Cities, CTV board hold emergency meeting Cities, CTV board hold emergency meeting (February 11, 2005)

Concerns mount over public TV station's management
by Jeb Bing

The four cities that govern the Tri-Valley Community Television system and its eight-member board of directors were scheduled to meet behind closed doors last night to discuss charges brought against Bruce Goddard, the station's executive director hired last April who has been placed on administrative leave.

The special meeting follows a story in last week's Pleasanton Weekly that detailed numerous charges against Goddard by current employees of the station and those who quit or were fired during the nine months he was in charge.

Pleasanton, Dublin, Livermore and San Ramon govern the station, receiving funds collected by Comcast from subscribers each month to finance the $650,000 community television system. Each city also designates a staff member to participate in monthly CTV board meetings, with direct oversight responsibilities rotated among the four cities each year.

This year that assignment has gone to Jeff Eorio, Parks and Community Services Director for the city of San Ramon. Eorio sent out a notice of the special meeting. But although Pleasanton's representative to the CTV collaborative received it, there has been no public posting. Jacqui Diaz, assistant to Pleasanton City Manager Nelson Fialho, said she assumes that San Ramon has posted a meeting notice locally.

Diaz said the meeting was scheduled to start at 7 p.m. last night in the Dublin Public Library, with a public meeting to follow at 8 p.m. if there are public announcements to be made.

The closed-door meeting was called to hear from Karen Kramer, an investigative attorney in San Ramon, who was asked to review employee complaints about Goddard's management style and actions. Several well-known CTV personalities either quit or were fired when Goddard joined the station, with many more that followed. Employees said their letters, e-mails and direct complaints to CTV board chairwoman Joan Zehnder and to officials in Pleasanton who had charge of CTV last year were rejected or ignored. Several said their letters, and in one case an e-mail, were sent to Goddard to handle. Goddard reportedly fired some of those who wrote the complaints and others whose names were mentioned in them.

As word spread that Goddard had been placed on administrative leave, with his $50,000-a-year salary being continued, a virtual beehive of phone calls and e-mails among current and ex-employees of CTV followed, including several to this newspaper.

"Goddard was horrific from the start, absolutely horrific," said one former on-air newscaster. "It was a horrible situation for everyone at the station. I'm just happy that the situation is finally out in the open and that something might be done about it. The board of directors knew about it and did absolutely nothing."

Another said that she became "so enraged over Bruce Goddard's obscene language toward me that I quit when my news producer told me I was about to be fired. He didn't deserve the satisfaction of firing me."

Goddard allegedly told a camerawoman who covered local sports that he considered her an "honorary member" of the sports team because, in his view, "a woman should not be doing sports."

Some of the employees contacted a local attorney as CTV's work environment worsened. At his suggestion, they began documenting verbal and physical abuses and incidents of sexual harassment, as well as management decisions they considered to be bad for employees and the station. Those complaints, along with copies of letters and e-mails sent to the board and management authorities in the four cities, are part of the documents investigator Kramer was to review at last night's meeting.

In the meantime, although Eorio reports that CTV programming is continuing on schedule, live broadcasts of two public meetings in Pleasanton had to be scuttled for the first 30-60 minutes because of equipment failure.

Screens went dark just as viewers tuned in Channel 29 at 6:30 p.m. to watch a joint workshop meeting Tuesday of the City Council and Planning Commission on a controversial plan by a developer to build 98 homes above the Kottinger Ranch subdivision. On Channel 28, viewers tuning in to watch the regularly scheduled live broadcast of the Pleasanton school board meeting also found blank screens.

Service was restored later in the evening, and technicians said tapes were made of both meetings and would be replayed this weekend.

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