Ephrata cable agreement presented to city council

EPHRATA — The Ephrata City Council held its first reading of a new 10-year agreement with Northland Cable to provide service to the city.

The agreement is largely unchanged from the city’s last agreement with the cable provider, City Administrator Wes Crago said. The city receives between $27,000 to $30,000 a year from the company.

City staff asked the community for input before entering into negotiations, according to a city report. Most of the comments focused on having additional programs.

“Northland Cable has some struggles with competition with satellite systems. It’s a little bit of a changing world right now,” he said. “We are considered small market, which makes the proportional costs for programming much higher than what they can attract in a larger community.”

The additional costs make it hard for the company to afford purchasing additional programming, Crago said.

“They are rolling out a lot of HD programming for free initially, and they will be making some of that available. Those were one of the main concerns that citizens have,” he said. “They also indicated their quality assurance team and their responsiveness to complaints is something they’ve enhanced significantly over the last couple of years.”

Crago added there are problems with people having trouble with their cable, but not reporting it to the company.

“By their reckoning, the improvements they’ve made to the system, there should not be end user issues with quality of signal and sound, but there can be between the TV and the cable underground,” he said.

Councilmember Ben Davis questioned whether the company proved it couldn’t afford additional programs.

Crago said the company did show staff the amount Northwest Cable News wanted to charge when Northland Cable decided not to carry it, adding the company’s profits were slim.

Staff plans to endorse the agreement at the Dec. 16 meeting when the council can choose to approve it, Crago said.