DARIEN — The local government cable-TV station Darien TV79 has transitioned to new channels this week, and the station’s managers said they hope its audience has made the switch too.
As of Thursday, Darien’s government Channel 79 had moved to Channel 1310 on the Optimum cable network and is now called DarienTV. Channel 78, from Darien Public Schools, is now on Channel 1305 as part of a series of moves involving the educational and government channels in Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, Norwalk, Westport, Easton, Redding, New Canaan, Weston and Wilton, according to a statement released by Area 9 Cable Council.
“A lot of our viewers are older. They’re not tech savvy. They still have cable,” Program Manager Jim Cameron told CT Examiner. “They rely on it. They want to watch us. We’ve had to scramble to rebrand ourselves, put the word out in the local news websites and we’re just hoping that people will be able to find us if they’re still on cable.”
Optimum’s owner, the telecommunications company Altice USA, moved the station without informing the station operators of the looming move, which was planned for Aug. 21, until late July, Cameron said. Channel 79’s all-volunteer staff learned of the move when a member of the organization happened to find a filing with the Public Utilities Regulatory Agency announcing the changes.
The lack of direct notification was disappointing, as relations between Altice and the local access channels have generally been very good, Cameron said.
Fourteen of southern Connecticut’s state representatives and senators wrote a letter protesting the “detrimental effect” of the changes and the lack of warning of them.
“Not only will these changes require rebranding — for example, Darien TV79 being changed to DarienTV — but also that these changes will create confusion amongst viewers. According to Jeff Boehme, Wilton’s Area 9 Cable Council representative, studies have shown that any kind of change in channel positions are detrimental and disruptive to viewers,” the letter states.
“This is particularly concerning in light of the fact that you have burdened the stations with broadcasting this changing of channels, with Optimum merely providing notice of this change to customers through their billing statements, which already contain an excess of information and small print,” the letter added.
Altice answered with a letter from Chris Bresnan, vice president of government affairs at Optimum, defending the changes.
“The change in channel location for the PEG [Public, Education, and Government access] channels in question has been carefully designed to enhance our customers’ experience by placing all PEG content within a dedicated and easily accessible channel block in the 1300s,” Bresnan wrote.
Optimum will tag all of the old channels with notices regarding the move and the stations’ new locations for 60 days — twice the typical amount of time, Bresnan wrote.
Now rebranded as DarienTV, the PEG organization has spread to multiple platforms like YouTube, Facebook and other social media for years now, Cameron said.
“Many of the stations, I won’t say most, have been smart enough and followed this trend as we have and migrated their signal to other platforms. You can watch DarienTV on everything except your microwave oven, and we’re working on that,” Cameron joked. “We want to put our signal where people are.”
“Our mission is to promote participation in democracy, to get people who live in this town to be engaged with their town government,” he added, “and anything that the cable company does to make that more difficult is really disappointing, because that’s why we do what we do.”