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James Weatherford offers a bit of  insight here and asks whether anyone watches the channel 52 replays of Hawaii County Council meetings.

I don't know how anyone can if they get the same feed I do. The fuzzy, clipped sound makes it practically unwatchable. I switched from DISH satellite to Oceanic Time-Warner cable about a year ago mainly to get Council meetings and other public access programming. But there's little of interest on the few public access channels that don't suffer technical problems. Cable's picture isn't as good and its onscreen program guide is vastly inferior to satellite. So we're going back to the dish.

But on Weatherford's question, even if they made it easy to watch, I think only a few would bother. That's not to say it isn't a valuable service. I just wish I could get the Council meetings clearly because I would watch from time to time. I'd think Time-Warner would be interested in getting better quality throughout their channel lineup unless they don't want to encourage competition for their pay channels in any way. The other conspiracy theory is that the Council only wants to make an appearance of openness by replaying its meetings on cable -- you just can't watch them because the sound is so poor. But honestly I don't know where the problem lies. But if the problem is not just on my TV, no one's being served well by the arrangement.