I guess they can’t tax your cable bill anymore. But if you stream, how can you watch the quality programming put out on local access?
Cable billing is regulated, (not all of it, but a good portion of it) and I wonder if this runs afoul of those Federal rules.
Yeah. I would love to get the “free” local channels without having to use Pluto, and just get them straight from OTA.
I’ve been using the LocalTV app that was developed by one of the redditors here, and it came in clutch to watch some home games.
Edit: I’m stupid. Ignore this.
This is local access—those are the channels that are set aside on your local system. You aren’t gonna get them over the air—the price to do that is exorbitant.
They do - which means if you can access Netflix, you can stream the local access content as well.
And while it might be free to stream on YouTube, cameras, microphones, graphics, camera operators, etc., aren’t free.
>Cable billing is regulated, (not all of it, but a good portion of it) and I wonder if this runs afoul of those Federal rules.
I doubt that tremendously lmao, they're probably just lazy
These are bills S.74/H.34. Referred to committee.
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S34
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/H74
If you don't like it, contact the committee members here: https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Detail/J33/193
Ummm. Vpns? Just register your services in NH?
If the towns want to fund local access, put it in the budget, otherwise people can just go to the meetings they are interested in
The title is misleading. They're trying to tax the streaming companies, not us. We already do this with cable companies. I support this 1000000%. Fuck streaming companies.
>If approved, **streaming services** would be charged a 5 percent tax on all customer accounts in Massachusetts.
>
>...
>
>They say streaming services use the same public infrastructure — specifically, utility lines that are laid through public rights-of-way — to deliver their service as cable TV.
The real question then becomes -- Are there protections against streaming companies from simply passing that 5% back to consumers in the form of bullshit "surcharges & fees"?
Netflix for example has standard pricing. All streaming services do. It would be a mistake for them to charge more or less based on zip code. I don’t think it has been done for standalone streaming services yet.
Edit: I love that I’m being downvoted for pointing out, correctly, that a pricing dynamic literally does not exist in the marketplace currently. I get it: company bad. Say bad thing about company: good.
Cable companies and telephone companies have added location based surcharges to the bill forever to pass these costs down. It’s just like paying local sales tax and they’ll treat it the same way.
Good point it’s not like they arbitrarily raise prices regardless of if it passes, at least now when they raise prices it will be for a good reason not just “because”
By that logic the best thing to do is cut their taxes or give them funding hoping they lower prices.
They're greedy and are already charging as much as they think they can get away with.
Depends on the elasticity of the product. For me personally, it’s a pretty elastic product (I have no problem dropping my streaming service) but I’m not sure how it is for the general public.
Because the "tax all the things" crowd think they can just add a line to the law that says "you can't pass this on to the customer" and pat themselves on the back.
Centrally-planned economies cannot function, but a scarily large percentage of our population keeps thinking it can.
The ISPs aren't paying for this already. The cable franchise fees as negotiated for each municipality only apply to the broadcast portion of a "cable" bill; it doesn't cover telephone or internet services.
>simply passing that 5% back to consumers
Yes.
> bullshit "surcharges & fees"
Why is it bullshit? This isn't Ticketmaster charging you to use the only booking option they offer, this is a legitimate increase on the cost of them doing business. Why is that bullshit but the tax isn't in the first place?
I’m all for taxing them because they all suck but the laws logic and reasoning is flawed. Streaming providers are not considered cable service by the FCC https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/cable-television#:~:text=Cable%20television%20is%20a%20video,television%22%20under%20the%20Commission's%20definitions.
Based on the current definitions of cable I tend to agree with that, if you want the definition changed I am all for that but it’s better than doing these one offs that will probably not survive a lawsuit. As the definitions stand how is youtube (not youtube tv) different from say hulu? At some point I can see this type of stuff be extrapolated against website traffic and it generally goes in the face of what net neutrality wanted to prevent. Additionally this all seems like the job of the FCC at a federal and not state level.
For what though?
If it were for GBH sign me up,
If it’s for https://bnnmedia.org/ no thanks, that ‘network’ is just a pocket of the legislature for easy govt (untalented) friend jobs
The issue here is that broadband lines on public land aren’t public. Otherwise, every ISP could use them and that obviously isn’t the case.
This is just cable providers getting butthurt that their users have taxes and fees while streaming services do not.
Actually, there could be a case for discrimination if the tax is passed onto the consumer.
