A state proposal could gut how residents watch public school school and Town meetings on cable TV. The public is invited to weigh in before Feb. 27, 2026 deadline.
A little-noticed state regulatory proposal could quietly change — and weaken — how residents of Greenwich follow local school and town government decisions on television.
A petition now before the CT Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA Docket 25-09-07) would scrap the long-standing town-by-town local TV model and replace it with a regional cable channel that mixes meetings from multiple towns together on the channel.
In plain English: instead of turning on Greenwich’s local cable channels 78 and 79 and seeing your school board or town meeting, residents would have to sift through programming from as many as ten different towns to find what matters to them.
Supporters of the current system say that’s a recipe for fewer viewers — and less transparency.
“People watch local meetings because they’re local,” said former Selectman Drew Marzullo, President of Greenwich Community Television “Once you turn town government into regional background noise, people stop paying attention.”
Today, Greenwich’s meetings are carried on dedicated local channels on Optimum cable and funded through a system run by the Area Nine Cable Council, funded by cable subscriber fees. The model has allowed residents to easily follow:
• Board of Education meetings
• Budget workshops
• Planning, Zoning, Board and Commission hearings
• Special town meetings
Currently Greenwich’s two Optimum cable channels, 78 (educational) and 79 (government), are run locally and funded through the Area Nine Cable Council, a volunteer group.
The proposed change would hand control of local access programming to a private out-of-area company, Nutmeg, and combine meetings from across Southwest Connecticut into shared channels.
Local officials and educators worry this would:
• Make school and town meetings harder to find
• Reduce parent and resident engagement
• Reduce funding of about $16,000 a year for Greenwich’s cable stations
• Dilute accountability at the local level
The public still has a chance to weigh in — but the clock is ticking.
The deadline to submit public comments is Friday, February 27, 2026.
Comments must reference PURA Docket 25-09-07 and can be submitted by email to PURA at [email protected]