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disabilities, "Disability Viewpoints," that has been produced at CTV North Suburbs for 15 years. <br />Losing five SD channels will severely impact how many of these locally produced programs will <br />be cablecast in prime time. Difficult choices will have to be made as to whether, for example, <br />"Disability Viewpoints" will be shown over the "Tale of Ten Cities." It will also impact the <br />availability of discrete educational channels for the three school districts as they are forced to <br />all share one channel. With all of the PEG channels being moved into a digitally compressed <br />technology, there is no question that Comcast cannot claim bandwidth scarcity. Rather, it is the <br />company's desire to reduce the availability of PEG programming in order to allow it to add <br />more commercial programming services for which it can charge subscribers. <br />But community media and CTV North Suburbs is more than programming. <br />The Youth Media Program at CTV North Suburbs had 161 participants in 2013. These <br />high school students produced 64 programs and contributed 350 volunteer hours to cover the <br />"Night to Light MN" at the Guidant John Rose Oval tree lighting ceremony in Roseville, the <br />Mounds View Community Theatre production of "Les Miserables," the North Oaks Vintage <br />Baseball Association baseball game, and the Roseville Area High School dance recital. The goal <br />of the Youth Media Program is not to create professional videographers, although some may <br />pursue that career, but to give them opportunities to use their academic studies in real life <br />situations and to develop life skills such as team work. <br />In a similar effort, two years ago CTV North Suburbs partnered with the Roseville Adult <br />Learners Program at the Fairview Community Center to provide video production training for <br />their students, all of whom are immigrants learning English as a second language. There were <br />12 students the first year, and this past year we had 34. As with the Youth Media Program, the <br />goal is not to train professional videographers, but to support their English language training <br />and to give them the tools to tell their own stories. <br />The Youth Media Program and the classes for the Roseville Adult Learners Program are <br />also important for helping those who sometimes perceive themselves as outsiders, whether in <br />the high school culture or in the American culture at large, to find a way to fit in and learn to <br />express themselves. <br />The Staff Report and RFRP laid out a well-reasoned needs assessment for the number <br />and type of PEG channels. The only additional requirement in the RFRP regarding PEG was a <br />move to simulcasting the current SD channels in HD. Considering digital compression <br />technology, the NSCC believed that the Staff Report and RFRP would have essentially not <br />required additional bandwidth but rather used less than the analog bandwidth used by the <br />NSCC/NSAC a year or so ago. Comcast's proposal would use less than 6 MHz of capacity, far <br />less than the 48 MHz of capacity in the current franchise agreement, according to CBG <br />Communications, Inc. <br />C� <br />