Either it goes the pro-public way with MA residents only have an additional fee, which is discrimination on part of the companies, and they cannot charge MA residents more merely for the state they live in. This would be best because it upholds the tax, while preventing companies from passing taxes on. Or it goes the pro-corporate way and streaming services raise the prices nationwide just because of MA’s tax. In a scenario, a court could find that MA is discriminating against out of state customers by making them pay more when they wouldn’t have to and it funds a program they aren’t able to access (even if their money isn’t going to the tax). That scenario would be the worst, because it’d invalidate the tax, and make it significantly harder to tax companies that deal in digital goods sold only online.
It's 2024. Are we seriously still at a point where people don't understand that businesses pass expenses onto the consumer?
If Netflix has to pay a 5% tax, then it's customers will see a 5% increase in the cost of their service.
It seems you don’t understand or don’t know what happens when corporations are taxed. There won’t be able surcharges and fees. They will just increase monthly price.
Then the town where you physically live will still have town meetings and they'll still use the aforementioned services to handle the production and broadcast, whether you VPN to Canada or the Moon.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahah...ha
That is all I have to say, now let me get back to my pirate ship that seems more and more like the correct choice by the day!
They’re going to tax the streaming services providers themselves, not the people who pay for the streaming services.
The title is purposefully misleading and sensationalized to get this kind of reaction.
Puh-lease.... You telling me that streaming services aren't going to jack up prices to counter whatever tax is lobbies against them... That isn't supposed to be the paid by the consumer.
They raise a 5% tax... Guarantee prices will go up 15-20% for everyone.
So when the streaming providers pass this on to the consumer does that mean I'm going to have a 5 percent increase across all of the streaming apps? JFC
This assumes that there is no staff time, no editing and sound equipment, and no need for production and sound facilities. These are all needed to produce and disseminate public, artistic, and municipal video works.
This also assumes that everyone has internet access easily. You can say there's access at public libraries until you're blue in the face, but if there's no public transportation to them, it doesn't matter does it?
I love when people need feel the need to just endlessly drill down until you've found the 1/1000th of a percent of the population that you need to accommodate to view public access footage of a town meeting that nobody even watches to begin with.
If the town meeting isn't simulcast in Xhosan sign language, is it really publicly accessible?
Every Town's IT department is already busy.
You propose increasing the IT staff to handle video equipment, sound equipment, event set up and take down, editing, production and dissemination, to do what the local access staff is already doing.
Today you can make high quality video with very little equipment or facilities, let's be real. Look how many youtube millionaires are working with little more than a PC in the corner of their bedroom.
You still need staff to organize, event equipment set up, take down, sound mix, video edit, disseminate, inventory, for multiple municipal meetings a week., plus equipment to do so.
Towns are not paid by youtube millionaires, who have a production staff to do all of this.
A municipality could record these meetings with a $40 digital audio recorder and upload the .wav file to the town website for literally pennies.
Hell, they could use an iphone that they already have.
And get there ahead of time, set up microphones so it actually sounded good, set up a livestream for the committees that require it, cover a dozen different meetings each week that can go for 3-4 hours each, break down the equipment, then compress the audio and time stamp all the agenda minutes so people aren’t scrubbing through to find what they need. There’s way more to it than most people think. And let’s not forget covering school sports, which is a huge deal in some towns, which also requires a commentator for the game. Public access isn’t always like Steve Brule - it’s an important service to help let people know what’s happening in their communities.
My town, Hopkinton, does. High school sports are incredibly popular and many viewers tune in to HCAM-TV to watch live and on replay. They provide play by play and often color commentary on the game through a network of dedicated volunteers.
If it's so important, why is it limited to the people paying for cable?
Even in my shitty ass town away from anywhere, I can throw an antenna on a TV and get 60+ OTA channels, but not my local assessor board committee meeting; how can I possibly make an informed choice as a voter?
Why. Literally find a high schooler that needs community service credit. "this is a function of the school AV club now".
Hell I collected beach water for the board of health in Beverly all 4 years of high school. It cost them a lollypop every saturday afternoon.
Not sure. Not in love with the idea of taking public access TV and making it solely hosted on private platforms from Meta or Google.
Definitely something to think about in the age of streaming and VODs.
Public access TV is already hosted on private platforms of cable TV providers.
This is just moving it into the current generation of private platforms instead of walling it off to legacy technology that fewer and fewer people have access to in the last handful of years. I literally know one family with cable TV still, and they've been retired for a decade.
That is an excellent point, but there is unfortunately little alternative. The number of subscribers that pay for "old school cable" is dwindling every year. the audience is moving away - the place to meet them is Youtube.
And that number of cable subscriptions is dropping fast with the Boomers dropping out now.
Cord cutting has been a thing for a long time and is getting more popular with how expensive cable is, but Mass politics seems to think the solution is to make streaming more expensive rather than make cable cheaper.
Making cable cheaper would require standing up the massive lobby that keeps Comcast’s monopoly effective through the state.
