NORTH BEND — Coos County viewers looking to make a stronger connection to the local arts scene won’t have to leave their living rooms to do so, if the city of North Bend supports an area television station’s effort to start up a new channel.

Officials from Coos Bay-based PEG Broadcasting Services Inc., which records and televises governmental meetings on Channel 14, plan to take up a public access channel dedicated to arts and education, said Don Van Dyke, the president of PEG Broadcasting.

“There’s just tons of things we could cover and we’re talking about the whole county, not just North Bend or Coos Bay,” Van Dyke said.

He added he plans to feature local school bands, debating clubs, science fairs, and shows in a variety of Bay Area theaters. “There’s a lot of talent in this area, especially among the youth, that the public just doesn’t know about.”

 PEGs — Public, Educational and Governmental — are a breed of public access channels sanctioned by the Cable Communications Act of 1984, in which local franchising authorities may require cable operators — in this case Charter Communications — to set aside channels for public, educational or governmental use.

While the station already provides the government leg of a PEG by recording city council and other governmental agency meetings and offers public access via channel 98 through its partnership with the Public Access Local Supporters, it isn’t living up to the educational part of its name.

“The ‘E’ stands for educational and we’re currently not doing that,” Van Dyke said.

He said the No. 1 reason for this deficiency is budget.

“We operate with volunteers. We are low on volunteers and we’re low on money,” Van Dyke said. “It’s been part of our charter, but it has been rarely exercised.”

At the North Bend City Council meeting last week, Van Dyke asked the city to support the new channel and to renew a contract with the company for the 2008-09 fiscal year. North Bend currently has a franchise agreement with Charter, where the cable operator has agreed to provide a channel for education and government programming. Adding the channel to the city’s current franchise agreement with Charter would cost neither the city nor viewers money, unless the city were to accept a grant on behalf of the PEG for equipment, Van Dyke said. He added North Bend would own the channel.

City Administrator Jan Willis said that if the city decided to pursue the grant, Charter would begin recovering money by charging viewers.

“If we do that we would want to hold public meetings and discuss it in a public (forum),” Willis said.

According to a letter sent to  Willis, once the channel has been granted, PEG Broadcasting will immediately provide arts and education over Charter cable, looping 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with scheduled times for each show.  

“There are many plays, concerts, festivals and recitals that we want to record to broaden the cultural life of Coos County residents,” Van Dyke stated in the letter. “It will grow from 4-hour loops of original programming to six and eight hours. We would expect that a 12-hour loop level would be reached in a year from the inauguration of the new channel.”

Following the discussion, Mayor Rick Wetherell requested a work session to discuss the possibility.

Van Dyke, who is found often behind the camera at such public meetings, later said he pursued the city of North Bend regarding an additional channel because the city has an opportunity to ask for one. He added that a number of volunteers, as well as theater groups, want to get involved in such a project.

“I think it would empower all the agencies that put on productions of one sort of another and broaden their appeal. I would expect more people (would) go to the museums, to live performances, to visit the schools,” he said.

Moreover, Van Dyke said it would be unreasonable to try to add this type of programming to channel 14 or 98, when a whole new channel would allow the ‘E’ to grow.

“If (we) do more than that, it will cut back on the availability of shows,” Van Dyke said. “To do anything else would put a crimp in what we are currently serving and the government has dictated that three channels be permitted.”

For more information about this topic or to volunteer at PEG Broadcasting, those interested can call the studio at 888-3460.