Once every ten years, Revere gets to renegotiate the deal that puts RevereTV on the air, funds the cameras in the council chamber, and decides what Comcast and RCN owe the city for the right to run wires down its streets. That decade is up, and the city is asking residents what they want out of the next one. Two focus groups are scheduled for the end of the month, and anyone who watches a council meeting from their couch, or wishes they could, has a reason to go.
The sessions
The first is Tuesday, September 29 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the City Council Chamber at Revere City Hall, 281 Broadway. The second is Wednesday, September 30 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Revere History Museum, 108 Beach Street. To reserve a seat, contact RevereTV executive director Bob Dunbar at (781) 426-9498 or by email through RevereTV.
The city describes the sessions as a chance “to learn about franchise renewal and provide their opinions regarding future services that could be available through the Comcast and RCN cable systems that serve Revere.” The formal process looks backward and forward: it reviews how the two companies performed under the expiring agreements, and it collects what residents, schools, community groups, businesses and city government want written into the new ones.
What a franchise actually buys
Cable franchise agreements are one of the few places where a city has real leverage over a large company, because federal law lets municipalities charge a franchise fee of up to five percent of the operator’s gross cable revenue in exchange for use of the public right of way. In most Massachusetts communities that money, plus separate capital grants negotiated into the agreement, is what funds public, educational and government access television: the studio, the equipment, the staff who record and stream every council, school committee and zoning board meeting, and the channel that carries high school graduations and the parade.
The agreements also set customer service standards, the number of access channels, whether meetings must be carried in high definition, whether the operator must extend service to new buildings, and how complaints get resolved. Once signed, the terms are locked for a decade. That is why the focus groups matter now and not in 2028.
The problem every access station has
The catch, and the reason Revere framed its sessions around “the future of cable service, RevereTV, community media, and technology” rather than just cable, is that franchise fees are calculated on cable television revenue, and cable television subscriptions have been falling for more than a decade. Households that watch everything through a streaming app pay nothing into the local access fund, even though they may watch the council meeting on RevereTV’s YouTube channel. Streaming services are not covered by the franchise system at all.
Access stations across the state have watched their funding shrink as a result, and cities have responded in different ways: negotiating larger up-front capital grants while subscriber counts are still meaningful, shifting some access costs to the general fund, or trimming coverage. The Legislature has considered bills that would require streaming services to contribute, and none has passed. Revere’s negotiators will be working inside that reality, and what residents say they want, live streaming of every board, Spanish-language programming, a youth media program, more coverage of Revere High sports, tells the city what to fight for with whatever money the next agreement produces.
Why Chelsea and Winthrop should pay attention
Every community in the area runs on the same clock with the same two companies. Chelsea’s own agreements with Comcast and RCN, which fund the city’s public access station, come up on their own ten-year cycle, and Winthrop’s WCAT is in the same position. The concessions Revere wins or fails to win in this round become the template the operators point to next door. A resident of Chelsea who wants to know what the city could ask for in its next renewal could do worse than sit in the back of the room on September 30.
How to prepare
The most useful thing a resident can bring is specific. Which meetings do you watch, and how? What could you not find? Did you have a service outage, a billing dispute, or a construction problem with Comcast or RCN, and how was it handled? Do you want the schools to have a studio? Do you want Revere High football streamed? The city is collecting exactly that.
Sources: City of Revere, Mayor’s Updates, September 8, 2026; federal Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, 47 U.S.C. 542 (franchise fee cap); general background on Massachusetts PEG access funding. Photo: Revere City Hall, by Daderot via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.