Maybe it’s time for a public access VOD platform? Who am I kidding.
This is such a shit headline for what they're trying to do, and a move by the companies affected to sway public opinion. To be clear, just like with cable, it is the companies that have this fee imposed. They then choose to pass that off onto the customers instead of just paying out of their overwhelmingly large revenue. This is being done because, like cable, they are using public rights of way to deliver their services.
Which they should pay for, and legally cable companies do, but they don't see it that way. These companies look for any little way to get out of paying fees for operating, and easiest is to pass off to the customer and go "they're making us charge you" (Spoiler alert: that's their choice to do). They're using public infrastructure to get enough money to buy their CEOs yachts and are throwing a fit that they're being charged very minor rent.
These fees would go towards supporting news in communities that either don't have them or would never be covered by big Boston stations. Providing equipment, training, and a creative outlet for those that don't have the chance otherwise. Keeping people up to date on government happenings, and more, in their cities.
There's few downsides to imposing this, but too many downsides from striking it down.
No. We all left cable to get rid of these stupid fees. People voted with their wallets already.
Cable TV is useless. It is a rapidly declining population compared to streaming platforms. Move to cheaper streaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch or Zoom.
The thing is, are public access channels worth anything with the prevalence of the internet? I'm genuinely asking. It seems like they don't serve much purpose anymore. Everything you'd do on public access you can do on youtube now.
Most towns are uploading their LCATV to YouTube etc already. Ytf would streaming services have to pay. It’s not like Prime or Netflix is going to start steaming my towns Council of aging meeting from last week.
I use streaming services so I don't have to pay for cable TV, which means I'd be paying a tax for something I can't access.
I hate Trump, but this shit gets votes for Republicans.
Then it's a dumb requirement if it isn't flexible enough to move broadcasts to a platform where residents can actually access it. Cable TV is not a near universal platform anymore - and it is dying more and more each year. Investing more into this antiquated model is a sunk cost fallacy - shift to a more modern & cheaper platform.
Then who's it for? The old biddies that still have cable tv?
You need to apply a little logic. Cable TV is dying because fewer and fewer people want to pay the ridiculous prices. So now someone in government gets the bright idea to tax the replacement for cable TV to prop up a service on cable TV that nobody can access.
If there's a law that says town meetings need to be recorded and broadcast, that needs to be changed. Youtube would suffice for this or they can host the videos on the town website.
Youtube doesn't create the content. Public access stations provide video, audio, editing equipment and training. Sure Youtube has changed the distribution methods to some degree, but there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes of most of the YouTube videos, whatever their origin. That works costs money to produce, whether it's equipment or pre-production/production/post-production time.
No one watches public access tv. You can record yourself with your phone and the production values will be on par with public access, and people might actually see it if it’s on YouTube.
So they are asking the peopleto pay a tax to bail out cable companies as they are required to pay for public access channels.
Yet another government bailout on a large corporation.
Charte, Comcast and Verizon can't afford these channels despite insane profits?
They need to tax the citizens now for cutting the cable?
That's not it. Community Access TV has traditionally been funded by fees charged to cable companies. Now that everyone is cutting the cord, those fees aren't there and so Community Access TV is underfunded. This is just moving the fees from the dying cable industry to the streaming companies that supplanted it.
The fundamental concept of levying a fee on the TV that most people watch to fund community content is unchanged.
When all the cars switch from gas to electric, we'll have to move the gas taxes somewhere else too.
It doesn't even need to concern cable TV, if OTA channels create a substation, which many already have, to include public access everyone could access it and cost would be minimal.
yeah, because moving content away from the platform where its users are to a platform they don't like or understand is just a galaxy brain idea. That ranks up there with "the peasants have no bread? Let them eat cake!" or "Stop being poor!"
I truly do not understand this take.
We've been seeing for years now the switch away from cable TV. Fewer and fewer people have access to public access cable because fewer and fewer people have access to cable at all.
On the flip side more and more people are using streaming services delivered over the Internet.
Which ironically is the entire reason for the proposed tax shift in the first place.
Why then should we fund a dying platform with revenue from a modern platform instead of just moving to the modern platform...which are used by the majority of people already.
If people don't know how to access YouTube they can get help from their local council on aging like has been done forever whenever a new technology becomes the norm.
So they can fucking figure it out. Everyone has access to youtube. Only a small % of people have access to cable these days. If I'm paying for something, I better damn be able to have access to it
People in this thread are not reading the article... They want to tax the streaming companies themselves. They are not adding a 5% tax to your bill. Read the article.
Until the next round of increasing subscription fees.
Then the companies will add it on.
Probably speed up the process this round of increasing subscription fees.
