by Steve McMahon –
Things are tight at the City of Davis. Programs and staff jobs will be cut. Yet the City Council is very likely this week to approve with very little consideration increasing the city’s spending on cable to television to close to a half-million dollars. Staff is recommending the increase largely because that’s the way it’s been done for nearly 25 years, despite having no evidence that the largest part of the program is an effective use of city funds.
The City of Davis currently finances three cable-tv channels: the city, education and public-access channels that are carried by Comcast. These channels are only available to the roughly 50% of city residents who get cable TV.
The most effective part of these expenditures is the one that most people are familiar with: the government channel, which broadcasts City Council meetings and maintains the Community Chambers facilities that are used to broadcast school board and other public meetings. The city also supplements this with excellent web-casting facilities, making the meetings available to the many residents who don’t have cable, but do use the Internet. The city has reliable survey evidence indicating that citizens get useful public information from these broadcasts.
There is, though, no reliable evidence that any significant portion of city residents regularly view the public access station, DCTV, or watch the educational cable channel for anything other than school board meetings.
Is it too much for cable TV?
Certainly, the cable channels are valuable resources, and the city should be willing to spend to maintain their use. But, should the city be spending 100% of its community media fund on cable-TV broadcasting?
The city’s community media funding has historically been derived from the cable-franchise fee the city receives for allowing Comcast to use right-of-way which passes through city streets and many front yards. These funds are unrestricted and are part of the city’s general fund; the city may use them any way it pleases. Davis has shown great leadership in devoting 100% of these funds to community media. Many communities don’t spend any of their franchise fee revenues on community communications. (There are other, restricted funds, which can only be used for cable channel facilities and equipment; I’m not including those funds in this discussion or any of the dollar amounts here.)
But what is community media?
25 years ago, the answer to that question was easy. The city’s cable TV channels were the only available non-commercial media outside printing and mailing. That’s changed. With the advent of the Internet and Low-Power FM (LPFM) radio, cable-casting isn’t the community’s only choice for community communications. In fact, there’s considerable evidence that it’s now our least effective choice, reaching the smallest audience for the highest cost.
How did you learn about the planned H1N1-Flu closing of Holmes Jr High a couple of weeks ago, and the sudden cancellation of those plans on a Sunday? From a cable channel? Or from an e-mail list, a web page or a telephone call? How do you learn about what’s happening with the local organizations that you care about? Some will answer that they get that information from the local public-access cable channel. But how many people? Very few? How do you think that compares with the Internet and radio? Wouldn’t you want to know before putting 100% of your community media funding into cable TV?
What about media literacy and creation?
When the city’s Telecommunications Commission held a public meeting in November, it heard a lot about the value of community media. Most of those testifying talked about how important KDRT, the local LPFM radio station, is to them, and asked for funding for it. Several talked about using the Internet for lists and websites. And, many said that they had greatly benefitted from Davis Media Access’ video training and media production facilities. Several people said that they had learned from DMA how to produce a video and put it on YouTube.
But, it was what was not mentioned much that stood out. Only one person talked about the value of cable-casting on DCTV a set of programs he was involved with. Nobody said that watching the local public-access cable channel had made an important difference to themselves or the organizations they worked with. Perhaps those folks stayed home that evening, or perhaps it’s a diminishing phenomenon.
Now, consider the fact that the contract that the city signs with DMA forbids them from using any city funds for activities unrelated to cable-casting. DMA can do great work on media literacy, creation and activism. That’s a good thing. Shouldn’t we recognize it as a legitimate activity that they can acknowledge in their budget?
What about LPFM and the Internet?
KDRT, which is a part of Davis Media Access, and the exploding community use of the Internet for governmental and organizational activity is the hottest thing in local media. Both are exciting and attract lots of volunteer enthusiasm. I work with a local non-profit, the Davis Community Network, that has helped develop hundreds of web sites and e-mail lists for local non-profits like PTAs, churches and sports groups. Nearly all of that comes from volunteer efforts, and the city could get tremendous bang-for-the-buck for its community media funds by encouraging these activities.
