Channel Pinal Informs and Entertains County Residents

YouTube Channel Increases Access to County Programs.

FLORENCE,AZ---Residents who subscribe to Cox, Mediacom or Comcast cable can now receive Channel Pinal.

Channel Pinal is the governmental access channel for Pinal County. Funding to produce and air programming is paid for through subscriber fees that the cable operators are required to pay the County.  

When a cable company receives a franchise, or the right to serve an area, they pay a fee to the franchisor based on the total number of subscribers.  Federal regulations specify that a portion of this fee be set aside for public, educational or governmental access programming.  This money is used to pay for the cameras, computer editing programs and the equipment to transmit the signal to the cable companies—taxpayer funds are not used to fund the access channel.

“It is our goal to provide subscribers with Pinal County-produced programming that is informative and entertaining for our audience,” said Heather Murphy, Director of Communications and Public Affairs.  “We hope the programs we air will help people better understand the services of their county and local governments.”

Murphy added that Pinal County-produced programming can be found on the popular website YouTube as well.  A link to the Channel Pinal’s YouTube site is on the county’s webpage.

“YouTube is simple to use and is a cost-effective way to get our programs out there,” Murphy said.  “We are able to reach out to those residents who subscribe to satellite TV or don’t have cable.  It also gives our annual winter visitors a chance to check in on Pinal County from their summer homes.”

It is free for Channel Pinal to post their videos on YouTube.  Many other governmental organizations use the service as a means to reach their residents.  The Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of California and many cities have active YouTube sites.

Programming produced by Channel Pinal includes interviews with the Supervisors, special event coverage and video press releases.  Other sources of programming appearing on Channel Pinal include the Pentagon Channel, other municipalities’ productions and Arizona Capitol Television.

Murphy added that it has been a multi-departmental effort to get Channel Pinal on the air.

“In addition to our Communications Department, it has taken the technical knowledge of our Information Technology staff to be able to get this channel off the ground.  We are still learning the creative and technical capabilities of our production and editing equipment and the systems used to broadcast the video,” Murphy said.  “The Supervisors are supportive of our efforts and we owe them a great deal of thanks for allowing us to pursue this communications medium.”

Check out the latest news from Pinal County by logging onto www.pinalcountyaz.gov  Click on the YouTube icon on the right to begin subscribing to Channel Pinal’s videos