WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

Hits: 0

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. From The Office of the District Attorney. December 8, 2003: Westchester County Attorney District Jeanine Pirro reminds holiday shoppers to be careful when buying online. Although the Internet provides shopping convenience, the high volume of online purchases during the holidays gives cyber-criminals an opportunity to gain access to the credit card numbers and personal information of unsuspecting consumers.

DA Pirro says, “Internet customers should be particularly careful this holiday season. This year, there are reports of scam artists sending unsuspecting online customers fraudulent emails asking them to provide, verify or correct personal and financial information including social security numbers, addresses, passwords and/or account numbers. The emails appear to originate from official financial institutions or businesses, but they are in truth a scam to obtain personal information in order to commit identity theft. In the past, scammers have attempted to obtain this confidential information over the telephone. Now, these same criminals are using the Internet to commit old crimes in new ways.”

Most legitimate online merchants will email customers to confirm purchases and shipping information. DA Pirro says beware of Internet criminals who often pose as legitimate online merchants by asking customers to confirm their credit card number or other personal information, often claiming such information is needed for security reasons or to receive a prize.

Legitimate businesses will not ask customers to provide confidential information either over the telephone or via email.
Consumers are urged to protect themselves by following these simple steps:

1. Don’t respond to emails asking to re-verify your personal information. Immediately alert the bank, credit card company, financial institution or Internet provider regarding the solicitation.

2. Cancel any credit card accounts that you suspect may have been tampered with or opened fraudulently using your personal information and request a copy of your credit report to identify any unauthorized activity.

3. If you believe that you may have unwittingly been a victim of an email scam print out and save all of the documents that you received or sent. Request and review your credit history reports carefully and ask that a fraud alert be placed on your credit history reports. To obtain credit reports contact a credit reporting agency:
Equifax – 1-800-525-6285
Experian – 1 -800-297-3742
Transunion – 1-800-680-7289
4. If you have been victimized immediately contact the Westchester District Attorney’s Office (914) 995-3303 or your local police department.

Hits: 0

WPCNR Stage Door. Review By John F. Bailey, From Row M-110, White Plains Performing Arts Center December 7, 2003: Walk right in! Take your seat, Mr. and Mrs. White Plains. The new inviting, gently curved stage has a piano, bass, skins, sax and trumpet stand. The bass drum sports a stylish “A.” You hear a snaredrum rolloff, a stately cadence the opening procession, and complete with umbrella, Andre’ De Shields and his “All Stars” turn the new WPPAC into the old Savoy Ballroom in South Chicago with the Ghost of Louis Armstrong Past “in session.”

 

The contagious good feeling, toe-tapping sultry music Louis Armstrong radiated and imparted to millions over his sixty years creating jazz with his cornet, Miss Selma, “for the applause” (as Andre’ De Shields puts it so simply towards the close of Ambassador Satch),  is back in a one-man tour de force playing a gig on Main Street and City Place. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

Mr. De Shields, star of  Broadway’s The Wiz, Ain’t MisBehavin’, Play On! and The Full Monty,  has Mr. Armstrong’s style, swagger, stutter step and panache’. Matching him in spirit, spunk, style and talent is the sensually smouldering Ms. Stacie Precia in her debut in the show, playing Mr. Armstrong’s four wives.  De Shields and Precia bring a legend to life, and tell of a way of life, robustly, ribaldly recreating that old Armstrong alchemy.

 

Satch blends clips of the star at the end of his life grousing about modern “cool critics” to a messenger in his dressing room, or to his white piano player trying to get “Old Pops” back on stage, with Mr. De Shields’ own silky, soulful rendering of Armstrong classics that put the “bl” in Blues.  Mr. De Shields puts the black and the blue into Black and Blue, a very moving delivery and the good news into What a Wonderful World.  Ambassador Satch tells it the way it was for Louis, tells us what jazz is, “like a life, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” and “it feels like life.”

