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An Asbury-centric cable television station could be on its way to TVs around the city, as the council officially formed a cable television advisory committee at its meeting on Dec. 5.

The council has not yet selected the committee’s nine members. They will likely pick members at the next meeting on Dec. 19, according to John Kaplow [pictured above], a city volunteer who has helped to implement the committee. Kaplow has applied for a spot on the committee but it is up to the council to pick the members, he said.

“I’m really looking forward to this,” Deputy Mayor John Loffredo said at the Dec. 5 meeting. “It’s been coming for a long time.”

The new cable station could be up and running as soon as next spring, Kaplow said in a previous interview.

Kaplow got the ball rolling to form a commission when he moved to Asbury Park about five years ago, he said. Based on Federal Communications Commission [FCC] guidelines, every municipality is entitled to one or two television channels from each cable provider, free of charge.

Technicians from the city’s two cable networks, Cablevision and Verizon, have installed cable boxes in a makeshift studio on the second floor of City Hall [pictured above]. The channel will likely start out with text-only bulletins, and could expand to include broadcasts of council meetings.

City attorney Frederick Raffetto created the resolution establishing the committee based on information he pulled from other municipalities with cable advisory committees, including Freehold, Maplewood, Plainsboro and others.

The committee’s nine members will be appointed by the council for three-year staggered terms.

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