Harry's Gang: Administrator responds to CAT-7 questions

Admittedly, I have a vested interest in CAT-7, the local public access television station. I’ve hosted “Harry’s Gang” on that channel for almost 20 years, and I’ve developed close friendships with both its coordinators, the late Jeff Korpi and now Eric Lipponen. CAT-7 is a small part of the city’s responsibilities, but I’m glad outgoing Cloquet city administrator Aaron Reeves took some time to respond to our editorials and stories on CAT-7. Even though he’s planning to leave the city in September, he’s still doing his job, and gave some thorough answers to some of our CAT-7 concerns.

First, he suggested that the level of service should not be diminished but actually increased. “With our new streaming service, we pay $17,000 a year to air/record 50 meetings, all produced remotely (the council’s work session and the regular council meetings count as one). We can also add additional programming at the cost of $175 per program. By not having our cable coordinator spend his time recording council meetings, we are freeing up his hours to do other programming — including the parades, graduations and sporting events you are worried about, and hopefully new original programming,” he told me via email.

Like hockey? Who doesn’t? It will still be a big part of CAT-7.

“Yes, the Wilderness games will continue to be aired. With less time needed for recording city meetings, the coordinator will have the additional time for Wilderness games and hopefully other sporting events as well,” Reeves told me. Fans of the Wilderness will appreciate this, as Eric’s camerawork is very well-suited to live hockey events, and brings a high level of sophistication to the team’s broadcasts.

He gave me some perspective on the costs:

“The City spent $36,304 for the new broadcast system, including new HD cameras and HD streaming equipment. We then paid $4,890 for the software/hardware to place all recorded shows on our city website,” he said, noting that the shows are now indexed to allow viewers to jump to exact times and agenda items. “This was paid from the CAT-7 fund,” he clarified.

They will continue to televise the church services on CAT-7.

“With our new system we will be able to use electronic recordings, not DVDs, and can input and schedule them from anywhere with the new software,” he said.

“If the high school or anyone else would like to start recording shows, the Council chambers are available, and with the camera set-up we can use any area of the room and still have three-camera coverage. So, if they don’t want to sit at the Council dais but have other setting needs, the room can be rearranged for their needs,” Reeves said. (I think he was speaking to me: our “Harry’s Gang” set would look silly on the Council dias, so I am pleased we have options.)

Reeves claims the Pine Knot News is mistaken about where all the money is coming from. He told me, “The franchise fees are not bankrolling the streaming. The equipment we purchased is used for both streaming and CAT-7. And any original programming would be both live-streamed and broadcast. They are not separate but the same, just two ways to get whatever it is we air out to the public,” he said.

I agree that more delivery options are appropriate; cable is a bit old-fashioned and people use the internet far more than ever before.

Here’s what he had to say about airing the meetings of political bodies other than the Cloquet City Council and city commissions:

“If the County or townships wish to air their meetings they can provide their recordings and we’ll replay them on CAT-7 and still livestream them. If they want live broadcasts they can work that out with Mediacom. If they wish to hold meetings at City Hall, we can broadcast live, but that’s no different than it was before,” Reeves wrote.

Too bad Reeves won’t be around to see how this all turns out.

I suspect he’s right; a long-term vision for CAT-7 will prevent it from miring away in mediocrity and it’s possible the channel will continue to be relevant in our area. I plan to send him an email occasionally to let him know how things play out.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hopes to host the talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7 again someday. He can be reached at [email protected].