City 7 typically rebroadcasts City Council meetings and study sessions three times following a live broadcast.  These times are 10 a.m. Tuesday, 7 p.m. Wednesday, and 2 p.m. Sunday.  These times are subject to change during weeks with a Monday holiday or meeting cancellation.  For the accurate schedule of upcoming broadcasts, please visit the Programs section of this Web site and click the "City Council" title.  Live and archived City Council video is also available on this Web site through streaming video.

On-demand streaming video of City Council meetings is typically posted to the City 7 Web site by Noon the day following the LIVE broadcast.  This is due to preparing the multimedia file for posting and transferring it across the Internet to our streaming service provider.  Sometimes technical issues may delay posting the video until later.

We are not able to distribute copies of most programs due to copyright restrictions. If you have a video recorder, you can record these programs off the channel for your private use. Copies of most programs produced by the City of Independence may be requested by calling City 7 at 325-7019 during business hours. Copies of tapes cost about $7.

The City 7 bulletin board is reserved for notices regarding activities and information sponsored by local, state, or federal governments and their affiliates. City 7 plays educational videos related to government services and the arts. The programs may not take a side on any controversial issue; endorse any political party, issue, or candidate; or promote products or services for a for-profit company. Comcast cable operates other community access channels specifically for area school districts and not-for-profit organizations. You may contact Comcast at (816) 795-2203 for more information. If you have a program that you believe fits City 7's criteria, please contact our Communications Director, Irene Baltrusaitis, at (816) 325-7020.

No, we always broadcast clear video and audio. We’ve discovered that a number of things can affect picture quality, including the quality of a subscriber’s home equipment and outside interference from digital television broadcasts in the Kansas City area. If you are getting poor picture quality on City 7, consider a cable TV amplifier for your home or replace old cable wiring inside your home with newer wire with better shielding. Use plugs that screw on to the cable jack instead of those that simply slide on. Viewing your cable signal through a VCR (by changing channels on the VCR instead of the TV) can also help clear up the picture.

Our music is provided by the "Music Choice" service on Comcast Digital Cable. The specific channel is "Singers and Standards," channel 436 (as of Sept. 18, 2007). We are unaware of any way to receive this music in an automobile, but satellite radio providers may provide an option for something similar.

City 7 is only available on Comcast cable in Independence. Because of complicated agreements and expensive fees that would be necessary to put City 7 on satellites, there currently are no plans to carry City 7 on these services.

While we plan to air scheduled programs at specific times, sometimes this doesn't happen. It may be for any number of reasons including operator error, equipment malfunction, government holidays, or even the lack of a program to play. We have been known to make mistakes when setting our playback controller and VCRs to play tapes. We really do apologize for that. Rarely, equipment malfunctions and a tape, correctly programmed, just won't play. In the event of a holiday, we may have to adjust our schedule to accommodate the limited number of tape decks available to play programs when we are not at work. We occasionally will have a program expire without another episode to replace it. In that instance, we may play a different program or the bulletin board in its place.

We would prefer to show every program in its entirety, but sometimes we can't due to equipment limitations or time constraints. If you miss the last few seconds of a program, it's because we were only able to estimate its starting time and length. In all actuality, the playback controller and/or VCR likely shifted that time allotment a few seconds from what we estimated. In other instances, we may only be able to play a program up to an allotted length before cutting it short. This is usually due to a set tape length (such as a 120-minute tape for Jackson County Legislature meetings) or the need to play another scheduled program. These are the only reasons why we may not play a program in its entirety.

Our tape formats are VHS, Super VHS (S-VHS), MiniDV and DVCAM.  VHS is the same kind of tape that you use in your home VCR.  S-VHS is like VHS, but with advanced picture quality. MiniDV is the same digital tape that many consumer camcorders use.  DVCAM is a professional grade, broadcast quality digital format in the same family as MiniDV. Programs that we receive from outside organizations in VHS, S-VHS or MiniDV are played in their native format whenever possible.  Some programs are received on DVD and we copy them to DVCAM for playback on City 7.  All programs produced by the City of Independence are mastered on DVCAM, and aired in that format whenever possible. The differences in quality between the analog and digital formats are what make some programs look different than others.

Some of the pages run more frequently than others. They give the city's Web site address, the current time, station identification, and upcoming schedule of programs on a regular basis. The remainder of the bulletin board is integrated into these pages. On average, the bulletin board displays more than 250 pages and lasts about an hour before it recycles.

City 7 uses a program called Scala InfoChannel® that is specifically designed for video bulletin board presentations. For instance, we use Scala's software to schedule information to start or stop at predetermined times or dates. This ensures that all the information is up-to-date (like dates for Parks & Recreation classes and other events) and not shown longer than it should.