 

Packs an Ethnic Wallop

 

In an audience where there was only one black person, “white” White Plains saw a raunchy, unapologetic reflection of a black performer entertaining a white world, and from time-to-time, how Mr. Armstrong felt about doing that.  There are very bad, but funny jokes, performer-to-audience repartee and “Armstrongnicity.”

 

Ambassador Satch’s clever, blunt writing,  shows us just a little of the trouble Louis Armstrong has seen, in Act One.  However, Ambassador Satch does not sugarcoat the pill. The audience joins in singing chants on the street when Mr. Armstrong was a kid “with bottlecaps on his bare toes,” tapdancing on the street in the New Orleans redlight district,“Storyville,” to The Bucket’s Got a Hole In It.  Here the audience sings along and gets into the spirit.  

 

Or go to the superbly textured “Mississippi-slow” tune of When It’s Sleepy Time Down South. Mr. De Shields muddies the lyrics in vintage Satchmo slur, while his “new All-Stars” back him up with the pronounced intermingling of parts that liberated artists and gave birth to the jazz.

 

Actor, Singer, Raconteur, De Shields Works the Audience, Wins Them Over.

 

De Shields’ singing voice does not have the vintage Armstrong rasp. He’s more of a silky, mellow Billy Eckstein, but that is no matter. The man has range, he has style, he can “scat-talk,” he can “bubalabogalaboo” (if you don’t know what I mean by that, you will know when you see the show), and he can dance, with “that glide in his stride.”

 

De Shields delivers the payload the way Louis Armstrong entertained. He creates the sheer enthusiasm and joy Louis did, pulling you in spite of yourself to share in the obvious joy he is having performing for you, (if you can dig that sentence, brothers and sisters).

 

As one gentleman in his eighties said to me, who said he saw Louis Armstrong perform in person, “Mr. De Shields is not Louis Armstrong,  he evokes “the nostalgia” for the artist.”

 

Fetching Foil Fills Four Roles

 

Mr. De Shields has a feisty foil in his co-star, Stacie Precia. The earthy smoulderess delivers the spitfire of Daisy Parker, Armstrong’s jealous first wife. She articulates with control and charm, the domineering careerist, Lil Harding. She has the most fun when she slinks salaciously and irresistibly as the seductive, captivating “goldigger, Alpha Smith (wife # 3). Then switches completely to establish the demure Lucille Wilson in Act Two.  Ms. Precia displays distinct camillionability that one viewer I spoke with did not realize the four wives were played by the same person. Play them she does. They were all strong women. I liked them all. Louis had taste.

 

She handles black dialect for the prostitute Daisy, delivering an energetic mock fight with him, choreographed cleverly with Mr. De Shields to Brick House Stomp.  She reminisces in a sophisticated style of Lil describing how Louis first looked when he got to Chicago, and she remade him, managed his money, and took charge.

 

Then, for someone completely different,  changes to the glamorous and sexual Alpha Smith, captivatingly “torchy” as she belts out Why Don’t You Do Right? Don’t know what “torch” is? Ms. Precia lets you hear it, delivering this very suggestive number in a style her own that is part Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee, if you can imagine such a combination. (She also has a great cadillac walk, too.) She does another turn as Lucille, Louis’ fourth spouse, when she is introduced in a most unique way, and duets with Mr. De Shields charmingly in Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

 

The two stars click together in each romantic combination they cameo. You can feel the chemistry. In a few short lines and repartee between each pair,  the dynamics and appeals of each relationship Louis had with the four women come through. In Satch, you get four romances in one with heartbreak.

 

Five Cool Cats. 

 

Mr. De Shield’s new “All Stars,” the sidemen who recreate the sounds of  Armstrong’s bands, are very cool cats for a combo of diversity. Terry Waldo has as the elegant touch of  Earl “Fatha” Hines on piano, Ken Crutchfield is  Lionel Hampton on Drums for a night, Michel Hashim delivers the old mellow of Jimmy Strong on Soprano Sax and Tenor Sax, and David Grego on string bass and tuba  back up Mr. De Shields vocals with intricate style. Grego’s tuba solo on Rascal is virtuoso Dixieland. You won’t believe what he does with it. (Dan Block on Clarinet, Brian Nalepka on Bass, and David Grant  on Trumpet and Riley Mullins on Trumpet will also play the show on future dates.)

