The town entered into a contract for the cable television franchise in the Town of Bow on July 1, 2011. That contract has now expired and the Town Manager is negotiating with Comcast as to whether the contract should or would be renewed and, if so, on what terms. Revenue from the contract is available with up to 5% of the franchise gross receipts from Bow with certain adjustments. Whether or not this makes sense depends on what has been happening in Bow with the old contract.
The 47-page contract contains in Exhibit E an annual report that is to be filed with the town. That report by Comcast would include customer service statistics such as the number of reports of system outages and the response time for such outages.
The annual report also requires Comcast to produce a summary of written complaints and a description of the resolution of those complaints.
After meeting with Manager Stack the Bow Times requested copies of those last five years of reports but Mr. Stack responded on August 2 that there have been no such filings and he will now attempt to obtain them. Section 9.13 of the Comcast contract with Bow says that Comcast would meet annually with the Board of Selectmen if they so requested it and that the company would submit the annual report on the anniversary dates of the contract. None of that has happened to date.