SD) and on Charter Spectrum channel 981 (SD).   Because of the way Charter Spectrum’s system works, communities around Wausau can also see the channels including Abbotsford, Antigo, Athens, Clintonville, Marshfield, Medford, Merrill, New London, Rhinelander, Shawano, Stevens Point, Waupaca, Wisconsin Rapids, and Woodruff.  WAAM also has a presence on Facebook as WAAMedia.  On YouTube, find WAAM here. The city’s website also has a homepage for WAAM. 

New technologies enables WAAM to serve the community on a smaller budget

Times have changed.  Technology is enabling WAAM to do more hours of programming than it was able to do in its early years, even though its budget is significantly smaller.  While access to training and the use of volunteers has been lost, the “pay as you go” model that enables the community to tap WAAM to cover the events that are important to them is making this station work.  It’s not ideal, and Berge is the first to say it.  “There are events all the time and I think, ‘Oh! We should cover that.’  But I don’t have the time or the staff to do it.”  

In 2010 when the station closed its doors, most people probably thought community coverage was done.  That was not to be.  WAAC served the community so well that when it closed, the community missed it.   The organization that rose from the ashes, WAAM, is filling the need for local coverage again, and while it does not have the capacity to do it all, the impact WAAC once had on this community, and the impact WAAM is now having on this community, is a record to be proud of.