Why aren’t any city media funds spent on KDRT or community uses of the Internet? Despite the fact that many people pleaded for that at the Telecommunications Commission’s public hearing? The answer is that all the funding is absorbed by cable-casting.
For several months this fall through spring, the Telecommunications Commission discussed the possibility of providing assistance to KDRT. That particularly rose to my attention when the DMA representative to the commission reported that fund-raising for KDRT was lagging and that DMA couldn’t guarantee its future. However, DMA chose not to apply for community media funds for KDRT because DMA’s board was concerned that it might dilute support for the cable channel. Spending for Internet activities unrelated to cable was opposed for the same reason.
So, where does the money go?
The city’s community media fund is projected to have $470,000 available this year. A small part of that will go to administration of the franchise and the city’s fiber-optic network. Nearly all of the rest goes to cable-casting. Roughly a third goes to the government channel and the remaining two thirds is currently allocated to DMA to operate the public-access and educational channels. The funding for the education and access channel will be about 5% higher than last year, and will represent an 18% increase over the last three years. The city’s contract with DMA requires that all of that money be spent on cable-related activities.
Who’s recommending this?
The city’s mandate for the Telecommunications Commission requires the commission to make recommendations on community-media spending. The Telecommunications Commission did unanimously recommend this year’s spending for the government and education channels. However, it did not recommend the proposed spending for the public-access channel, and did not endorse the staff report (both of these votes were deadlocked, with tie votes failing).
Despite the absence of a recommendation from the Telecommunications Commission, the staff budget proposal is on the consent calendar for Tuesday’s meeting. The staff report does not have any mention of the failed consideration by the commission. In fact, it erroneously reports that the commission did not consider budget recommendations.
What should the Council do?
Spending all our community media funds on cable television is an odd choice for a community that has a much lower than typical percentage of households with cable television. It’s an odd remnant from a long-past time when public-access cable was the progressive choice for community media funding. But, how do we engage with the future — or at least move into the 21st Century?
The hard choice for the Council would be to acknowledge the issue and make some decisions about whether or not cable-casting is the only way community media funds should be spent. But, the Council’s facing a lot of pain right now, and the totals for the other painful parts of the budget are in the many millions of dollars. So, I wouldn’t really blame the council for side-stepping this issue this year.
But, here’s an easier possibility: tell staff to withdraw enough money from the community media fund to conduct a serious study of the effectiveness of media spending, including a reasonably scientific poll to determine the regular viewership of the three cable channels it’s financing. Then, tell staff and the Telecommunications Commission that it had better take the results of that study seriously the next time it makes community media spending recommendations. Otherwise, a half-million dollars of unconsidered spending this year may become well over $5 million in the next ten years.
Steve McMahon has spent most of this decade as chair of the city’s Telecommunications Commission and its predecessor, the Telecommunications Task Force. He stepped down as commission chair at the commission’s May meeting. Steve considers himself a media activist, and has spent many hundreds of hours on volunteer community media projects.
What is community media? It’s about capturing stories, and localism. It’s about content, and history, training and skills building. It’s really about the people of our community and our collective history. And it’s one of the things that helps make Davis, Davis.
The old adage “content is king” persists. Distribution is just that, and there are nearly infinite options these days. List serves and websites are available free for the taking, and almost anyone can upload a video to YouTube. But access to video and radio production equipment, ongoing technical training and support, event coverage and TV/web archiving of community events—that’s why Davis Community Television, well as City Government Channel 16 and DJUSD Educational Access Channel 17, exist and are funded.
Our elected officials have consistently voted to fund community media so that our community remains more connected and transparent. We thank them for their support, and for their input and collaboration as we’ve worked these past few years to evolve DMA into a true community media center—television, radio and Internet. DMA has cultivated superb relationships with the City, DJUSD and our other organizational and community partners.