 

Stanton Davis on backup trumpet deserves a stand all his own for his magnificent tone, his buttery lips, his mastery of Satchmo riffs and his two hours of virtuoso Armstronging with Mr. De Shields. The band also banters well with Mr. De Shields, a very cool chemistry that embroiders the night club atmosphere. All that’s missing from this dance hall is the cigar smoke and the cigarette girls (which is against code in White Plains).

 

Mr.Waldo deserves a tip of the hat for spirited dueting with the stage dominant Mr. De Shields, holding his own in Old Rockin’ Chair in Act Two, that reprises a little vaudeville, and a lot of Mr. Armstrong’s melancholy at modern critics. The two interplay well.

 

Occasionally “The New All Stars” are a little tooooo cool and jivey, a little too Mingus, a little too jazz sounding. Nevertheless, they shine capturing the molasses sweet style solo turns that created the cacophonously seamless originality of Armstrong’s bands on West End Blues, Black and Blue and I’m Confessin’. The five bring the house down on a rambunctious, shouting, Dixieland style revenge song, You, Rascal You in Act Two.

 

Signature Song

 

Act Two, delivers a visual and musical mock: Mr. Armstrong’s hilarious parody of the cool jazz musicians of the mid-twentieth century, who were criticizing Armstrong’s style. It tells of his courage during the 1954 segregation of the Little Rock, Arkansas schools. (A fact, “Mr. Armstrong” points out that he says, “I bet you you didn’t know that,” and I did not.)

 

 Mr. De Shields is at his most reflective in Act Two letting us see the hurt inside the heart, especially when he sings Black and Blue, in a more anguished and revealing tone than the way Mr. Armstrong did it in 1928. That song is Mr. De Shield’s signature song in the show. The lyrics will haunt you as you leave the theatre.

 

A striking point Louis makes to the audience is that there’s really nothing new in music. The show pointed that out to me. I recognized the up tempo Dixieland You Rascal You as the exact melody of Chuck Berry’s 40 Days hit in the 1950s. Chuck simply changed the words from You Rascal You to “40 Days.”

 

Ambassador Satch is a dance hall, it’s a bigger-than-legend personality come back to life. It’s entertainment that reaches out from one joyous soul to yours, creating that bond between entertainer and entertainee in its purest form the way Louis Armstrong did wherever he went and entertained.

 

The Critics would Recognize this Louis Armstrong of 2003.

 

Or, as Irving Kolodin, music critic for the New York Times wrote of Louis Armstrong in 1929,

 

 He backs off downstage left, leans half-way over like a quarter-miler, begins to count (swaying as he doe) one, two, three…he has already started racing toward the rear where the orchestra is ranged, and he hits four executes a slide and a pirouette; winds up facing the audience and blowing the first note as the orchestra swings into the tune. It’s mad, it’s meaningless, it’s hokum of the first order, but the effect is electrifying. No shabby pretense about this boy! He knows what his audience will take to their hearts and he gives it to them. His trumpet virtuousity is endless—triplets, chromatic accented eerie counterpoints that turn the tune inside out, wild sorties into the giddy stratosphere…all executed with impeccable style and finish, exploits that make his contemporaries sound like so many Salvation Army cornetists. Alternately singing choruses and daubing with the handkerchief at throat, face, forehead (he perspires like a dying gladiator)…

 

The same words could be written today about Mr. De Shields’ performance, who has meticulously captured this style while keeping in character, and remaining his own actor. He is Andre’ De Shields playing Louis Armstrong.

 

You feel a sense of loss as you leave the theatre. The audience was in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and up, with about 125 persons in the 417-seat house. The few members I spoke to seemed struck by the experience. It is a different musical. They liked it. They thought it was fantastic. Many stayed afterwords to “dig” the pictures of Louis Armstrong in the Art Lobby, borrowed from the Louis Armstrong house in Corona, Queens.

