(a) Unless otherwise provided by the franchise agreement, the grantee shall, following completion of the system upgrade/rebuild, make available to each of its subscribers who receive some or all of the services offered on the system, reception of up to three educational and government (E&G) access channels to be allocated among noncommercial, educational and government usage as determined by the grantor. The channels designated for access shall be provided by the grantee as a part of the basic cable service. The access channels shall be made available by the grantee for use by the City and its citizens in accordance with the rules and procedures established by the City or any lawfully designated person, group, organization or agency authorized by the City for that purpose.
(b) To the extent that any access channel is not being used for the provision of non-commercial, educational or governmental access purposes, the grantee shall be permitted to use such channel(s) for the provision of other services, subject to any reasonable rules established by the City regarding such use. The grantee's permitted use of any access channel made pursuant to this section shall cease within ninety days of the grantee's receipt of notice from the City that such channel will again be used for educational or governmental access.
(c) Notwithstanding the above, the grantee may accommodate a request from the City for additional access capacity made pursuant to Section 753.27(b) by combining more than one access use on a channel, provided that:
(1) It is technically and economically feasible for the grantee to do so;
(2) The scheduling needs of all users of the channel can be reasonably accommodated; and
(3) The access entity which requires use of the alternate channel must be able to access the alternate channel from the site where it normally originates playback of its programs and may not be required to transport tapes to a remote site for playback.
(d) However, the grantee shall provide an additional channel for non-commercial, educational or governmental broadcasts in the event that the three E&G channels provided under this section are then fully utilized. In no event shall the grantee be required to provide in excess of one additional access channel, and only after the cable system offers at least 150 channels. As used in this section, "fully utilized" means utilized for original, nonduplicative, locally produced programming not less than eight hours per day, five days per week, for a period of ten consecutive weeks. The additional E&G channel provided under this section shall be reviewed annually by the grantee. Upon such annual review, the additional E&G channel will continue to be made available to the grantor to the extent that the E&G channels provided under this agreement (including the additional PEG channel(s)) are at least seventy percent fully utilized. To the extent that such capacity requirement is not met, the additional E&G channel shall be terminated, subject to reactivation at the request of the grantor upon demonstration by the grantor that the three original and any other additional PEG channels provided under this section are fully utilized, and to the annual review provided herein.
(e) The grantee shall provide free cable transmission facilities and free modulation equipment to introduce programming onto these transmission facilities by linking the below listed origination points with the head-end, or through hubs to the head-end, for distribution to all subscribers generally and for distribution to discrete audiences via scrambled signals and decoders at the origination points for such channels.
(f) Costs of providing said facilities shall not be a credit against payment of the franchise fee imposed under the franchise agreement.
(Ord. 1997-19. Passed 4-28-98.)