Let’s talk about that funding for a moment. What’s lacking from this “analysis” is mention of the fact that the funding comes from right-of-way fees that Comcast pays to the City, not from any general funds. The modest “increases” came out of City staff’s thoughtful juggling of the City Media services budget to try to minimize proposed Tier 1 & 2 budget cuts to public and educational access, and won’t even address the across-the-board increases in operational costs that all non-profits have been weathering these past few years. The funding allocations derive from increased cable revenues from Comcast, and it was the Council’s decision in 2005 to apply any future increases to bolster the revenues for educational access television.
Funding is short everywhere, and we must look to community leaders to leverage what dwindling resources we have. Non-profits are a great way to extend the reach of limited funds, and we believe the services and demonstrated growth of Davis Media Access is a good investment. Describing the work of DMA as old or stale, with false claims of excessive government spending, is simply opportunistic at best, and misguided or spiteful at worst.
The persistent characterization of public and educational access monies as merely going to “support cable TV broadcasting” misses the mark by a mile. In the past week alone, DMA has sponsored the red-carpet premiere of “From the Community to the Classroom,” an incredible youth-produced documentary film on racism and educational equity in the Davis schools, and one for which DMA has provided major support for the better part of two years. We taped the keynote address and several sessions at “Saving California Communities: Starting Here!” We recorded for posterity the season’s final home games for the Davis High School men’s baseball and women’s lacrosse teams, which included each team’s senior appreciation and recognition—important moments in a young adult’s life. We recorded the Harper Junior High Spring Concert at the request of the Harper Band Boosters so they could use the DVD as a fundraiser. The events were crewed by a combination of high school and community interns and volunteers, in some cases guided by a DMA production staffer.
During this same week, DMA’s field equipment and edit suites were all booked, either by community members shooting the local Juneteenth celebration, or taping lectures through the Osher Lifelong learning Institute, or by folks editing anything from Battle of the Bands at the Teen Center to environmental documentaries. The studio was in use all week for two live, local music shows, as well as talk shows featuring Bike Forth! and the Asian American Film Festival, and meetings of various community groups. Another group of people came in for a seminar on filming pets and children, part of our ongoing “Open Media Sessions” drop-in nights, and a Cub Scout troop came in for a tour and the basics of media literacy.
That is a snapshot of one week in the life of our community media center, and it doesn’t even reflect KDRT’s program schedule or volunteers. It was a week full of teachable moments, inspired conversations, problems solved and people helped. Who do we help? Parents, teachers, coaches, career-changers, senior citizens, elected officials, high school students, non-profit leaders, university departments and too many more to name. When people think about media in Davis, they call on DMA.
Autumn Labbé-Renault
Executive Director, Davis Media Access
I’m sorry that Ms Labbé-Renault found my commentary “simply opportunistic at best, and misguided or spiteful at worst” — particularly since we seem to be in agreement on nearly every point.
I greatly admire DMA’s media literacy and education work and I think the maintenance of a community studio and production equipment — and training in their use — are invaluable. I’ve worked as a volunteer for DCTV, as lately as last fall, and have received multiple DCTV volunteer awards. I love and listen to KDRT, and have contributed to it financially.
So, where do we differ? Perhaps on a couple of factual issues.
1) Current Limitations on City Financing of DMA
Ms Labbé-Renault says that my “persistent characterization of public and educational access monies as merely going to ‘support cable TV broadcasting’ misses the mark by a mile.” In fact, it is DMA’s agreement with the city requires that all city funds received by DMA be used for cable-related purposes. Every city staff report since I became involved with the city’s telecommunications effort has had language similar to this year’s requiring that “the agreement with DMA and DJUSD be strictly for the operation of the cable channels and related media (bulletin boards systems, webcasting, etc.)….” (Staff Report, 5/19/09 council packet)
In short, it is DMA’s contract with the City of Davis which requires public and educational monies be used strictly for cable-channel related activities. This means that, less than one-fifth of DMA’s operations funds may be be spent on activities unrelated to operation of the cable channels (based on their last annual report). I favor lifting that restriction.