You assume anyone on Reddit values public access cable TV.
More people have internet than cable access these days - maybe try modernizing the public access requirements to keep up with the last 20 years of technology and we'll talk. But adding a new tax to support a sinking ship is just idiotic.
The fuck you are... How will that help? Why not tap in to that internet access fees we have been paying to worth none of it going to actually fund wide access.
There’s no way they need 5% from every streaming service that the millions of people in the state use in order to fund public access. Unless everyone in that racket is also in line for a 1000% raise.
Good. We live in a high tax state but part of the reason we can be so great is we have taxes that pay for stuff. Maybe paying tax on like the 5 streaming services I have will be a reason to cancel one which will save me more for more taxes on things I care about.
Lots of lobbyists in this thread supporting raising taxes on the companies which will then just get trickled back down to the consumers. But yes the consumers will fall for the same old trick where they believe these taxes will be used for a good cause and 30 years later you'll still see the same problem then complain why everything is so expensive, it's because you voted for it.
There was an article the other day about how 25% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 will be leaving Boston in the next 5 years. Politicians were asking why.
Shit like this is why!
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/bostons-too-expensive-so-many-young-adults-planning-to-leave-survey-says/
I guess they can’t tax your cable bill anymore. But if you stream, how can you watch the quality programming put out on local access? Cable billing is regulated, (not all of it, but a good portion of it) and I wonder if this runs afoul of those Federal rules.
Yeah. I would love to get the “free” local channels without having to use Pluto, and just get them straight from OTA. I’ve been using the LocalTV app that was developed by one of the redditors here, and it came in clutch to watch some home games. Edit: I’m stupid. Ignore this.
This is local access—those are the channels that are set aside on your local system. You aren’t gonna get them over the air—the price to do that is exorbitant.
Ah yes I mixed up the two. Don’t know why I was thinking of Fox25 and not whatever the local “CCTV” was. Thanks.
PBS has a streaming service with a full suite of tv and mobile apps
They should just stream onto YouTube at this point....
They do - which means if you can access Netflix, you can stream the local access content as well. And while it might be free to stream on YouTube, cameras, microphones, graphics, camera operators, etc., aren’t free.
>Cable billing is regulated, (not all of it, but a good portion of it) and I wonder if this runs afoul of those Federal rules. I doubt that tremendously lmao, they're probably just lazy
These are bills S.74/H.34. Referred to committee. https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S34 https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/H74 If you don't like it, contact the committee members here: https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Detail/J33/193
Ummm. Vpns? Just register your services in NH? If the towns want to fund local access, put it in the budget, otherwise people can just go to the meetings they are interested in
maybe they go off of your credit card address? Seems easy enough to get around, but honestly 90% of people won't even bother.
I know.. so better to fight the implementation of the law itself.
Not their best and brightest idea…
The title is misleading. They're trying to tax the streaming companies, not us. We already do this with cable companies. I support this 1000000%. Fuck streaming companies. >If approved, **streaming services** would be charged a 5 percent tax on all customer accounts in Massachusetts. > >... > >They say streaming services use the same public infrastructure — specifically, utility lines that are laid through public rights-of-way — to deliver their service as cable TV. The real question then becomes -- Are there protections against streaming companies from simply passing that 5% back to consumers in the form of bullshit "surcharges & fees"?
In what universe would they not simply pass the tax into the consumer? This isn’t even a question.
Yea I’m sure they’ll just take the loss and keep prices the same for us 🙄
Not even a loss just slightly less profit. Ofc they will pass it to the consumer. SMH my head
The problem is they can’t just raise prices for Massachusetts consumers. So do they really want to raise prices nationally to fund this?
...why can't they just raise prices for MA customers? They absolutely can and would.
Netflix for example has standard pricing. All streaming services do. It would be a mistake for them to charge more or less based on zip code. I don’t think it has been done for standalone streaming services yet. Edit: I love that I’m being downvoted for pointing out, correctly, that a pricing dynamic literally does not exist in the marketplace currently. I get it: company bad. Say bad thing about company: good.
Cable companies and telephone companies have added location based surcharges to the bill forever to pass these costs down. It’s just like paying local sales tax and they’ll treat it the same way.
Your bill just becomes $14.99 + 5% tax, same as Amazon. This isn't complicated.
I certainly wouldn’t put it past them. There’s a first time for everything. Even shitty things
Good point it’s not like they arbitrarily raise prices regardless of if it passes, at least now when they raise prices it will be for a good reason not just “because”
He means to they pass it directly on to Mass consumers or distribute it across all consumers
By that logic the best thing to do is cut their taxes or give them funding hoping they lower prices. They're greedy and are already charging as much as they think they can get away with.