 

Satchmo plays White Plains again Tuesday evening at 7 P.M, through December 21. The number of the theatre is 328-1600.

 

It is a show that makes you feel his music and his pain and be the wiser for it. At the end of this show, the audience didn’t want this afternoon to end.

 

Intermission: Kudos go to the Lighting Designer, Burke Wilmore who interplays color and patterns to transform the ornate bandstand into a time machine with very striking showcase hues that create illusions of memories and moods. Choreography by Mercedes Ellington gave the audience a spicy and naughty series of interminglings between Mr. De Shields and Ms. Precia, while demanding much of Mr. De Shield’s six foot frame with which he dazzles with his splits, tap-dances, and slides.

 

The new WPPAC stage stars itself, showing it has plenty of room to house an orchestra and still give Ms. Precia and Mr. De Shields plenty of room to dance like Fred and Ginger.

 

Jeffrey Rosenstock, Executive Director, opened the performance once again thanking the audience for being pioneers as the White Plains Performing Arts Center grows. He said “We are very grateful. You are the backbone of this theatre.” He thanked them for persevering through the growing pains, which he said, one was “enduring a parking garage without proper signage,”  (which is now in place, I am happy to report).  Mr. Rosenstock also notes the theatre is in need of volunteer ushers, if interested, do contact the theatre at 328-1600.

 

The rest rooms have “21” quality, the equal of any posh hotel, marble floors.

 

The acoustics of the theatre are very supportive of live music. The sound fills the hall, surrounds you, and reaches out to you. If you’re a musician, you are going to love performing in this hall. Louis Armstrong would.

 

 

 

 

Hits: 0

WPCNR STAGE DOOR. By John F. Bailey. December 5, 2003: Hey, guys, if you were famous and were going to be “profiled,” would you want your wife or former wives to do the remembering?

 

While you think about that, you and other White Plains theatre-goers beginning with Sunday Matinee at 2 tomorrow,  and running through December 21, will watch Andre De Shields, and the strikingly beautiful Stacie Precia (pronounced PRESHAY) in her debut playing quadruple roles, the personalities of Louis Armstrong’s four wives, talking about the jazz icon, interacting with him in key incidents of his life, and playing to the legend portrayed by Mr. De Shields.

 

Andre De Shields leads you down his “Musical Memory Lane on Main Street” entitled Ambassador Satch. First Matinee-ers Sunday at 2, will discover and hear a live quintet (“new all stars”) demonstrate Louis Armstrong jazz, the original stuff that turned a century on its ear. They will hear the music that made Armstrong the inspiration of the jazz greats of the twentieth century: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Ben Webster, Artie Shaw and countless musicians. Photo of Mr. De Shields by WPCNR StageCam.

Ambassador Satch  opens with a Sunday Matinee tomorrow at 2 PM at The Little Ingenue on City Place, recreating the four epochs of the jazz impresario’s musical and personal life, and it is “through the lens of Mr. Armstrong’s wives, that we see (him),”  Mr. Armstrong’s alter ego, Andre De Shields told WPCNR Friday backstage at the White Plains Performing Arts Center.

 

Mr. De Shields took the time before Friday afternoon dress rehearsal, script open on his coffee table, bananas (a food Armstrong was forced to eat, unloading banana boats in New Orleans in the 19-teens), black pearl cufflinks on his mirror table, tuxedo hung on a hangar nearby,  to talk to WPCNR about the jazz memoire of Armstrong he wrote with James Mirrione.  Photo by WPCNR StageCam

 

Dropping In on Louis and His Sidemen.

 

When theatergoers settle into the posh upholstery of the Little Ingenue on City Place, any evening at 8, they will drop in on Mr. De Shields as Mr. Armstrong in the process of putting together a show, with his Louis Armstrong All-Stars, De Shields explains.