The status of cable-franchise fee proceeds
Ms Labbé-Renault states that “the funding comes from right-of-way fees that Comcast pays to the City, not from any general funds.” Funding from right-of-way fees are part of the City’s general funds, and are unrestricted in use. I was involved in nearly every detail of the City’s negotiation of the franchise agreement with Comcast, and can quite confidently state that there is nothing in law, regulation or the contract with Comcast which requires that cable franchise fees be spend on cable-related activities.
I strongly favor spending all those franchise fee funds on community media; I just don’t want it strictly restricted to cable-related activities. By lifting the cable-only restriction, we can legitimately fund DMA’s media education and activism and KDRT. Some of the new activities will replace some of the old. Is that bad? Let’s have a real discussion about our community-spending priorities in a world where cable’s not the only community media.
This is both a philosophical and a fiscal issue being aired here. I could have quite a lot to say about the philosophy of modern communications media but to hone in on the fiscal I’d need more information and be able to look at a detailed (well, semi-detailed perhaps) budget that included data about types of services and people or groups served. Maybe the DMA folks could point us to such information on their website.
I agree with Ms. Hance’s comment. I also would like to see a budget that details how the funds are to be spent and who is served before the Board simply okays this expenditure.
The funds, after all, do come from the entire Davis community and it would be good to see how they are spent.
We all want to see the city maximize the return on its public media investment, but the current process for allocating franchise fees is stuck in a badly outdated cable-centric model. The process needs to be adjusted to accommodate consideration of current and future media access trends, and opened up to organizations that can best meet the identified needs.
Unfortunately, the City Council may not have the time to grapple with the intricacies of franchise fee allocations prior to adopting its FY09-10 budget, especially in light of the much larger fiscal issues on its plate. Meanwhile, DMA and the school district need to move forward with their plans for next year. However, I think they should do so in the context of the current budget environment.
The city’s Media Services program did an admirable job in controlling costs in its FY09-10 budget. I believe the other franchise fee recipients can do the same. I advocate holding allocations to DMA and DJUSD at their FY08-09 levels in the interim. That will give the city time to review its allocation process, give due consideration to current and future public media needs, and bring a performance-based budgeting approach to its allocations, without having to commit all of the available franchise fees under the old model.
While no one welcomes the financial pain that is spreading out into most corners of society, if there’s a silver lining to the city’s distressing budget situation, it’s that tough times offer a good opportunity to take a fresh look at where city money goes. Let’s hold the line for next year and determine how to get the most bang for the buck, instead of just spending it all in the same old way.
I think the Cable Media Services are among the most valuable things in the city. While I appreciate the internet, I don’t see cable as outdated, in fact, many of us get our internet through our cable provider.
I’m not sure what “Disagree” is disagreeing with. I don’t see any writer so far saying that ‘cable’ is outdated. Our cable provider is Comcast. Comcast tries to be on the cutting edge and does indeed provide Internet services. But that’s a different issue. The issue here is about local, nonprofit television and radio stations and the suggestion that Davis is not keeping up with the times when it funds those in preference to spreading the funding out to encourage and help support Internet technologies which now reach more of the Davis community and could blend wonderfully well with the local radio and television if horizens were widened.
To clarify
What happened to the comments that were on this page yesterday?
What I think is not clear to all readers here is that this posting by Steve McMahon is referring not to Comcast’s commercial cable venture with its multi TV channels and Internet Service but to local, nonprofit cable TV. Currently the Telecommunications Contract Franchise Fees paid to the City of davis by Comcast support only the local DMA (and indirectly KDRT too.)
Director, Davis Media Access
The statement by Anne Hance is not accurate. Funds received by the City of Davis from its agreement with Comcast go to support capital equipment costs and video production activities by the City of Davis (including funding staff positions), the Davis Joint Unified School District and DMA. They also support the I-Net backbone, which is a broadband data backbone linking together most governmental and public facilities in Davis. These funds do NOT support KDRT, neither directly nor indirectly!
