Board eyes Metrocast option on meeting broadcasts

LEBANON - A representative of Metrocast briefed selectmen on Monday regarding what the cable company could do to help begin the process of videotaping town government meetings.

Metrocast Regional Manager Moira Campbell told the board a franchise fee of 1-5 percent could be implemented that would raise funds that could help deliver a top-notch system for viewing board meetings, some of which might be delivered live over special channels.

For those that don’t have Metrocast, meeting videotapes could be burned on discs and uploaded for viewing onto the town website.

Some 1,545 of the town’s approximately 2,500 households use Metrocast as their video provider, and the average video portion of the bill hovers around $100.

The franchise fee would only apply to the video portion of the bill, Campbell explained, not the Internet portion.

If a 3 percent fee were applied, it would raise about $45,000 a year; if a 5 percent fee were enacted, it would raise about $74,000.

That amount of money would enable a state-of-the-art system, which selectmen seemed to favor, plus it would allow pay for those who worked to videotape the meetings and prepare the videotape for upload and viewing to the public.

Metrocast would provide expertise in the setup, Campbell said.

It was discussed that a dedicated fiber optic line might be run to a primary meeting venue from where live feeds could be broadcast. If meetings were held in other venues then a camera would be used to record the meeting and then the meeting would be played back on the cable channel and uploaded to the website for public viewing at a later date.