Press Releases From Ken

July 8, 10 - New FCC Action

Today I received the long awaited letter from the FCC on our transmitter issue.. In short it said:

In your December 22, 2009 response to the NOUO, you stated that you would install a filter (also referred to as a "RF Choke") and reconnect the antenna's ground lead in order to resume operation of your AM transmitter in Stayton, Oregon, with the antennal and ground configuration exceeding three meters.

On March 23, 2010, this office re-inspected your AM transmitter, then operating with a filter (Rangemaster Model AM1000FIL) along with the associated antenna and ground configuration. This office made field strength measurements with and without the filter connected to your antenna/ground configuration. The field strength meter readings revealed no appreciable difference between operation of your AM transmitter and associated equipment with the filter attached, and without the filter attached. Consequently, it is apparent that the attachment of the filter to the transmitter and associated equipment does not limit the total length of the transmisson line, antenna and ground to the three meters required for unlicensed operation pursant to Section 15.219 of the Commission's rules. The FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology ("OET") also tested the devices and OET's results confirm the ineffectiveness of this configuration. The field strength measurements also exceeded the 14.8uV/m at 30 meters limit prescribed by section 15.209 (a) of the rules.

You are hereby warned that operation of this radio transmitting equipment, in the configuration as tested on March 23, 2010, without a valid radio station authorization is a violation of Section 301 of the Act. Resumed unatuthorized operation of the radio transmitting equipment described herein may result in additional sanctions and potentetial forfeitures. Binh Nguyen , resident agent, Portland Resident Agent Office, western Region, Enforcement Bureau.

So, our primary transmitter is off until we can find a way to make it compliant. We still stream our station and we do have one transmitter still on that seems compliant.. Ken Cartwright

June 13, 10 - What's happening to PEG in Stayton

PEG as of June 12, 2010.
Ken Cartwright

The city of Stayton has a dedicated channel on Wave Broadband cable, channel 5. It is known as a government channel and is dedicated for Public, Educational & Government use, known as a PEG. For over 2 years, cable subscribers have become accustomed to seeing Stayton council and town hall meetings, concerts in the park, concerts at Cartwright's Music Event Center, lambing time, Scio Sheep and Lamb fair, Market Place, Easter egg hunts, government candidates forums, Chamber of commerce luncheons with special guests, State senator town hall meetings, county commissioner meetings and other special productions. All of these videos, with the exception of the Commissioners meetings have been shot and produced by Ken Cartwright with some help from James Wright. The commissioners meeting we could not show for a long time because we had to have the DVD rendered in a special way in order to be played on the current system. All of the equipment is privately owned by Ken who has a production facility in place at Cartwright's Music Event Center. It has been the hope and goal of Ken to make this a public facility, that all of Stayton can use.

Several years ago, former mayor Virginia Honeywell, at the request of Ken Cartwright, formed the cable access committee. The city council ratified this committee with the exception of Steve Frank, who abstained from voting Ken to the commission. This group met to bring an operation manuel and procedure guide to the council for the day to day and year to year operation of a PEG system. Originally it was the commissions desire to not run the operation, but to oversee the group who would be running the PEG. The commissions job is to report back to the city council and make recommendations to the council as a voice for the PEG operations manager.

Ken Cartwright began videotaping and airing the city council during Mayor Honeywell's tenure, because as a reporter for community radio KENC, he felt that the coverage of the city council was not being adequately conveyed to the public with just newspaper and some radio reporting. Since that time two years ago when he began videotaping, there is much more awareness in our community with regards to not only city council, but to other events that make a whole community.

When he first began running video on the channel 5, he could not get the cable company to provide a direct link to the feed node so he bought a DVD player and TV monitor and placed them in the cable company's office in order to get the videos up. That was over two years ago and recently he asked the cable company to provide a DVD player and monitor as he needed his for the Events Center studio. They put a used player and TV in which is barely adequate. Ken has been trying to get the cable company to give him 24/7 access to the fiber node that feeds the signal to the cable. It is impossible to do any kind of daily programming without that access. We have to render a DVD in a special program which is very time consuming in order to get it played. When it's played, because there is no one there to change the DVD, it is played in an endless loop that gets very old quickly. The same program will sometimes run for a week before it's changed because of the current system. They don't seem to be interested in helping to bring local television to the community. I don't get it, as it's proprietary programming that you can't get anywhere else; an exclusivity that should be of interest to them. But because PEG is a regulation enacted by congress, they seem to only participate because they have to, and at a minimum.