Pete Peterson’s emphatic statement that KDRT receives no funding from the community media budget is exactly to the point of Mr. McMahon’s article.
Why should they not be eligible for a share of these funds? KDRT along with other groups, like Davis Community Network, provide a demonstrable benefit to what is arguably a larger number of folks in our community than does the local access cable station.
A cable channel is surely an outmoded way to distribute local video content, or locally selected video content. It could be fine to pay for video production, and it could be fine purchase video content to redistribute to schools or to the city. But the right way to distribute this video is through the web and DVDs, and not by airing it on a cable channel. Even if you don’t have Internet at home, it is surely more convenient to watch any particular content at the library, than to wait for the one time that it might be broadcast on cable. Maybe contentious city or school board meetings, things that people want to watch live, are an exception.
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in response to Greg Kuperberg, the thing is, distributing via cable is free: comcast provides the fiber, the equipment necessary to move the content, and the channel space / bandwidth. so why not distribute via cable, as well as other modes?
in response to all the DCN folks: Jan, Anne, and Steve. the door at DMA is always open, come on by. trying to debate these topics on a blog is too hard to communicate, esp. since we all know each other and live in the same town. in fact that offer stands for anybody reading this. There is a general orientation on June 10 at 8pm that is open to all- please come by.
p.s. i should have mentioned, I work at Davis Media Access, hence my response.
Thank you Jeff for the invitation and I know that Autumn (DMA Exec. Dir) would be happy to talk too if I were able to drop by the office but right now that’s not easy. However, I do find time to communicate over the Internet – often late at night like this! My interest in all of this is to try to help find a way in which DMA, KDRT and DCN can cooperate as we each provide valued services to our community. We have very similar aims but use different tools and all struggle for funding to cover our basic costs. At this time the bone of contention of course is the funding but we are intelligent, creative people (I know that for a fact) and we should be working together despite our differences.
Some years ago there was a great visionary plan in which the Davis branch of the County library and DMA and DCN were eagerly looking forward to a future in which we would work closely together and complement each other’s services. The library is out of the picture now (funding rears its head again) but surely DCN, DMA and KDRT shoud be sitting at a round table talking about a future together?
Yes, DCN will still need to work toward obtaining some funds – very likely from the Franchise Fees – because it does make sense for those monies to be used for some of what DCN does too. But, as you said Jeff, we know each other, live in the same town and should still be able to work together.
There seems to be some things missing in this entire discussion.
(1) The money.
[quote]The funds, after all, do come from the entire Davis community …[/quote]
WRONG. The money the City gets from Comcast (and uses to fund channels 15, 16, & 17) come ENTIRELY from fees paid by cable users in Davis. When Steve says [quote]The city’s cable TV channels … cable-casting … it’s now our least effective choice, reaching the smallest audience …[/quote] he misses the fact that the CABLE AUDIENCE is the sole source of this money. Why should THEIR fees go to pay for distributing things to people who don’t pay for it?
Cable fees funding cable-related services seems fair to me.
(2) The “sides” and the “players”
I recognize the names of almost all the people participating in this discussion. Some have disclosed their affiliations, some not. Let’s set the record straight so folks from outside these two groups can ID the players.
DMA:
Autumn Labbe-Renault and Jeff Shaw are on the staff of DMA (Davis Media Access), which includes DCTV (channel 15) and is associated with Davis’ low-power radio station KDRT 95.7-FM.
DCN:
The original author, Steve McMahon, is one of the technical wizards for DCN (Davis Community Network). Jan Meizel was one of the people involved in the original UCD project which became DCN. Anne Hance, Jim Frame, Steve McMahon, and Jan Meizel are all on the DCN board (as of Feb 2009 — the most recent Board Minutes I could find).
Neither:
Greg Kuperberg’s name does not come up on a search of the websites for either organizatioin (DMA or DCN).
