Tony Shawcross, Suzanne St. John-Crane, and Sue Buske presented in Berkeley yesterday about DIVCA (statewide CATV franchising in California). It was truly eye-opening for me.
Tony inadvertently gave us a preview of the new CivicPixel/DOM site yesterday - looks good!!
The three presentations were remarkably different in tone and style, which illustrated the great diversity among styles and approaches. The content of the presentation was mostly about funding changes, lessons learned, and new models. Great stuff, and I'd like to thank all three of them for putting the valuable information forward.
Tony's DOM model was clearly presented to me for the first time at this meeting. That's definitely my bad for missing the PEG 2.0 presentation in Denver (which was probably better), but I got a lot out of what he talked about. Most notably was the importance of changing your usual staffing model (i.e. hiring a web developer and an awesome operations person who can clearly draw the line between helping and doing.) Empower the users to do the encoding, scheduling, and check out themselves.
It was also great to hear from Suzanne, since her San Jose model is SO starkly different from the model she ran in Gilroy. San Jose is HD!! And they have updated their production services rates to reflect some semblance of reality. They also charge for equipment use, studio time, etc.
IMO, it is always valuable to hear from Sue Buske. You could probably learn a lot about PEG from watching Sue eat a salad.
One of the things left open for me is the ablility to use capital expenditures for software development. In other words, could Drupal developers be paid from capital by PEG stations to develop tools for PEG stations? hmmmm.
The most remarkable aspect of this presentation for me was the stark difference between the way that the California funding and Community Media in general is disucssed at NATOA (among cable operators and government officials), and the way this information is presented at Alliance for Community Media - media literacy people, activists, etc.
Frankly, it is my belief that NATOA folks have their heads out of the sand . . . as for the Alliance, well . . . it still has my heart, but my wallet and stomach are going the NATOA way of thinking.
Some of the things that I took away:
In-kind operations are essentially DOA in California. Expect in-kind to die a quick death in other states as well. It was unclear to me if this meant ALL in-kind (including Inet support, mailings, pass-through fees administration), but I am proceeding on the assumption that the cable operators will interpret DIVCA this way. If you operate, volunteer, or work through an in-kind organization, find somewhere else to play.
1% is the new 3%. So, I'm expecting dramatic funding cuts over the next 2-5 years. It is in the cable operators best interest to shut the operations of PEG stations down. Expect them to push for a greater capital/operations ratio.
Expect government organizations to grab as much PEG funding as they can for G-only operations, city/community technology deployments, and capital expenditures. Not much "change" here, but a starkly different message than what I usually I hear at ACM (la-la-la-la we're all happy friends!).
The bottom line here is that if you are a P, E, or PE combo, you better make nice with the man right away, and get yourself some G contracts and G services. That is likely the only way to survive, and is certainly the only way to thrive, unless you are already operating below 1%.
Charge for everything. The "give it away" days for anything seem to be over - monetize it! This means ANY services, ANY equipment use, ANYTHING.