Marcia Chambers Photo
Alan Fitz.
Branford Community Television (BCTV) plans to change a rule that now permits an individual’s own edited production of public town meetings to be aired on the station’s government channel.
If the plan receives final acceptance, only programs of town government meetings — -gavel to gavel — will be broadcast on the government channel. The new rule would effect after Jan. 1, 2013.
Under the proposed new rule, edited versions of town meetings will be moved to the public channel. “It is not that it goes away,” said BCTV Board President Alan Fitz (pictured above). “It just goes to a different channel.”
With the anticipated change, the government channel will return to its original purpose, start to finish videos of town meetings without sections removed. Typically these meetings include the Board of Selectmen, The Representative Town Meeting, (RTM) and the Board of Finance, among others, Fitz said in an interview.
The BCTV board changed its policy about four years ago to allow an individual to present an edited version of town meetings under his or her own name. Only one resident has participated, Fitz said. He is Wayne Cooke, a town resident who has been engaged in a long-term vendetta against First Selectman Unk DaRos and other public officials.
Over the years Cooke has produced his own edited versions of government meetings, often hiring his own videographer to tape RTM committee meetings. The main meetings are videotaped by BCTV, which Cooke later edits for his own presentation under the banner “Wayne Cooke Presents.” Cooke is usually present and engaged in the discussions of the meetings he later edits and airs on the government channel.
In order for a person to produce an edited version of a public meeting that is later aired on the government channel, a former BCTV board required that the edited meeting version be sponsored by an elected official.
The sponsor’s name is listed in the credits at the end of the program. The elected officials who have sponsored Cooke’s edited programs are current Republican Third Selectman Jamie Cosgrove who served as a Cooke sponsor when he was an RTM member and Marc Riccio, a Republican RTM member and vice-chair of the Republican Town Committee.
The Board of Education and related education events are produced on a separate channel. A third channel, the public channel, is used to produce a variety of other shows, including the Branford Eagle’s cable television show, for example. This channel, the public channel, is where edited government programs would now be placed.
Fitz said in a recent interview that about a year ago, the current 16-member board “began to raise questions about whether or not we should be continuing this. The population of the board changed over the years and the views changed as well.”
He said that many on the board thought the edited government meeting was “confusing and inappropriate for that channel.” In addition, the board had received complaints. “It wasn’t a landslide but we were having people saying, ‘hey this shouldn’t be going on.’ Our own board members were concerned because this practice was not consistent with community access’s views as to what the government channel should be used for.”
“We had a pretty spirited discussion among the board members over the course of many meetings and at the board’s early October meeting a majority clearly indicated we should go forward with these changes,” Fitz said. An announcement was later put up on the site.
Those on the board in favor of keeping Cooke’s program on the government channel took the position, he said, that “it is important to provide for the opinions of those who are not in agreement with the majority about government affairs on the government channel itself.”
While Fitz said there is another point of view, he also said the resulting confusion, and the need for gavel-to-gavel coverage, prompted the board to come to a different conclusion.
Cooke was the only one who produced these shows. “No one else in Branford went on the government channel?” the Eagle asked. “No. Nobody else wanted to as far as I know,” Fitz said.
BCTV has announced its proposed change in a statement on its website, saying meetings whose work is public “must be broadcast from beginning to end, without any changes or additions, so the viewing public is confidant it is seeing the events exactly as they took place.” Click here to reach the announcement.
Public comment is now open. Comments can be emailed to BCTV (wmann@branfordtv.org), or sent via U.S. mail to BCTV, 40 Kirkham Street, Branford, CT 06405. Comments should be addressed to Walter Mann, Station Manager.
The board will also hold a public meeting on Monday, November 5th at 5:00 p.m. at the new Branford Fire Headquarters, 45 N.Main St., Meeting Room (2nd Floor) to discuss the proposed change.
The state’s public utilities regulatory authority (PURA) oversees public television in the state. BCTV is a private not-for-profit organization.
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