Ken tried to negotiate directly with Wave Broadband for this direct node access and to have it installed at his music event center, but it was felt by Mayor Aboud that my approach was too direct and that because it was a city controlled channel it would be best left to the city manager and the mayor do this negotiating. The last news I had was that Wave has agreed to put a direct fiber node in the community center "MAYBE" sometime this late summer. That node and facility will need a duplication of equipment that Cartwright's Music Event Center already has. Who pays for that? Me? No. The city? Probably not. Wave? I doubt it but that would be nice. Donors? No guarantee, just maybe.

So, where are we with the PEG community cable access channel? I told the mayor and city manager that I would no longer be providing the city council meetings and other shoots for channel 5 because after two years of doing it for free and buying the thousands of dollars of TV production gear and related computers and programs I felt that It was time for me to get paid. I began the formation of a 501-C3 not for profit group known as (NSCA) North Santiam Communications Association some months ago, again at my own personal cost, $700 to date and $700 yet to go, but have not been able to attract 5 people from our community who are interested in serving and being a part of community TV. It was the provision of the cable access committee that this 501-C3 would be the actual operations group of the TV channel and station. With that said, funding for PEG is guaranteed in our franchise agreement with wave in two ways. First, the cities franchise agreement that spells out a set aside channel (PEG) allows that 1.2% of the collected franchise fee from Wave will be used to fund the operation. That agreement has been in affect for over 10 years and to date, none of that money has been set aside, but instead like the franchise fee, it has all gone into the general city fund. That amount is over $30,000 a year. 1.2% of it would be less than $1,000 a year but had it been set aside, that would be nearly $10,000 for a startup of a facility. The other funding mechanism for the city to tell Wave to instill a 60 cent per month per Stayton city limits subscriber fee. Currently that fee because of the Stayton's PEG agreement language cannot be used for salary's but only equipment. The language can easily be changed by a decision by the city council and I think it should be. The sixty cents a month fee comes out to about $550 a month. That is a good start in compensation for coordinating all that goes into what is and will be placed on channel 5. Most communities like Salem and Woodburn use all the collected franchise fees to run their PEG channels. I think that's not going to happen in Stayton.

It was discussed by the cable access commission that other communities up and down the canyon that are served by Wave could also use this facility with a per city per subscriber fee instilled by each community like Aumsville, Sublimity, Turner, Lyons, Mehama, Mill City Gates and surrounding areas. This would eliminate the need for the cable company having each community form a PEG agreement with them and duplicating the process. I presented this idea to the cable company and they didn't think it was a good idea and stopped talking to me about it. Maybe they would like all PEG's to go away, or maybe they would like each community to have a set aside channel; I don't know because they won't talk about it. Mayor Aboud and City Manager Don Eubank thinks it's a good idea to have a shared PEG center and so do I. I don't think Stayton is at a point that others would use a PEG studio. I think there are many who would like to see high school football, basketball, plays, concerts, board meetings as well as being able to have these same events broadcast live, but they will want someone else to do the work to make it happen. I think that's OK, but there should be compensation for it.

I approached Stayton Cooperative Telephone Company some time ago about their new Fiber Optic build out that is going on in Stayton and asked if they were able to help bring locally produced television programs to the community. They said they couldn't and wouldn't support that on the cable but could and would support it by use of the internet and their fiber build out. Several months ago they helped me in setting up a live television streaming system. We have have been testing it now for 2 months and with some improvements, it will far exceed what cable television can and will do for us. For the past several years everything thing that I have video taped for cable has been and still is available on the KENC website provided by SCTC. They have been community players for many years and want the community to have the best in communications and live video access and have stepped up to plate to make that happen. We call it CIT, or Community internet Television., Everyone that has a computer and a connection is able to see what has been recorded in and for this community. Plus the advantage is we can and will broadcast local events live as well as delayed. They are also working to acquire programming for CIT, and that is just the beginning.