 

As the audience sits in to watch the jazz great put together one more show, Mr. De Shields playing Mr. Armstrong, begins to reminisce. Theatergoers, Mr. De Shields hopes, will reminisce along with him through the prism of Ms. Precia who plays each of Mr. Armstrong’s spouses.

 

They will hear the Armstrong music that give birth to jazz played by a 5-sideman combo recreating the timeless riffs and turns that bring Mr. Armstrong’s one-and-only personality to life, covering the four periods of creativity in his life: His time in New Orleans in the 19-teens, his taking Chicago by storm in the 20s at the Savoy Ballroom, when he recorded West End Blues; his New York period, to the time when he became America’s “Ambassador to the World,” as De Shields calls him, in the 1960s.

 

I Heard Him on the Radio.

 

De Shields, of course has been a lifelong admirer of Armstrong, “because his stature has had an influence on all who have heard him.” Andre said. “Mom and Dad listened to him on the radio, which is how I got influenced by it.”

 

THE GLAMOUR SHOT: Mr. De Shields, left and Ms. Precia, right, stars of show. Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

 

De Shields said, “It was pretty obvious how he had influenced the world in his own way.” He recalled how the show Hello, Dolly!  with Carol Channing was struggling in the early 1960s when Louis recorded the title song in 1964. This reporter recalls how his gravelly delivery and trumpet made it a tune everybody was singing along with. Louis’ version became a hit record topping The Beatles’ She Loves You, Do You Want to Know A Secret?, and Please, Please Me on the on the Top 40 Charts. His recording made Hello, Dolly!  “The Producers” of its day because Louis Armstrong recorded the title song.

 

“There were endless generations of musicians who were influenced by him, De Shields related, “There wasn’t any jazz musician who did not envy his introduction on West End Blues (his legendary 1928 recording on OKEH records).” This is what lead De Shields and his Co-Writer, James Mirrione to create the show, which started as a 55-minute teaching seminar in 1993, and has now grown, then been trimmed again (since last Spring) to a two-act, slightly more than 2 hour production.

 

The Man Who Got Along.

 

Besides “Satchmo’s” (for his nickname from New Orleans days, “OId Satchelmouth”) obvious musical legacy as the creator of jazz, De Shields pointed out that what made Armstrong’s life so interesting to him to write about, was “he seemed to be everybody’s personal friend, how do you distill his style?”

 

Ms. Precia’s Roles, Reactions, Actions Reveal Anxieties of “Mr. Jazz.”

 

“We all know the sweat-beaded face, the rolling eyes, the gold trumpet, the hankerchief, but who knows the demons behind that grin?” De Shields mused, his eyes distant and sensitive. “We know his image: Simple. Happy go lucky, almost an idiot savant. His trumpet playing was not learned. What  we see in the show through the lens of his four wives, played by Stacie, is what conflict in this man’s life made him, shaped him and prepared him for this heroic destiny (of America’s Ambassador to the world).”

 

DEBUTING IN QUADRUPLE ROLE: “To know a man, you go to the people who knew him, and who better to know Louis than his four wives,” De Shields explained, “Stacie interacts with me, she narrates, (in each of her wife roles) in the four epochs. You get a vision of how he evolved in each of his four eras through the lenses of his wives.” According to De Shields, she is terrific.Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

 

Following the Man Who Created Jazz.

 

De Shields notes the show combines a revealing look at “an icon,” with the musical styles he created, from Armstrong’s “formative” years in New Orleans, to when he began in Chicago, to New York, with 19 numbers performed live reflecting the legacy and the personality. If the show is as Mr. De Shields promises, it will be a tour de force of the evolution of jazz by its pied piper.

 

The show will not have scenery. “The device of Ambassador Satch is Louis,” De Shields explains, “Through his comments. His wives’ comments. Through seeing him in the present, to flashbacks and flashforwards, you get to know the man.”

 

A Visit to Corona. A Walk-off and a Walk-on and “Satch” Was Born.

