Take a look , go ahead, the image is stuck right now, it’s a replay of the Historic District committee. Tell me it’s Comcast that is to blame. Tell me why the sound still cuts out, the screen goes blank or why a rustling paper drowns out an important point being made at a meeting. Tell me why after all these years we still are having issues with knocked technology. You pay for this in your cable bill and you should be demanding that it get fixed.
Published on
1/16/2009 15:02
Update 9/17/14
Nothing has changed. I have several posts of this nature going back many years, this one with Andy Swanson’s reply is typical of the others. I do call, I do text and there are still issues and its time to fix it . This Town will be discussing huge projects that require all of its citizens to be informed prior to a vote. The deliberations of public officials and citizen committees should be complete and accessible and without these constant problems. The time for excuses is over in my view.
Fix it.
Mike
The Exeter Town Crier 
I took a quick look around this place and see you are still relying on hearsay, rumor and outright disinformation as the basis for some of your rants. Nice work. Then again, you called my office at the time of the outage you mention here. I informed you that Comcast had been notified and was aware. You did fail to mention this. In fact, Comcast technicians arrived at the broadcast point just 10 minutes later and after some trouble shooting, they replaced the modulator.
Neither you or any other viewer called Comcast to mention that there were problems with the signal so either no one was watching or they thought the problem was with EXTV’s equipment.. One hundred percent of EXTV’s equipment is less than 2 years old and is then plugged into the 30 year old network supplied by Comcast. Last summer we lost signal four times because someone switched off a piece of equipment hanging on a pole near the corner of Spring street. If you are outraged, you should be and it would be a good thing if you and your fellow outraged viewers showed up for the last Ascertainment hearing and get on the record as saying so.
I have taken the time to see some other meeting productions in the area and found the same number or more glitches in their productions often with much lower picture, sound and title quality. Our citizens and board members are not professional speakers and often do not speak to the microphone, they fiddle with the microphone stand, they make loud scratching sounds with their writing implements and often rustle their papers but I am not convinced they do this to purposely interfere with your ability to hear what they are saying. Still, if anyone knows an audio engineer familiar with productions like ours, I would be eternally grateful if they could send one my way for a few hours. I have a couple of ideas and you will likely see them implemented in 09.
You are correct in pointing out that the money you pay for EXTV services is paid on your cable bill, it is right on there as a line item. What you probably don’t know is that you are paying just 20% for this line item compared to what cable subscribers in most towns are paying, even towns that offer no local channel at all. Sure EXTV has problems to address and in most of them would not be cured by just throwing cash at them, short of hiring a professional television crew which would be overkill. We endeavour to improve and learn from our mistakes and by my observation, we have passed the level being produced by our local peers and will be looking for new benchmarks in the future.
Three years ago, the voters in Exeter approved the airing of Public Access programming and over the last year and a half it has been part of EXTV’s regular fare. There was no money attached to this and it has left a gap in what we offer vs. what is the norm for Public Access and that is help for local citizens to produce their own local content. Most stations can offer some equipment, training and a modest studio but EXTV is not funded to do so.
So in Exeter you are getting more and paying less, just something to think about. I don’t really mind that you voice your complaints here or that your slings and arrows are often slung haphazardly but if you are going to call me about a problem then I would appreciate that you call first and blog later. That way you know at least one person got the message.
Andy Swanson
Manager EXTV
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I guess I just assumed that the town was aware of the problem and that’s why I’ve never called to report it. I saw the same thing last week when there was some video of high school sports and it was stuck on the same photo with angry heavy metal music playing over and over.
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This blog is wide open and if anyone spots any outright disinformation please bring it to my attention. It’s simple , you simply say ‘that’s not true”. I actually make an effort to keep it light and to the point, my point.
I regularly am informed with stuff that would make your hair stand on end. I don’t post it and it’s all true. I will often post and hours later change a post to soften it. This is not some frivolous hobby for me.I am careful and think before hitting the publish button.
The Town Crier is the result of attending many public meetings and not being satisfied with the answers.I actually feel better after posting, you might start your own blog! The paper has few regular readers and the letter to the editor process is wanting.Fosters does not even cover Exeter. WMUR is weak in Seacoast coverage. My primary reason for calling Andy was to ask if the Town manager or Selectmen are using the tools at hand to inform the public . Specifically about the meals on wheels debacle. As an aside I mentioned that Don Clement had informed me that EXTV was still experiencing issues. Don has been over all week as we are in final edits on the Squamscott River movie. Premiering soon!
Andy informed that the image was stuck and did say it was a Comcast issue.Frankly that doesn’t matter much to me.
I have gone down to Selectmens meetings for years to bring attention to issues with EXTV.
My problem is they still are not fixed and the time for excuses at least for me , is past.
The last time I checked Andy was not compensated for his time spent on EXTV work, neither was Sam Bruno.I do appreciate Andy for stepping up nose to nose with me, but it’s getting old.
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