So what will happen to the PEG? I have been assured that if I continue to show the city council meetings that I record, the city will eventually work out a deal with Wave and the city council probably will ratify the PEG language change we need for funding to get it on. So for a few more months I will continue to make the city council meetings available on channel 5. I don't see the PEG going much further than that. Mayor Aboud has recently asked the citizens of this community how they feel about a PEG channel and would they pay .60 cents a month to keep it going? So far, no response. So I guess it would be fair to say that if people have no objections or opinions about it, then it's fair to say they wouldn't object to a monthly additional fee to keep city council meetings alive. I don't see enough community interest in others learning how to video tape and contribute programs with the exception of Stayton High School and I think it may never be more than what it is; and that's terrible... We need some volunteers to step forward and help with this if it's ever going to go anywhere. We need folks that want to learn how to use a camera, learn an Apple Mac computer editing system, go on shoots to city council meetings and do the shoots and get involved. I'd love to see regular talk shows produced by our citizens that are relative to our needs. But in the meantime, I'm still working on it, still bringing what I think the community needs in broadcasting and trying to make a difference by empowering our community with relevant information that you can't get anywhere else and you don't even have to go to the meetings.
Ken Cartwright
KENC Community Radio and television.

April 24, 2010 - CIT (Community Internet Television)

Hi folks,
I've been working on developing CIT (community internet television).. This is an alternative for folks who do not have Cable Access, per Wave Broadband's channel 5 in our area. We've been streaming video for the past several weeks to test the system. I have a dedicated computer that we will use to develop our scrolling community bulletin board and for programming unique area videos and locally produced programs. We have and will be offering live events from our studios at KENC, and other locations as we develop the system. Our partners in communication, SCTC and I, have known for sometime how important television and the internet are in our area to both enlighten, empower and communicate quick relevant news to our area and the world.. thus CIT is "THE" new local station. Cable access is very limited in what can be broadcast because it is government owned and controlled, albeit local government. I will continue to provide city council and some other programs to our local cable access channel, but the bulk of programs will available exclusively on www.kencradio.com both live and programmed as well as archived and available for download at your convenience.
Technology has allowed us to connect our computers to our large screen televisions so that we may take advantage of complete home entertainment via our computers to the comfort and visibility of our large screen TV's. Wireless routers and HDMI connections that seem to come standard with both computers and televisions make it very easy to be able to accomplish this technical marvel... What we will do is join the rest of the world in bringing you local programming that you can watch on your television through this technology. Very soon you'll see a scrolling community bulletin board that is up to date and very easy to navigate with KENC radio played behind it so you can listen to great music while you see what's going on in our area. We need your community announcements and forthcoming events to be able to place on this system. Just send your press releases to kenc@wvi.com and we'll gladly put them up. You'll be able to see and hear locally produced concerts, festivals, town hall meetings, city council meetings, daily and weekly local news and weather, talk shows, football, baseball, soccer and basketball games plus live meetings with our area government officials, all on your computer.. there will be no limit to only having cable. If you have an internet connection SCTC and KENC will be giving you a very valuable resource to keep up with what's going in our area. You will be invited to contribute to this resource. We will have training sessions very soon to teach you how to be a part of this system. We'd love to have you contribute programs. They can be of your favorite hobby, church, school, community organization, a weekly or daily news program or simply a program that you would find interesting. If you're interested in learning how to do this, regardless of your age, or where you live, please contact Ken Cartwright at 503-769-2778 for more information. There will be inexpensive advertising and sponsorship programs available too...

Ken Cartwright
mandomedic@wvi.com
AM 1620 KENC community radio
www.kencradio.com

April 13, 10 - Transmitters off

We shut off our transmitters at our studio in Stayton and in Sublimity this morning. We are appealing the FCC's citation and will post any new developments here... We are still on line at www.kencradio.com ... Kenc