Written by John Mark Adkison
At the beginning of May, Harding’s campus will receive a new cable lineup and will switch cable providers from White County Cable to Campus Televideo, according to Harding’s vice president of information systems and technology, Keith Cronk.”Cable television has been provided through White County Cable ever since we have had cable television here,” Cronk said.”[Harding] was on a five-year renewable contract, the five years was up, and this time around we did not want to automatically renew it and White County Cable did not want to renew it either. It worked well from both sides.”Seeking alternate cable providers, Harding sent out Requests for Proposal to several different cable providers and found Campus Televideo, which is “the nation’s leading provider of satellite-delivered cable television and other telecommunication services to colleges and universities,” according to Campus Televideo’s website.”The process of installing the ‘head end’ equipment and equipment in the buildings should take approximately four to six weeks once Campus Televideo begins their on-campus work,” said Matthew Nunnally, Harding’s communications infrastruc- ture manager. “We have been preparing for this install for the last six months and longer to make it go as smoothly as possible once they arrive.”According to Cronk, the new single head end equipment will be a huge benefit to the IS&T department. A head end is what receives cable television signals from the local cable provider, transmitting into the televisions in a building.”Currently, cable is delivered through 18 or 19 head ends,” Cronk said. “So any change that needs to be made to the channel lineup has to be made 18 or 19 times. With the single head end we can do that once. From that point of view, it is a lot easier management.”Another new benefit the new cable provision will offer Harding is greater control over the cable lineup.”We control the quality of the signal being distributed,” Nunnally said. “We will be able to add new buildings and additions to the CATV (Cable Television) system much easier and faster. We have much more control over the content and channels we can provide. We are able to add Internet Protocol Television channels fairly easily when we want or need to.”The transition should be smooth and go unnoticed by students until the channel lineup changes.”The White County [Cable] will stay in place until we con- vert to [Campus Televideo]; the signal will be turned on and delivered to buildings a week before,” Cronk said. “Then when White County Cable goes dark, it is really a matter of taking their cable out and putting another in.”Harding’s cable channels will stay the same for the most part, with a few more “empty” channels added for Harding students to utilize, along with several more extended channels. The new channels will include Fox Movie Network, Cooking Channel, History International, Lifetime Movie Network, NASA, National Geographic, Science Channel, Travel Channel and Mandarin Direct III, among others.