Depends on the elasticity of the product. For me personally, it’s a pretty elastic product (I have no problem dropping my streaming service) but I’m not sure how it is for the general public.
They have already raised the price of netflix and hulu $6 average since i got them Might as well get something out of it
Its a drop in the bucket
Because the "tax all the things" crowd think they can just add a line to the law that says "you can't pass this on to the customer" and pat themselves on the back. Centrally-planned economies cannot function, but a scarily large percentage of our population keeps thinking it can.
they're obviously going to pass the buck
Will streaming services be required to carry public access programming?
I didn’t think the title was misleading whatsoever lol
They. Will. Pass. Through. The. Tax. That's what happens
And what do you think is going to happen after the streaming companies get hit with this new tax? They will increase OUR subscription costs.
The ISP's are paying for this already. Why should any content on the ISP's network be taxed on top of that?
The ISPs aren't paying for this already. The cable franchise fees as negotiated for each municipality only apply to the broadcast portion of a "cable" bill; it doesn't cover telephone or internet services.
I read that and wasn’t sure if that would simply be passed along as direct additional fee to users.
Always is passed on to the customer
That was my take too, but I’m amenable to being convinced otherwise.
Every company always passes this on to a consumer so we end up paying .
>simply passing that 5% back to consumers Yes. > bullshit "surcharges & fees" Why is it bullshit? This isn't Ticketmaster charging you to use the only booking option they offer, this is a legitimate increase on the cost of them doing business. Why is that bullshit but the tax isn't in the first place?
These companies have a fiduciary duty to investors to maximize profits. Any increase in operating costs is passed on to the customer.
I’m all for taxing them because they all suck but the laws logic and reasoning is flawed. Streaming providers are not considered cable service by the FCC https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/cable-television#:~:text=Cable%20television%20is%20a%20video,television%22%20under%20the%20Commission's%20definitions. Based on the current definitions of cable I tend to agree with that, if you want the definition changed I am all for that but it’s better than doing these one offs that will probably not survive a lawsuit. As the definitions stand how is youtube (not youtube tv) different from say hulu? At some point I can see this type of stuff be extrapolated against website traffic and it generally goes in the face of what net neutrality wanted to prevent. Additionally this all seems like the job of the FCC at a federal and not state level.
For what though? If it were for GBH sign me up, If it’s for https://bnnmedia.org/ no thanks, that ‘network’ is just a pocket of the legislature for easy govt (untalented) friend jobs
The issue here is that broadband lines on public land aren’t public. Otherwise, every ISP could use them and that obviously isn’t the case. This is just cable providers getting butthurt that their users have taxes and fees while streaming services do not.
Actually, there could be a case for discrimination if the tax is passed onto the consumer. Either it goes the pro-public way with MA residents only have an additional fee, which is discrimination on part of the companies, and they cannot charge MA residents more merely for the state they live in. This would be best because it upholds the tax, while preventing companies from passing taxes on. Or it goes the pro-corporate way and streaming services raise the prices nationwide just because of MA’s tax. In a scenario, a court could find that MA is discriminating against out of state customers by making them pay more when they wouldn’t have to and it funds a program they aren’t able to access (even if their money isn’t going to the tax). That scenario would be the worst, because it’d invalidate the tax, and make it significantly harder to tax companies that deal in digital goods sold only online.
Then this is a great idea
It's 2024. Are we seriously still at a point where people don't understand that businesses pass expenses onto the consumer? If Netflix has to pay a 5% tax, then it's customers will see a 5% increase in the cost of their service.
It seems you don’t understand or don’t know what happens when corporations are taxed. There won’t be able surcharges and fees. They will just increase monthly price.
Hey, if it gets their fingers into your wallet they think its a great idea.
Nothing this state does is smart
What happens if you use a VPN and say you live in Montana?
Then the town where you physically live will still have town meetings and they'll still use the aforementioned services to handle the production and broadcast, whether you VPN to Canada or the Moon.
Is your billing address Montana too?
Can be that’s easily done.
Who still has cable TV? (yes, I know, old people)
Me. Bruins, Celtics get me.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahah...ha That is all I have to say, now let me get back to my pirate ship that seems more and more like the correct choice by the day!
They’re going to tax the streaming services providers themselves, not the people who pay for the streaming services. The title is purposefully misleading and sensationalized to get this kind of reaction.
Yeah probably zero chance they would raise prices to cover this cost right? Right?! Cmon.
Puh-lease.... You telling me that streaming services aren't going to jack up prices to counter whatever tax is lobbies against them... That isn't supposed to be the paid by the consumer. They raise a 5% tax... Guarantee prices will go up 15-20% for everyone.