 

De Shields created the present show with Mr. Mirrione, after conducting extensive personal research at the Louis Armstrong house in Corona, Queens. A tour of the home inspired him.

 

 De Shields had not originally planned to make Ambassador Satch his signature role, but when the show was being performed in Carnegie Hall in 1993, when it was just 55 minutes long and cast for only one actor. The actor cast in the part suddenly acquired “a big time gig” as Mr. De Shields described it, and Andre had to go on stage the next day with it, and he said the role galvanized him, and lead him and Mr. Mirrione to expand the show to two actors and a band.

 

De Shields learned firsthand what Louis was like to work with from Arvell Shaw, Mr. Armstrong’s former bass player qirh Louie’s All Stars in the early 60s.  Andre worked with Shaw in Ain’t Misbehavin’ on Broadway in 1978. De Shields worked with Phoebe Jacobs, Vice President of the Louis Armstrong Foundation, and Michael Cogswell, Curator of the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College, selecting material and creating the show.

 

 

Ambassador Satch debuts in White Plains Performing Arts Center Sunday afternoon. Tickets are available for Sunday’s performance and all other performances through December 21. Curtain is at 2 PM on Sunday. For information on tickets call 1-888-977-2250, or WPPAC direct at 328-1600. Tickets are $32.50 to $45. At the December 18 staging,  Mr. De Shields will conduct a post-performance Meet-the-Artist program for youth.

 

As for the Ambassador Satch “message,” De Shields said, “My co-writer and I are happy to reveal Louis Armstrong, and to remember him as a prophet of peace.” Photo by WPCNR StageCam.

 

 

 

Hits: 0

WPCNR PRESS BOX. From Hudson Valley Express. December 5, 2003: There will be a Clinic held at East Fishkill Baseball/Softball Academy on December 21, 2003. The Clinic’s will run two (2) hours in duration and will be from 9:00 AM to 11:00AM and 12:00 PM thru 2:00 PM.  The Focus of the Clinic will be on “Hitting the Hofstra Way”.
Bill Edwards is a world renown clinician and it well worth the price of admission which is $60 per session.   For more information please call 845-223-8460 capture your spot in this outstanding Clinic.

Hits: 0

 

WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VARIETY By John F. Bailey. December 3, 2003: The Common Council authorized Mayor Joseph Delfino and Corporation Counsel Edward Dunphy to begin the process of negotiations on a new 10-year contract with Cablevision,   the city’s local cable access provider.

 

Mr. Dunphy and Frederick Strauss, Executive Director of White Plains Public Access, said they were planning on negotiating for a substantially higher percentage of revenues from the cable company, Cablevision.  Cablevision, according to the White Plains Public Access,  currently has 18,000 subscribers in the City of White Plains, a 60% penetration of city households. The current city contract, negotiated in 1995,  expires at the end of 2005, and by law the city is authorized to begin negotiations at this time, according to Dunphy.

 

Determining Our Own Fate.

 

Dunphy in his remarks to the Counsel said White Plains is one of the leading customers of Cablevision in Westchester County and is seeking to improve its present contract with Cablevision which pays the city $1,000,000 per year for the right to be Franchisee, and $100,000 a year to White Plains Public Access.

 

Mr. Dunphy advised the council that White Plains is seeking to cut their own terms with Cablevision, rather than be tied to “me-too” standard cable agreements Cablevision offers to other communities in the county without the audience of White Plains.

 

Quality Counts.

 

Council member Glen Hockley, as a result of his “Hockley Walkabouts” said he has heard numerous complaints from city residents about the quality and variety of Cablevision service in the city. Mr. Strauss said the city would be bringing up both quality of service, types of service, projected improvements and upgrades in cable technology offered by Cablevision in the future as bargaining chips and issues to be dealt with in the new contract.

 

Mayor Delfino assured the council that they would have to approve any final negotiated arrangement with Cablevision.