Both:
Lois Richter (that’s me!) has been a volunteer producer & tv host with DCTV/DMA since 1992; has hosted radio shows on KDRT since 2005; and was in “The First Fifty” when DCN was just starting (early ’90s). I have never been on staff for any of these, although I served on many DCN committees in the early days. I still have a DCN account, but am currently only really active with KDRT (both as a host and on the steering committee).
And now for my opinion …
Money derived from cable subscribers should be used for getting community messages out to those same subscribers.
The three prongs of PEG access cable television — public, educational, & government — are all useful and all done well in Davis. Diverting money from there to fund an Internet company is inappropriate. Leave things as they are.
[quote]The money the City gets from Comcast (and uses to fund channels 15, 16, & 17) come ENTIRELY from fees paid by cable users in Davis…Why should THEIR fees go to pay for distributing things to people who don’t pay for it? [/quote]
There are two components to the ongoing funding associated with the Comcast cable franchise:
1. PEG capital pass-through fees. Every Comcast customer in Davis pays a small amount to finance equipment and facilities for the public, education and government cable channels. The monthly subscriber fee is currently 85 cents, and will decline according to a fixed schedule over the life of the 13-year franchise. These fees are estimated to average $109,000 per year over the life of the franchise.
2. Franchise fees. Comcast pays the City of Davis 5% of its gross cable TV revenues as compensation for the use of city right-of-way for Comcast distribution facilities. The right-of-way is owned by the City of Davis municipal corporation and held in trust for all its citizens, not just cable subscribers. Franchise fees for 2009-10 are estimated to be $470,000.
Franchise fees are general fund revenues that the city may use for any legal purpose. I’d like to see them used to support all community media, not just cable television.
Hi Lois, and welcome to the discussion. I’d like to reply to both your points.
You argue that cable fees should benefit only cable subscribers.
The cable franchise fee is basically rent charged to Comcast (and, probably soon, AT&T) for using space in the utility right of way owned by the City. That right of way runs through our streets and yards. Everyone is inconvenienced when the streets are dug up, and most of us have cable-tv “lawn furniture” in our yards — whether we subscribe to cable or not. The quantity and size of those lawn installations may be dramatically increasing in the next couple of years.
Cable franchise fees are general municipal funds; communities may spend them any way they please. Davis is very unusual in California — and nationwide — for spending 100% of cable franchise fees on its cable channels. To say that those funds should be spent only to benefit cable subscribers would be to say that they should be given free use of this public property.
Let’s look at a couple of similar situations: Bistro 33 rents the historic city hall from the City of Davis and Davis Commons is on land rented from UCD. Should the City and UCD spend the rent money only on benefits for Bistro 33 and Borders patrons?
(By the way, there is also a specific add-on fee on cable bills for capital and equipment for the municipal cable channels. That is not the same as the franchise fee and is not what’s being discussed here.)
You list organizational affiliations for the contributors to this discussion.
If your argument is that affiliations should be taken into account in reading the discussion, that’s reasonable. But, I also think it’s fair to distinguish between different kinds of interests.
Jan, Anne and myself are indeed volunteers and board members for the Davis Community Network. None of us have now, or have ever had, any financial interest in DCN, though we volunteer hundreds of hours a year. DCN is a 501(c)3 public-benefit organization that works to help community organizations make better use of the Internet.
Autumn and Jeff are indeed full-time staff of DMA, which receives over 95% of its funding from the City of Davis.
Lois and I have indeed done volunteer work for both organizations.
When I first read this post, I thought it was interesting, but why should I walk into another quarrel.
But the city is talking budget cuts, just as UC is talking much bigger budget cuts. In both cases, budget cuts are the best chance to give up expensive things that are nice but not really worth it.
On that note, the half million that Steve McMahon is talking about is extremely important! This wouldn’t solve all of the city’s budget problems, but it is a sizable fraction; it’s not a small amount of money. Steve, your proposal deserves an answer from the city council or the city manager. An answer at the very least. Can they tell you, or otherwise do you know, how much money they would save if they reduced programming to city and school district meetings?
