Travis County Commissioners Court
January 18, 2005
Item 16
16. Consider and take appropriate action on request from state of Texas to broadcast the house of representatives sessions of the 79th Texas legislature on tctv on Thursday of each week.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners, steven broberg here and al jackson is here with me, manager of tvtv, we are here to discuss the feesbility level of live cable cast of the 2005 house of representatives legislative sessions on tvtv, I would like to remind you that we have done this since 1987, this is a request from the Texas house to air on Thursdays only, these are the days that this -- that the city of Austin cannot show the house broadcasts because they are broadcasting their own city council meetings. Everything is as has been in the past. Session starting January 11th and going through may 31st.
>> I guess my question would be what if we have a work session that we believe is pretty important, like last Thursday, and the legislative session is really just one of those -- sometimes they are kind of like congress on but not on, see what I'm saying. If they are discussing public school finance, I would think it would be more important than probably our work session because we wouldn't take any action on Thursday, anyway. But do we have the ability, I guess, to pick and choose like that?
>> judge, you have the ability to do whatever you want with these sessions. As we said before, you all are our first love. Commissioners court is the reason, the primary reason for tvtv. And -- tctv. There's no contract here with the house and if you would prefer to pre-empt one of the sessions that would be totally up to you.
>> don't you have a good suggestion in there that on things where the house -- the house is going to extend past and into a work session, is that our work session be done on the internal channel 12.
>> yes.
>> and that 17 broadcasts out and then we pick up in terms of the very important work session the replay, usually starting at 7:00. It's rare until you get down to the very last of the session that they are working super late like that.
>> that's true, Commissioner. And again, in fact, that is -- that is the normal procedure anyway. That we would broadcast internally within the campus. Now, that excludes the eob and also excludes del valle.
>> excludes all of the non-downtown campus offices.
>> yeah.
>> do we think that we don't have a listing tv audience during the day on Thursday, in our work session?
>> judge, we -- there's no way for us to really know that. We don't get ratings from time warner and I would like to -- my personal feeling is that Commissioners court is our highest rated broadcast that we do. And I think that's really true.
>> well, do they have like a -- for the house of representatives, a posted agenda, say days in advance, so we will see what bills are coming up?
>> that I don't know. We could look into that and find that out.
>> see, my idea is that if -- if -- it's a little bit more subjective. But I think if I were part of the audience, it would make more sense to me. If the county thinks there's real serious business being contracted Thursday afternoon, I would want the county to be on. The other thing is that unlike the state and federal sessions, you know, ours, if we are posted for a certain item, the discussions may not be as meaningful as they should be, but there are discussions and there are -- even if we have a recess, typically it's -- it's five or 10 minutes unless we're in executive session, whereas some of those sessions really they are in session, but -- but not doing business. So I mean my thing would be to pick and choose. Now, the other thing that I'm mindful of, it looks like 75% of the work is done in may, anyway. Is there a way for us to look at a few Thursdays, see what happens? Just look at what we're doing. We would know in advance whether ours is real important. I mean, for example, I know if we have a work session Thursday of next week, we will have three items, we can look at them and try to figure out whether they are items that matter to Travis County managers and staff or whether they matter to -- to residents.
>> judge, that would be fine with us. I'm a little concerned about the logistics. When would we know --
>> we would almost need to -- a week in advance.
>> that would be great.
>> yeah.
>> by that I mean some items really are like for us internal working of county government. Other items I think impact Travis County residents a whole lot more than that. So a delayed broadcast that evening probably would suffice. The other thing, these are the kind of employees that I think -- I don't know that I would want to use my nighttime looking at it. I mean, my guess is county staff will try to work in -- and look at what we are doing anyway, but they try to -- to anticipate when a certain item that affects their department might be coming up. That's what I'm told. I think that's what most of them do. Any other -- I don't know that it's -- I mean, I'm just thinking, I don't know that I -- that I assume that whatever they are doing at the state is more important than whatever we're doing. Some of the business we conduct here I think is more important to Travis County residents than what they may be doing at that particular time.
>> is that just -- let me ask this question. I'm sorry, judge, go ahead.
>> no.
>> okay. What's the range of -- of the -- of the tv -- I mean not actv, but Travis County tv, what's the range of that? I'm just wondering, is it just for Travis County residents or how far does it go out? Because we're talking about state government that affects practically every county in the state of Texas.
>> we're currently broadcast over all city of Austin viewers and selected outside areas. Do you know the list?
>> I don't have it totally. It does not cover the entire Travis County. Just things that fall under the interlocal agreement with the city. We we did have del valle. But there's some areas in the county that it doesn't cover.
>> I would like to see us be as helpful as we can to the state of Texas. Because if they don't get on during that time period, that is going to be the one day of the week where the actions of the state legislature are requesting to be blacked out. I think there is an incredible amount of interest in what is going on there and if it's gone by anything in the past, the number of conflicts are really not very many and not very often because a lot of times they finish up their work in the morning and then they go into committees in the afternoon and that would not be part of the broadcasting. I just think that we need to do as much as we can. I would hate to see it that there's one day of the week where they could be blacked out, especially when we are trying to get stuff from the state legislature. I would like to be as helpful a neighbor as we can. As we have done in the past. Internally, people want -- if people want to watch our -- our work sessions, they can punch it up on the tv set and watch what's going on so they know when to come over here or not. It's not very much that we are asked every other year to assist and everyone else has figured out ways to assist the state.
