No news is good news for TV30 Comments on Stories, posted by Editor, Pleasanton Weekly Online, on Jan 2, 2009 at 6:34 pm
No news is good news for TV30. By stripping the Tri-Valley's community broadcast station of its costly four-day-a-week live news show last June, the four mayors who now control TV30 trimmed $250,000 from a runaway budget that had forced city councils (a.k.a. taxpayers) to contribute about $70,000 from each of the cities for two years in a row just to keep the station on the air. The action came after surveys showed that about 70 percent of the 200,000 people who live in the TV30 coverage area never watch TV30 or its sister channels 28 (education) and 29 (city government), or had only watched it once. The mayors--Jennifer Hosterman of Pleasanton, Dublin's Janet Lockhart, Livermore's Marshall Kamena and San Ramon's Abram Wilson--replaced the once-appointed and independent board of directors and executive directors after two consecutive years of runaway budgets. Besides the community survey, they also brought in outside auditors who spent three months sifting through scraps of old budgets and financial materials. Last June, after cutting payroll and programs, the mayors approved a budget for fiscal 2008-09 of $587,000, down from the $880,193 spent the year before and reasonably balanced with revenue that includes $430,000 a year from Comcast and the rest from sponsors/advertisers who support the nonprofit system.
Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, January 2, 2009, 12:00 AM
Posted by frank, a resident of the Pleasanton Heights neighborhood, on Jan 2, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Missing in this piece is a statement as to what is the charter (purpose) of TV30 and its sister station channel 28. If you know what it is and you support it, then you four mayors should come up with the money. If you don't either understand it or don't support it if you do understand the charter, then get rid of it.
If nobody is watching it, and you don't have a clear view of its purpose, the answer is clear. If nobody is watching it, but you really believe it has a purpose, then throw more money at it.
It seems TV30 is caught in a twilight zone. It is supposed to be competitive against the myriad other channels in capturing viewer's interest but has one one thousandths of the budget that the others have for programming and infrastructure. What a losing battle!
Posted by nofrank, a resident of the Stoneridge neighborhood, on Jan 9, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Actually, frank, TV30 is NOT meant to "compete" with the "myriad other channels"... it's meant to supplement them.
No news is not good news, it's never good news when a community loses its only local newscast.
TV30 has two things working for it: it's a TV station and it's a non-profit. There should be no problem finding FREE volunteers looking to kill their time or for TV experience. Use 'em!
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