The one thing that led me off track a bit was the idea of moving cable programming to other media funds. For sure, the city should take the Internet very seriously, not only its own web site but also city WiFi, DavisWiki, and other projects. But maybe the best solution is simply to cut local TV shows and worry later about hot new media. Pretending that money comes with strings attached when it actually doesn’t is just a mistake.
[i]Why should THEIR fees go to pay for distributing things to people who don’t pay for it?[/i]
As Steve says, franchise fees are very similar to rent. At some sweeping level, it is better not to rob Peter to pay Paul. It’s economically misaligned to tax hockey games in Buffalo to build swimming pools in Bakersfield. Yes, people would think that it’s unfair, and they would attach legal strings to their taxes to put a stop to it. But at a smaller scale, it’s completely reasonable to move money to where you need it. It would be nuts for the city of Davis to trap every dollar according to where it came from. Either there are strings attached or there aren’t; in this case there aren’t.
In this case, I am a cable subscriber, and I would be much happier to use the cable funds for park services (for example) than for local TV shows. It doesn’t bother me that people who don’t have cable can also go to the pool; it’s in my interest to share. Besides, as Steve says, the right-of-way funds also compensate all of us for Comcast’s ditch work.
Finally, if you’re wondering about my affiliation, I have nothing relevant, other than that I am a resident, a home owner, and a Comcast customer. I am a math professor at UC Davis and I like to bicycle in town.
Greg wrote: Can they tell you, or otherwise do you know, how much money they would save if they reduced programming to city and school district meetings?
That’s fairly easy to answer. The programming for the city and school district meetings is all done by the City of Davis Media Services, which has a non-capital budget of $170,510. Franchise administration and coordination of the institutional network add $31,500. The remainder is the DMA funding: currently $267,990 per year.
However, completely eliminating the DMA funding would have dramatic negative effects that would go far beyond eliminating Channel 15 (DCTV). We’d lose a community TV studio, a home for KDRT, and all the great media training and facilities coordination done by DMA.
I’m convinced those facilities and training provide value to the community that justifies the bulk of the DMA funding. My point all along has been that cable-casting doesn’t in itself justify the expenses, not that it could or should be dramatically cut. Just because some of the money could be spent better (and all of it could be monitored better) shouldn’t lead one to throw out the community media baby with the bathwater.
[i]However, completely eliminating the DMA funding would have dramatic negative effects that would go far beyond eliminating Channel 15 (DCTV). We’d lose a community TV studio, a home for KDRT, and all the great media training and facilities coordination done by DMA.[/i]
Okay, I don’t mean to sound like a seek-and-destroy anti-tax crusader. But times are bad. It is a good time to cut relatively expensive things, and not necessarily replace like with like. KDRT clearly has an audience. Some YouTube videos have an audience and some don’t. City of Davis Media Services has an audience; it’s also a valuable record of city planning. By your account, much of the content on DCTV has very little audience. The community TV studio and the media training are more of a gray area, because it depends on who makes use of that training. My intuition is that video production tends to be expensive, much more so than audio.
Since the city is planning real cuts, how much would the city save if it asked DMA to only do things that have a real audience? I don’t know where to place the TV studio and the training in that question; I would suppose that it is also a mix of justified and wishful projects. Maybe they should charge money for some of it, since after all the Davis Arts Center charges money for its classes.
Another comment about audio though: When you’re listening to KDRT 95.7, you’re therefore not listening to KDVS 90.3. I can understand having one community radio station. Do we really need two? Could they merge?
Now that I know a little more, I can expect Jeff Shaw’s answer to my question: KDRT is almost free for the city and it actually branched off of KDVS. Although the statement on DavisWiki that KDRT’s entire budget is only $25K does not entirely square with the conclusion that we would lose it if we cut DMA’s budget. It makes it sound as if that $25K does not include unbudgeted use of DMA’s paid employment.
