Rice Lake Community Media shines a spotlight on T-Mobile grant to Main Street Association

Rice Lake Main Street Association members accept a $40,000 check from T-Mobile.

by James Wyngaard, Director, Rice Lake Community Media

Rice Lake Community Media was called upon recently to help get the word out about a major grant provided to the Rice Lake Main Street Association. T-Mobile presented a $40,000 grant for a new Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant kayak launch and the Main Street Association asked Rice Lake Community Media to cover the event and spread the good news.

Chris Olsen is a board member for the Main Street Association and said, “With our relationship between the Main Street Association and Community Media, we felt it was important for James [Wyngaard] and Community Media be there to help us inform the community about this important addition to our city’s lakefront.”

The Main Street Association does a monthly program with Rice Lake Community Media to discuss activities and news from around Rice Lake’s central business district.

WSCS Celebrates (the first) 40 Years of Community Media in Sheboygan

By Scott Mealiff,  Program Director, WSCS, City of Sheboygan

Plans are underway to celebrate the 40th anniversary of community media in Sheboygan in conjunction with Community Media Day – October 20, 2022.

The city’s PEG (Public, Education, and Government) access television channels date back to 1982 when the City of Sheboygan signed a franchise agreement with Lakeside Cablevision to provide cable television service in the city.  As part of the agreement, channel space, production equipment, and training would be available to residents for locally produced programming. 

Over the years, the cable company changed hands through mergers and consolidation. In 1997, at the conclusion of the original franchise, the cable company, now Charter Communications, did not want to operate the community access facilities anymore, even as their obligation to continue providing channel capacity and the franchise fee payments to the City remained.  As a result, the City of Sheboygan took on the operation of the public/government access channel. In the years since, the City has continued to manage the cable channel and expand access via Internet delivery platforms and additional video service providers.

Two years ago on Community Media Day, Oct. 20, 2020, the final cutover was made to fiber optic delivery of the local PEG channels – the conclusion of a multi-year project between Charter Communications and the City of Sheboygan. This upgrade has proven to provide Sheboygan residents a high(er)-quality and stable signal for viewing local government meetings, events, and citizen-produced programs.

Watch as we celebrate 40 years serving the community of Sheboygan!

10/30/22 UPDATE: Charter resolves Watertown TV audio problem after more than 4 months

OCTOBER 30 UPDATE: Audio problem resolved.

After more than four months and a report to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP), Charter Spectrum finally identified the problem with Watertown TV's signal as an encoder problem on their end and installed a new one on September 29. Lisa Famularo, manager of the channel, reports that the audio is now better than ever.

Starting in late May, Watertown TV began receiving calls from residents about bad audio on the channel.   “I started getting two or three complaints every day about the audio cutting out,” said Lisa Famularo, Media and Communications Director for the City of Watertown. “When the audio goes out every three to five seconds, it’s impossible to watch our channel’s programming.  This will go on for maybe a week and then clear up.  But then it happens again.” 

After checking to be sure that the city was sending a clean signal to Charter, she emailed Charter on May 25.  Mike Hill, Director of Government Affairs for Charter, responded two days later, explaining “we have some equipment issues on our end that will need to be replaced.”  But despite follow up calls and emails, Watertown TV’s channel is still having problems and so is the City of Jefferson’s JPEG channel. 

Famularo has been tracking complaints and now has a pretty long list of names.  “Most of the callers are watching church services on Watertown TV and most of them don’t have the Internet,” said Famularo. 

Frustrated by Charter’s inaction, a local church finally filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) on behalf of its congregants on August 29.  Two days later the state agency called the church back and shortly after that, the church received a call from Charter, asking who specifically had been complaining.  Not comfortable supplying the names of members of its congregation without permission, the church decided to say it was the City of Watertown.

Today, [September 6, 2022] Charter technicians are being dispatched to check the lines between the City of Watertown origination point and the company’s headend – where the signal connects to Charter’s system.  “I’m crossing my fingers that the technicians figure it out,” said Famularo.  “Having recurring reception problems for three months is far too long.  The people I’ve been hearing from – some of them are just livid at this point.”