Cable Advisory Council
of Charter Communications

~ Minutes ~

Public Regular Meeting – Tuesday, November 9, 2004
Newtown, Connecticut

There was a regular meeting of the Cable Advisory Council called to order at 7:40 p.m., Tuesday, November 9, 2004 by Chairperson, Carmella Amodeo at the Charter Communications facility, Newtown, Connecticut.

ATTENDEES:

Stephanie O’Rouke (Kent), Jill Zaloski (Monroe), Eugene Rosen (Newtown), Carmella Amodeo, William Fredrickson (Southbury), Jim Lang (Trumbull), Barry Diamond (Trumbull).

From Charter: Bob Spain, Greg Antwerp, John Palinkas.

PUBLIC INPUT:

No public present.

 APPROVAL OF MINUTES:

 Minutes approved.

 TREASURER’S REPORT:

 The Treasurer’s Report will not be duplicated in the minutes in the future, it will be electronically transferred to members along with the minutes and agenda for each meeting.

 We need to reach John Sabo regarding transferring the domain name to Jill.  Gene will call the Southbury school system to attempt to get contact information for John.  He will provide Jill with the contact information.

 Jim Lang made a motion to accept the minutes, Gene seconded and they were unanimously accepted.

 CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS REPORT:

 Charter has reorganized resulting in the elimination of Dick Elwell’s position.  Four key market areas (including the Newtown system) will now be part of the New England Key Marketing Area (CT, MA, NH, NY, VT).  Georgia Griffith (from Charter in Massachusetts) is the general manager for the new division. Bob Spain (also from Charter in Massachusetts) will be handling franchise negotiation and public access.  Charter has 6 million subscribers in 37 states and is still owned by Paul Allen.  The company instituted the reorganization to save money.

 Several questions from Council members were raised.

 Customer reported no response when calling in.  Charter explained that there was an issue with the routing done by computer that has been fixed.  They also noted that 17% of the calls were either abandoned (hang ups) or resolved.

 Charter explained that there are different in subscriber fees due to different copyright fee payments, depending on which DMA a town falls into.

 Charter explained that the five miles of new build plant were half underground and half aerial.  Winsted has been finished.

 Gene mentioned that although customer complaint calls to him had gone down, he usually called John Dee for answers and needed to know who to call now.  Bob Spain said he would take the calls from Council members.

 There was a discussion of Internet service problems resulting from a recent outage.  Charter indicated the server had been down while a part was replaced.  The Council recommended that in the future, Internet customers should be notified of an outage and refunded some portion of their monthly fee.  Charter responded that they would review their customer outage history.  Charter also reiterated that they are seeking to build a company with “delighted customers, satisfied employees and a strong bottom line.”

 Charter reported that they continue to lose basic subscribers.

 Greg presented the CommuniTyVision newsletter and report.  Charter recently completed another intern training program, presenting certificates to those that had completed 180 hours of training.  Greg thanked the members for disseminating their production training recruitment flyers and requested that Council members continue to post the flyers in local schools and libraries.

 COMMUNICATIONS & CORRESPONDENCE:

 There is a change in when our annual reports are due from August 31st to January 31^st.  Information we need to submit includes:  list of council members, minutes for each meeting of the year, final treasurers report and an annual summary which should include any comments or concerns not reflected in the minutes.

 OLD BUSINESS:

 Video Festival:  Four judges have been found.  Five tapes have been submitted.  The competition was promoted on Channel 21 and cross channel promos.

NEW BUSINESS:

Rachel Goodkind from New Milford has moved and will be resigning from the Council.

Next Meeting:  Tuesday, January 11, 2005 at 7:00 PM (note new time) at the Charter offices at 11 Commerce Drive (note new location).

ADJOURNMENT:

The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 9:25 PM.

Respectfully submitted by:  Kate Donahue, Secretary

 NEXT MEETING:  Rescheduled to Tuesday, January 18, 2005 at Charter Communications offices in Newtown at 7:00 PM.

 ~ 2005 Meeting Dates ~

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

©2005 Cable Advisory Council
Designed by Ben Haase
PC Wizard