Still, a central question is how many people actually watch channels 15 and 17, which are apparently the objects of much video production effort.
I’m definitely not for gutting community media in Davis. Even small cuts in a small budget have cascading effects, especially for organizations so dependent on volunteers.
And, without a good factual analysis, this statement is rather overreaching: “Davis is very unusual in California — and nationwide — for spending 100% of cable franchise fees on its cable channels”
I would agree Davis is unusual for many reasons (many of which I like) but again, very, very little money is actually spent on the cable channels themselves, other than the playback system that puts video on the channels itself: VCRs, DVD players, a video server and the bulletin boards. And since DMA is moving towards supporting a server system that will do internet distribution as well as cable distribution, this entire debate (at least the portion that involves Davis Media Access) will soon be moot. Plus with social networking options for volunteers on our new system we’ll be increasingly lowering operational costs. Plus this system will build capability for sharing content across national networks and onto other cable systems. This type of thing cannot be built overnight. DMA has been working hard towards all of this for the past two years and is culminating this coming year. To get a sense of some of the capability, take a look at kdrt.org or http://www.denveropenmedia.org/, which is the group we are working with. Right now you can subscribe via RSS to the Davis Vanguard radio show, for instance.
Really, I don’t see the purpose in building these walls around cable / internet / radio. Funding is such that a community media organization needs to be doing it all and shouldn’t specialize in any one area and ignore the others. DMA is doing it all, and I can honestly say a day doesn’t go by that we aren’t thankful and working harder because of the amazing support of the Davis community.
Regarding Greg’s question about KDRT. I’m not sure what is on the daviswiki, and as you know wikis are super awesome- (especially the daviswiki!) but are only as accurate as their editors. I haven’t edited the KDRT wiki page in a few months. I can say that KDRT’s budget does indeed hover in the ~25,000 range each year so far due to equipment maintenance, licensing fees, and the overhead that DMA “recharges” for that corporate activity. Funding comes from donations, rent, dvd sales, underwriting and whatever else we scrap together (concerts, events, benefits) that we budget as “unrestricted funds.” This way of doing business has helped DMA mature as an organization, as we now have a great bookkeeping structure to expand other corporate activities, like our work with the school district (djusd.davismedia.org), among other expanding partnerships.
What KDRT would lose with a cut to its corporate parent is kind of like what KDVS would lose if UCD cut their media budget: operational support like bookkeeping, utilities, computer bandwidth, and many other expenses that decrease with scale.
I hope this helps. Again, in my mind this entire premise is mostly a false one. Dividing people into “cable tv watchers,” “radio listeners” or “email listserve readers” is creating boxes where there is none in reality. Today’s media consumers and producers float from one outlet to another with much greater ease than ever before.
In my mind, arguing over how to interpret contract language rather than focusing on what is getting done is actually dividing camps that should be working towards more urgent issues: net neutrality, public use of the spectrum for wireless devices, open software standards, keeping important content freely available, and building more public media infrastructure. Or even the lawsuit against AT & T regarding their banishment of community access programming to the digital wasteland on their U-verse distribution system.
Again, I invite all members of the public to come down to a DMA General Orientation. While I won’t debate the particulars of budget line items, I will give an overview of the organization’s activities, structure, history and some future visions. You can go to davismedia.org to get the date, as I don’t have it off the top of my head.
thanks!
Jeff Shaw
production manager
davis media access
530-757-2419 ext. 14
Jeff wrote:
Really, I don’t see the purpose in building these walls around cable / internet / radio. Funding is such that a community media organization needs to be doing it all and shouldn’t specialize in any one area and ignore the others.
Exactly my point. That division is created by the policy of strictly limiting community media funding to operation of the cable channels. It creates a situation where cable-tv-channel-focused work sucks the air out of everything else. $470,000 a year for community media is justified. $470,000 strictly for only the operation of channels 15, 16 & 17 is too much.