 

A KOUFAX AND DRYSDALE APPROACH?: Asked by Mr. Hockley, if the city was going to negotiate in consort with other communities, Dunphy, (foreground, with Mayor Delfino standing), said that was a possibility. Dunphy told the council that by cable television law, the city can negotiate a new franchise agreement only with the present franchisee, but in telecommunications law, the city would be able to negotiate with a variety of carriers, and he was looking into possibilities of that. Photo by WPCNR News.

 

Dunphy said he was seeking more than the million dollar fee presently received by the city, “at least a million-and-half,” but no figure had been settled on as a target.

 

Married to Cablevision

 

Robert Greer and Mr. Hockley suggested exploring other franchisees such as Time-Warner, because T-W, for example, had in Mr. Greer’s opinion, better programming.

 

Mr. Strauss cautioned that the city “is unable to dictate programming offered to the community. We can only inform and communicate to the cable company to get them to be more responsive. We hope to motivate them (Cablevision) in a variety of ways.”

 

The council authorized the Mayor to begin the negotiation process during the Work Session Tuesday night. Mr. Dunphy reported to the Council that the city is now marshalling resources to explore areas of negotiation, and will be traveling to Washington to seek input from federal cable regulators as to what the city can demand and expect, and is also seeking information from Cablevision.

 

Dunphy Insights into Intricacies of Negotiation and Departure.

 

In an interview after the meeting, Mr. Dunphy told WPCNR that the present contract negotiated in 1995 by Rusty Monroe, (during the Sy Schulman administration), called for White Plains to be paid 5% of the Cablevision gross revenues earned from the city. He said that is the agreement that will expire in December 31, 2005.

 

Asked if the city could not reach an acceptable agreement, what happens? Dunphy said the city could revoke the franchise, which would trigger “a hearing process” in which the city would have to justify why it was seeking to revoke the contract.

 

WPCNR asked if the city would consider a step-level contract with Cablevision, in which if certain revenue levels were achieved, or certain technological improvements added, the city revenue would be automatically increased, Dunphy said “that’s under advisement,” and ruled nothing out.

 

Queried as to whether Cablevision payments to the city had to be spent on the Public Access operations, or could be used as the city sees fit, Mr. Dunphy said he would have to check on that.

 

White Plains Is Cable-Friendly.

 

According to Gary Stukes of White Plains Public Access, Cablevision has 18,000 subscribers in the city out of 25,000 residences.

 

The White Plains CitizeNetReporter is one of those subscribers. I pay $41.25 for Family Cable, and $44.95 for their Optimum online package, $4.95 for the iO navigation package, $3.24 for remotes, and $1.95 for the YES network, plus a Franchise Fee of $2.72, a Peg Fee of  .46 and a Regulatory Fee of 5 cents. This comes a regular monthly bill of $99.97 last month.

 

If the city’s 18,000 subscribers had a package that just included the Family package, as I do, they would pay approximately $50 a month generating $900,000 a month, throw in HBO, Cinemax, MSG and other services and the bill goes up perhaps to my level, $100. With just a Family Package that is over $10,800,000 a year. With added premium networks it is more…up to $100 a month, that works out by WPCNR estimate to be $21,800,000.

 

At the $1 Million a year the city is receiving now, it would appear that “gross revenues” now are running at  $21,600,000 as a WPCNR rough estimate according to my own figures above generated a 5% return for the city of  $1,080,000 of revenue which approximates the figure Mr. Dunphy quoted last night.

 

Mr. Stukes of White Plains Public Access said that it is important to note that more than 18,000 subscribers in White Plains might have cable access through satellite dishes which bring them cable, but those dish-equipped viewers do not receive White Plains Public Access,  which includes “The Spirit of 76,” Channel 76 (Home of White Plains Week, and your other favorites), Channel 75, The Home of the Common Council and Channel 77, The Home of White Plains Schools and that other “news” station, News12.

 

Stukes added that  White Plains cable penetration through Cablevision is 60%, a penetration level that is recognized as the highest penetration level nationally. He said that New York State leads the nation in penetration, and White Plains is “at the top of the list.”