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Weather radar back on local programming
By Stephanie Flemmons, Staff Writer
The Plano Independent School District (PISD) and the city of Plano created a partnership to bring back the 24-hour weather radar Doppler service on Time Warner Cable’s channel 98.
This service came into effect May 29 and will broadcast on all Time Warner basic cable services.
PISD Superintendent Doug Otto said the city received numerous requests about the weather radar service. He said the city contacted the PISD and asked if they would be willing to give up one of their channels in order to allay all of the requests.
PISD’s communications coordinator Nancy Long said the district gave up its staff channel, but kept the community channel, which is on 99. She said the city approached the district and asked for support. She said together they approached Time Warner with their idea, which was immediately approved.
Long said the staff channel posted news announcements related to PISD employees, but she said a lot of the information was also run on the community channel. Long said there is also a staff section available on PISD’s Web site where the public can also obtain information.
Plano’s city manager Tom Muehlenbeck said city staff asked the PISD because it was the only government channel the city felt could be eliminated.
“I think it’s excellent that we made this happen, because this was something Plano had for many years,” Muehlenbeck said. “We’ve been working to bring it back for some time.”
Gary Underwood, Time Warner’s director of communications, said the 24-hour weather radar channel was not a part of Time Warner’s analog line-up when the company came to the area in August of 2006. He said residents who were equipped with Comcast’s basic cable would have started seeing the change in the line-up in October.
Underwood said Comcast originally had 19 public education government (PEG) channels available, but condensed their line-up in order to make more channels available, like the history and discovery channels. He said now Time Warner offers six PEG channels on the basic tier package and one on digital.
“We’ve added a number of channels and restructured the line-up, now offering the same channels in Plano as we do in all of North Texas,” Underwood said. “We have an abundance of weather channels available on the basic tier channels.”
Spokesperson for Verizon, Bill Kula, said Plano is also equipped with six PEG channels on Verizon’s FiOS T.V. Verizon’s line-up still includes the 24-hour Doppler radar on channel 49.
“The city of Plano has the discretion to place content of their choice on any of their PEG channels,” Kula said.
Otto said now that the PISD has only one channel, the district can focus on putting quality programming on that channel instead of spreading it out between two channels.
“The weather alert channel benefits the school district, parents and all citizens,” Long said. “The PISD is all about being of service to the community, which is why we were able to make this happen.”
Contact Stephanie Flemmons at sflemmons@acnpapers.com
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