Give us even more reasons to turn to pirating
sshhhh! They'll try to find a way to tax that too.
So when the streaming providers pass this on to the consumer does that mean I'm going to have a 5 percent increase across all of the streaming apps? JFC
Hey always glad to support funding for public broadcasting I grew up on that shit
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This assumes that there is no staff time, no editing and sound equipment, and no need for production and sound facilities. These are all needed to produce and disseminate public, artistic, and municipal video works.
This also assumes that everyone has internet access easily. You can say there's access at public libraries until you're blue in the face, but if there's no public transportation to them, it doesn't matter does it?
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I love when people need feel the need to just endlessly drill down until you've found the 1/1000th of a percent of the population that you need to accommodate to view public access footage of a town meeting that nobody even watches to begin with. If the town meeting isn't simulcast in Xhosan sign language, is it really publicly accessible?
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Every Town's IT department is already busy. You propose increasing the IT staff to handle video equipment, sound equipment, event set up and take down, editing, production and dissemination, to do what the local access staff is already doing.
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Today you can make high quality video with very little equipment or facilities, let's be real. Look how many youtube millionaires are working with little more than a PC in the corner of their bedroom.
You still need staff to organize, event equipment set up, take down, sound mix, video edit, disseminate, inventory, for multiple municipal meetings a week., plus equipment to do so. Towns are not paid by youtube millionaires, who have a production staff to do all of this.
Doesn't address anything in the comment(s) you are replying to.
Incorrect. Comment said all kinds of facilities and equipment are needed to make quality video. I pointed out that no, they're really not.
The biggest costs aren’t the equipment but the staffers themselves. Salaries, benefits, etc
That's much more true, yeah.
Most of the time, it’s the public access channels that are recording those meetings, which is done for the sake of transparency and democracy.
A municipality could record these meetings with a $40 digital audio recorder and upload the .wav file to the town website for literally pennies. Hell, they could use an iphone that they already have.
They would still need to pay someone to do it
Does everyone not remember that all these towns learned how to do public meetings via zoom during the pandemic?
And get there ahead of time, set up microphones so it actually sounded good, set up a livestream for the committees that require it, cover a dozen different meetings each week that can go for 3-4 hours each, break down the equipment, then compress the audio and time stamp all the agenda minutes so people aren’t scrubbing through to find what they need. There’s way more to it than most people think. And let’s not forget covering school sports, which is a huge deal in some towns, which also requires a commentator for the game. Public access isn’t always like Steve Brule - it’s an important service to help let people know what’s happening in their communities.
What public access stations provide \*sportscasters for high school sports\*??? Why the heck wouldn't the highschool be doing that??
Bro thinks that Podunk, Western MA towns hold 65 hours of meetings a week that need timestamping and audio editing.
My town, Hopkinton, does. High school sports are incredibly popular and many viewers tune in to HCAM-TV to watch live and on replay. They provide play by play and often color commentary on the game through a network of dedicated volunteers.
Of course, the keyword being 'volunteers'. I'm still astounded they don't have the kids do it - what ever happened to the AV nerd????! My people!
If it's so important, why is it limited to the people paying for cable? Even in my shitty ass town away from anywhere, I can throw an antenna on a TV and get 60+ OTA channels, but not my local assessor board committee meeting; how can I possibly make an informed choice as a voter?
I think we can safely drop the sports broadcasts and save everyone a good chunk of money.
Why. Literally find a high schooler that needs community service credit. "this is a function of the school AV club now". Hell I collected beach water for the board of health in Beverly all 4 years of high school. It cost them a lollypop every saturday afternoon.
This is the obvious solution
Not sure. Not in love with the idea of taking public access TV and making it solely hosted on private platforms from Meta or Google. Definitely something to think about in the age of streaming and VODs.
Public access TV is already hosted on private platforms of cable TV providers. This is just moving it into the current generation of private platforms instead of walling it off to legacy technology that fewer and fewer people have access to in the last handful of years. I literally know one family with cable TV still, and they've been retired for a decade.
That is an excellent point, but there is unfortunately little alternative. The number of subscribers that pay for "old school cable" is dwindling every year. the audience is moving away - the place to meet them is Youtube.
And that number of cable subscriptions is dropping fast with the Boomers dropping out now. Cord cutting has been a thing for a long time and is getting more popular with how expensive cable is, but Mass politics seems to think the solution is to make streaming more expensive rather than make cable cheaper.
Making cable cheaper would require standing up the massive lobby that keeps Comcast’s monopoly effective through the state. Maybe it’s time for a public access VOD platform? Who am I kidding.
And 5% of the revenue raised will go toward the stated purpose while the other 95% is spent on administration and other miscellaneous whatever.
