Harry's Gang: Cable channel isn't dead yet

After the Cloquet City Council fired Eric Lipponen, the CAT-7 cable TV coordinator, I have been asked repeatedly: Is CAT-7 dead? Will "Harry's Gang" ever come back?

I am encouraged by the comments, actually.

I have produced exactly four "Harry's Gang" shows in the past year, not counting some candidate interviews. (In case you didn't realize my point, there are 52 weeks in a year. Having taped 4 weeks out of 52 is a sign that maybe, just maybe, something is wrong at CAT-7.

So, to have so much interest from the community gives me hope that CAT-7 has been providing a service that some, at least, want and appreciate.

But there's not much on the channel, and there hasn't been in years. Aside from Cloquet City Council meetings, my "Harry's Gang" political talk show and Minnesota Wilderness hockey games, I doubt anyone is tuning in for a repeat of the same three public service announcements that get rotated over and over. Occasionally, a parade gets taped and played, and sometimes I've seen local high school graduations. But it's inconsistent.

The stand-out programming has been local church services. For decades, Sunday services from four or five different churches have been played, but those haven't been on much for a year either. Some churches tape their services, and then tune in later that evening to find the services aren't being played. They are, understandably, frustrated.

I've had that problem with "Harry's Gang." Sometimes we'd tape a great program on Monday afternoon, full of lively discussion and heated argument, and I would, as usual, brilliantly triumph over my fellow panelists in both logic and style. Then, we'd tune in that evening to watch the fun, and an old show from weeks ago would be playing. The same thing has happened with the new Dragon Lady's show.

Now, you have to realize that last May, the City moved the CAT-7 studio from the high school - where it had been for decades - into the basement of the new City Hall. The move took some time and was poorly done, interrupting programming for months. No one has really been able to explain why moving a simple cable access studio from one place to another should take nearly 10 months. That's probably because it should have taken days, not months.

At the same time, city administration cut the coordinator to halftime, which certainly didn't help matters as all the part-time employees had left by then.

Another part of the problem is that there are limited funds available for the station. It's entirely funded by cable TV franchise fees. No city tax dollars are spent on CAT-7. The budget is about $100,000, more or less. And while that's a decent amount of money to run a simple cable access channel, the move to City Hall would have been more effective if the station could have hired professionals to move, design, and install the new facilities. With a limited budget, all the work was left to the employee who just didn't have the capability/time/access to do it. Hence, the station was dark for months.

It didn't help that the cable commission, of which I am a member, hadn't met since January 2017 before it was finally revived last August.

Now CAT-7 is without any employees or programming.

I guess it's time for a new direction. If we want to keep the station, we'll need to re-examine how the station operates, and what its function should be in a town where cable TV is losing subscribers. Decisions need to be made, ultimately by the Cloquet City Council and the others served by CAT-7, including Carlton, Scanlon and Esko.

I just hope they consult the Cable Commission as they do.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who has hosted the talk show Harry's Gang on CAT-7. His opinions are his own. He can be reached at [email protected].