>> is there a media source that covers the state legislature state-wide?
>> no, sir.
>> not gavel to gavel.
>> pardon me?
>> not gavel to gavel.
>> okay.
>> I don't think.
>> this is done in local jurisdictions. As it is here. Just for discussion purposes, that -- that we have pre-empted the legislative sessions in the past and we have received complaints. But just to let you all know that.
>> the house is schedule -- the house's schedule is very, very fluid. Oftentimes i'll hear from the communications director, monica mcdonald, she won't know until the Wednesday session adjourns what's going to happen on Thursday. Then she might call me --
>> basically they take it from there --
>> not really, time warner pushes a button, I have to let them know by Monday if they are going to push it on Thursday. They need leeway to program their computers.
>> if there's a person in dallas county.
>> which county.
>> dallas county, just as an example, if they are interested in seeing what the legislature is doing, some things that are going to be affecting the folks up around dallas county, what ways of following this legislative session do they have privy to? Of the media? Other than the 6:00 news or the 5:00 news or whatever affects their community?
>> to my knowledge, the house and senate make their own arrangements on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis. Just as they have come to us, they would go to whatever sources might be available in dallas county. That might be a local -- it might be a county, probably not a county, since there are so few county stations, could be a city, could be a -- could be any kind of district that would have a local television station just like here.
>> and they also have been streaming them in the past. I don't know if they are still doing that. But they did do live streaming of the sessions. As well. Even committee meetings, some of them are streamed live.
>> okay. Thank you.
>> so if we notify time warner on Monday -- well, if they are supposed to televise on a Thursday, and we believe that we can look at our work session on Friday, the week before, and we think Travis County residents ought to see what we're considering, I mean, are we able to contact the state and say we need our Thursday time?
>> we are in communications every week. With -- monica calls me, tells me what time they think they are going to start because the start times actually vary, 9:00 to 10:00, sometimes 11:00. We have always reserved the right to put our own channel on. This is a matter that we can. We need permission for you to do it, but we don't have to. We have gotten a call from your office before that said we really want to have this certain work session on, we call time warner, even on a Thursday morning tell them to leave it on us, don't switch it to the state. We don't do it that often because they like to have a schedule ahead of time, like anyone else. But -- but we have in the past made -- not an obligation to do it, allowed us to do it.
>> just because we are on delay doesn't mean we are not going to be taped. It's just are we more important live. I have to be honest to you, I'm not sure how many people are sitting by their tv's on a Thursday afternoon watching us rather than anything else that's on tv or the Austin city council for that matter. I think we have got a very specific audience and -- channel 6.
>> that's how many, six.
>> two of the people are in my office, they watch the internal channel on channel 12 and know what's going on.
>> [multiple voices]
>> how many people do we think will watch the state?
>> I think a lot.
>> [laughter]
>> judge, what are you suggesting?
>> my suggestion we make this a lot more academic if we take a week and come up with a work session schedule. As best we can for the next two, three, alternate Thursdays. We -- if we have work sessions, we do them every other Thursday anyway, so the -- when we don't do work sessions they obviously have it. The other times let's just see what we have. If we think the state business is more important, let's do it. But it makes me wonder why we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on channel 17 if it's not of value to Travis County residents. My assumption has been since we had it that the programs are important because they communicate to everyday residents what business we are conducting in their behalf, how they would be benefited or adversely affected.
>> judge, I think -- there's no doubt about that, at least not in my mind. Keep in mind, too, we are talking not just about the live broadcasts, but the repeat broadcasts as well as web streaming. So people do have an opportunity to see the -- whether it be a Commissioners court session or a work session at their leisure in their computer and just choose those items that they want.
>> replay the state programs are they just live.
>> we replay them as well.
>> it's transparent to us. We don't do anything for them. We just tell time warner to switch from this feed to that feed. It has nothing really to do with our facility.
>> I'm going to ask you. What do you all would be the most active months? If they say January, we just won't believe them. Because it never is. Baugh basically what we expect to be real, real busy, may, April, March, back it up like that.
>> in the Texas house office of the communications it's pretty straightforward about that kind of thing. It does bring up another point, though, as you've stated later in the session, there will be going even into our normal replay time. They haven't addressed whether we are going to let them have it then. They have gone until 11:00, 12:00 in may.
>> if they are doing real business, I have no problem with accommodating them. But I guarantee you that there will be some Thursdays on -- over the next month when -- in my view, they would be waiting on either the -- I mean, I guess -- doing business their way, but certainly not -- what they are doing won't be televised. You will see them talking -- what if I work on the work session agenda between now and next week. Share it with the court, at least that way we can make informed decisions. If we contact them and see if they can give us some feel for when they will be conducting business, let's go with them. I don't buy into the idea that their business is more important than ours. If it is, when they come to town we ought to ask for a financial contribution toward the cost of the channel 17 during that four-month period. Resolution number 5, let's be factual in '05. I'll put that list for your staff, put that list together on items that we need to discuss in work session over the next few months, that way we can do whatever we want to do. Okay? Let's give it a little bit more thought.
>> leave this on the agenda then?
>> we will have it back on.
>> we don't have a problem this week, because this Thursday is the presidential inauguration so the house is not conducting business this Thursday.
>> that's my point right there.
>> what?
>> we will be working on Thursday [laughter]
>> we sure will. [laughter]
>> thank y'all.
>> thank you.
>> Commissioner Sonleitner [laughter]
>> very little humor.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:11 AM