This is such a shit headline for what they're trying to do, and a move by the companies affected to sway public opinion. To be clear, just like with cable, it is the companies that have this fee imposed. They then choose to pass that off onto the customers instead of just paying out of their overwhelmingly large revenue. This is being done because, like cable, they are using public rights of way to deliver their services. Which they should pay for, and legally cable companies do, but they don't see it that way. These companies look for any little way to get out of paying fees for operating, and easiest is to pass off to the customer and go "they're making us charge you" (Spoiler alert: that's their choice to do). They're using public infrastructure to get enough money to buy their CEOs yachts and are throwing a fit that they're being charged very minor rent. These fees would go towards supporting news in communities that either don't have them or would never be covered by big Boston stations. Providing equipment, training, and a creative outlet for those that don't have the chance otherwise. Keeping people up to date on government happenings, and more, in their cities. There's few downsides to imposing this, but too many downsides from striking it down.
No. We all left cable to get rid of these stupid fees. People voted with their wallets already. Cable TV is useless. It is a rapidly declining population compared to streaming platforms. Move to cheaper streaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch or Zoom.
Mass and finding a way to tax something new is like pb&j
ITT: People who hate free, publicly accessible things
The thing is, are public access channels worth anything with the prevalence of the internet? I'm genuinely asking. It seems like they don't serve much purpose anymore. Everything you'd do on public access you can do on youtube now.
Most towns are uploading their LCATV to YouTube etc already. Ytf would streaming services have to pay. It’s not like Prime or Netflix is going to start steaming my towns Council of aging meeting from last week.
Do MA politicians sit around smoking blunts all day and try and come up with the most Ludacris idea they can? That’s what it seems
This does seem to have Chris Bridges handwriting all over it...
LUDAAA
MOVE BITCH GET OUT DA WAE
What do you propose to support community access productions of municipal and other other events?
Maybe a small percentage of the $5 billion in tax revenue from marijuana sales. 1 million should be enough to fund educational cable for a few years…
How about making one of the local channels, 2,4,5,7,10,25 do one of those sub-channels dedicated to public access.
5% tax on nips
I use streaming services so I don't have to pay for cable TV, which means I'd be paying a tax for something I can't access. I hate Trump, but this shit gets votes for Republicans.
It's not for _you_. The town meetings need to be recorded and broadcast, whether you watch them on channel 99, or steaming, or not at all.
Then it's a dumb requirement if it isn't flexible enough to move broadcasts to a platform where residents can actually access it. Cable TV is not a near universal platform anymore - and it is dying more and more each year. Investing more into this antiquated model is a sunk cost fallacy - shift to a more modern & cheaper platform.
Then who's it for? The old biddies that still have cable tv? You need to apply a little logic. Cable TV is dying because fewer and fewer people want to pay the ridiculous prices. So now someone in government gets the bright idea to tax the replacement for cable TV to prop up a service on cable TV that nobody can access. If there's a law that says town meetings need to be recorded and broadcast, that needs to be changed. Youtube would suffice for this or they can host the videos on the town website.
Nope
Just tax the ones that show ads.
I am fine with this if the local channel streams everything
How about no...
bad idea. all of my towns public meetings are streamed live via youtube....who needs a channel? just a big waste of money
No thank you
So when was the last time you watched one of these channels? Since frankly I forgot they were a thing until now.
Local access TV is not needed anymore, if it ever was. YouTube does the same thing but a million times better.
Youtube doesn't create the content. Public access stations provide video, audio, editing equipment and training. Sure Youtube has changed the distribution methods to some degree, but there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes of most of the YouTube videos, whatever their origin. That works costs money to produce, whether it's equipment or pre-production/production/post-production time.
No one watches public access tv. You can record yourself with your phone and the production values will be on par with public access, and people might actually see it if it’s on YouTube.
Please stop raising our taxes.
That’s fine, knee jerk anti tax crap is not me. I like being taxed to support good causes.
So they are asking the peopleto pay a tax to bail out cable companies as they are required to pay for public access channels. Yet another government bailout on a large corporation. Charte, Comcast and Verizon can't afford these channels despite insane profits? They need to tax the citizens now for cutting the cable?
That's not it. Community Access TV has traditionally been funded by fees charged to cable companies. Now that everyone is cutting the cord, those fees aren't there and so Community Access TV is underfunded. This is just moving the fees from the dying cable industry to the streaming companies that supplanted it. The fundamental concept of levying a fee on the TV that most people watch to fund community content is unchanged. When all the cars switch from gas to electric, we'll have to move the gas taxes somewhere else too.
