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]
On Friday afternoon First Selectman Camillo issued a statement in support of local cable channels, that reads in part:
“I am opposed to a petition that is currently before PURA at the State level that threatens to eliminate local television programming in Greenwich and other municipalities and instead replace it with a private entity that will offer regional services and deny residents the Greenwich-focused coverage we currently have.
GCTV Channel 79 on the Altice cable system is an important part of our local government here in Greenwich. It helps keep people informed and provides needed transparency and accountability by airing meetings of the Board of Selectmen, Board of Estimate and Taxation and the Representative Town Meeting.
I believe the proposal currently before PURA would reduce visibility and discoverability of our local board and commission meetings. This would also have a financial impact to our local television operations in Greenwich as it would result in a loss of close $8,000 in annual funding.
This is something I believe would lower Greenwich resident engagement with local governance and I am strongly opposed to losing local control over our programming priorities and responsiveness.
We do not want to see GCTV taken away and replaced by a private, out-of-town company called Nutmeg which would combine meetings from across Southwestern Connecticut into a shared channel.
I oppose this effort to take away what has worked so well, and for so long, in Greenwich and I am urging residents to speak out as well. Comments will be accepted from the public by PURA until Feb. 27.”