Santa Ana’s KCTY Will Go Off the Air, Lay Off Employees

Santa Ana’s television station, KCTY, has fallen victim to the city’s ongoing dispute with its cable service provider, Comcast Cablevision, and will cease broadcasting March 31, Deputy City Manager Jan C. Perkins said Wednesday.

The station’s seven full-time employees will be laid off in April.

KCTY is Santa Ana’s local government access station. It broadcasts City Council meetings and other programs of mostly local interest and scrolls government job postings, city events and weather reports between programs.

As many as 54% of Comcast subscribers--about 23,000 households--watch the council meeting broadcasts, station manager Jack Davis said.

Santa Ana has been funding the station since early 1987, after Comcast stopped making payments for local and government access programming, Perkins said. According to the city’s franchise agreement, Comcast is required to pay $468,000 annually for such programming. About $345,000 of that would have gone to KCTY this year.

Comcast, however, says the amount for local programming, along with a few other items in its contract, are excessive, and has refused to pay, asking instead that Santa Ana renegotiate the contract. The city has refused to do so, and each side has a lawsuit pending against the other.

Perkins said Santa Ana could no longer afford to pay for KCTY operations from the city’s general fund.

“We advanced the money from the general fund to KCTY before on the assumption that the city would be receiving the grant (from Comcast),” Perkins said. “But we haven’t received any (money), and there are no prospects in the immediate future to receive any. . . . We are not anticipating their voluntary compliance with the contract.”

Perkins estimated that the city spent about $400,000 keeping KCTY alive after Comcast made its last payment for local programming in October, 1986.

Station manager Davis said station employees got news of the closinglast Friday in a meeting with Allen Doby, the city’s community services executive director.

“We thought we would have until the end of the fiscal year, through June 30, but we’re just kind of running on fumes rightnow,” Davis said. “When Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare, something has to go.”

In addition to Davis, the station’s programming and production coordinators, chief video engineer, two producers and clerk will all be out of work by the end of April.

“They do tremendous, high-quality work . . . and we’re extremely sorry this action is necessary,” Perkins said. “It’s only necessary because Comcast is not honoring the contract agreement.”

Comcast attorney Maureen Whalen was on vacation Wednesday. But in an interview last month, she said there was a lot of “fat” in KCTY’s budget. “We could do more for less,” she said in the interview. “We just want to have a chance to save our customers a lot of money.”

Comcast raised its basic subscription rates from $13.50 to $17.95

this month, blaming the increase on the city’s unwillingness to renegotiate its contract. It has promised to refund all or part of the rate increase if the city reduces its demands.

If the dispute were resolved and Comcast resumed payment of the local programming grant, the seven employees could be rehired, Perkins said.

Santa Ana’s public access station, KYOU (Channel 26 in Santa Ana), went off the air for a week at the end of February under circumstances identical to KCTY’s. But after the city said it could no longer afford to keep KYOU operating, Rancho Santiago College--whose telecommunications department helps run the station--struck a deal with Comcast and received about $96,000, plus monthly payments of about $6,000, to get the station going again.