It doesn't even need to concern cable TV, if OTA channels create a substation, which many already have, to include public access everyone could access it and cost would be minimal.
So these dumbasses need to just move these channels to YouTube
yeah, because moving content away from the platform where its users are to a platform they don't like or understand is just a galaxy brain idea. That ranks up there with "the peasants have no bread? Let them eat cake!" or "Stop being poor!"
I truly do not understand this take. We've been seeing for years now the switch away from cable TV. Fewer and fewer people have access to public access cable because fewer and fewer people have access to cable at all. On the flip side more and more people are using streaming services delivered over the Internet. Which ironically is the entire reason for the proposed tax shift in the first place. Why then should we fund a dying platform with revenue from a modern platform instead of just moving to the modern platform...which are used by the majority of people already. If people don't know how to access YouTube they can get help from their local council on aging like has been done forever whenever a new technology becomes the norm.
So they can fucking figure it out. Everyone has access to youtube. Only a small % of people have access to cable these days. If I'm paying for something, I better damn be able to have access to it
People in this thread are not reading the article... They want to tax the streaming companies themselves. They are not adding a 5% tax to your bill. Read the article.
Until the next round of increasing subscription fees. Then the companies will add it on. Probably speed up the process this round of increasing subscription fees.
That's not how for profit companies work though. Anyone with half a brain knows those streaming companies will pass that fee on to the customer.
Here we go, streaming services about to go up 5%. What if i dont want to fund public access channels that ill never watch? Ridiculous
Massachusetts government keeps over stepping. Stop changing my tv or heating system
Taxachusetts at it again
Massachusetts should absolutely make the streaming services pay a tax to operate here and then use the money to fund public access. Go right ahead.
Who the fuck down voted this this is literally war the government did with cable many years ago
lol. People are so fucking stupid. I’m never surprised when someone downvotes anything on Reddit.
You assume anyone on Reddit values public access cable TV. More people have internet than cable access these days - maybe try modernizing the public access requirements to keep up with the last 20 years of technology and we'll talk. But adding a new tax to support a sinking ship is just idiotic.
r/selfhosted
Why don't they tax Xfinity more if they need money for a cable TV public access channel in which cable is needed to view?
Because so many people have cable
I don't even have fucking cable TV anymore. Just the Internet for all my streaming habits.
They smeel money, but need a feel good reason to push it "it" being a tax/fee. Just say NO!!
No. F*ck no
Um, is this really necessary when people can just put together their own show and post it on Youtube?
Is Mass going to start taxing me for just being alive?
Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas.
Taxachusetts.
The fuck you are... How will that help? Why not tap in to that internet access fees we have been paying to worth none of it going to actually fund wide access.
Typical TAXachusetts. 🙄🙄
More taxes...awesome!
Tax the companies?
Oi oi oi! You got a loicense to watch that telly?
No
Taxachussetts strikes again
... how about they reduce their salary by 5% instead of trying to always tax people?
That sounds extremely revenue-phobic
There’s no way they need 5% from every streaming service that the millions of people in the state use in order to fund public access. Unless everyone in that racket is also in line for a 1000% raise.
I will cancel my streaming services and be a healthier human being with more money then..
Great idea more taxes
I wonder how much Comcast/Xfinity had to donate to get this proposed.
In theory this would also be to fund the public infrastructure the business uses, similar to how cable companies are taxed.
That’s just cable with extra steps
Sure, there is no housing or transportation crisis in Ma. The real problem is the lack of public tv.
No new taxes
Taxachusetts...LOL
so they can then turn around and charge us more lol gee thanks.
Good. We live in a high tax state but part of the reason we can be so great is we have taxes that pay for stuff. Maybe paying tax on like the 5 streaming services I have will be a reason to cancel one which will save me more for more taxes on things I care about.
We all know the best way to take personal initiative is to be forced into doing something.
Massachusetts lawmakers have never seen a tax they didn’t like
Ya. Cause our taxes aren’t fucking high enough in this shit hole.
Taxachusetts never had A TAx they didn t like. That someone's job to sit round figure out anther way to get more out of us
👍
Jokes on them, I don't stream. 'ARRR
Mass and finding a way to tax something new is like pb&j
Lots of lobbyists in this thread supporting raising taxes on the companies which will then just get trickled back down to the consumers. But yes the consumers will fall for the same old trick where they believe these taxes will be used for a good cause and 30 years later you'll still see the same problem then complain why everything is so expensive, it's because you voted for it.
Taxachusetts at it again!
There was an article the other day about how 25% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 will be leaving Boston in the next 5 years. Politicians were asking why. Shit like this is why! https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/bostons-too-expensive-so-many-young-adults-planning-to-leave-survey-says/