 Welcome viewers to our ongoing program focus coming to you from Fennel 17 Center for Media and Democracy here in Burlington, Vermont. We are also town meeting TV, open access TV, and today I want to welcome a very special guest, Lauren Glenn Davidian, the Chief Executive Officer of CCTV, which is our station. Welcome, Lauren, and you're in an opposite position. Usually you're the one doing the interviewing, right? It's always a pleasure to see you, Margaret. Thank you so much for having me on. Oh, thank you so much for being here. Lauren, it's kind of confusing times for community producers like myself. I've been a community producer for Channel 17 for going into 15 years now with my first show, Nuclear Free Future Conversation, and then the second one I started six years ago, which is called Focus, which is this program we're doing, and I sent you questions for our conversation, and I don't think that we can cover all of them, and maybe it's not appropriate to cover all of them today, but I'd like to start off with what is the 10-year plan that they're looking ahead, and why is it important for community producers like myself and so many community producers who are doing shows or have done shows before COVID on Town Meeting TV, and why is it important for us to weigh in on it? And because although I've given input over the years when asked you on the questions for CCTV, I haven't sent any comment this time, and I'd like to know why it's important, and also that it's the 10-year plan, that's interesting. So I'm not sure where the 10-year plan came from except the state is doing a 10-year plan, which is a little different than the planning horizon for CCTV and Town Meeting Television, so maybe we'll just sort that out because that might be what you're asking about. The first is that the state of Vermont creates a 10-year telecommunications plan, which they update every three years, and in this past cycle the state wasn't too satisfied with the Department of Public Services work product, so they decided to hire a third party to actually run this 10-year plan. I think it's very difficult for the state of Vermont to do a 10-year telecommunications plan. Just imagine, I mean it covers cable, it covers telephone, it covers cellular, it covers broadband. I mean you have to be an expert in pretty much everything in order to generate a coherent vision for the future, but the state's focus is on getting broadband to as many households as possible, and that's less important in Chittenden County because we're very dense and the companies like Comcast and the phone companies have gotten broadband to as many people as possibly can get it. I think it's probably true, maybe with some exceptions, but in other world parts of the state getting broadband out is an issue, so that's really been the state's priority and all the other priorities are secondary to that in their one, two, three, five, 10-year planning process, and plus there's a lot of federal money in the pipeline to help make that happen, and I think that might actually not be what you want to focus on, that's we could talk about that in another show because there's certainly opinions about that, but as far as community media is concerned and public educational and government access, we have, and this applies to both the state's planning and our own planning, is we all know that people are cutting the cable cord and when people cut their cable subscriptions, that means less money for community media for town meeting television, channel 17, and the other 25 centers around the state, and that cord cutting is happening faster and faster because on the internet people can get any service that they want, they just buy a la carte kind of programs that they want, and the federal government has basically prohibited the state from putting a kind of franchise fee or a fee on internet like we do on cable, so the question is what is the alternative funding going to be to continue to support this really only, the only non-commercial community production in the country, I mean make no mistake, Facebook and YouTube, those are not open media platforms, those are data gathering companies, that's really what they're about, is gathering data, I wouldn't even call them media companies at all, and so community media and the work we do is the only non-commercial outlet truly that there are for people to express their views, produce their own programs, and talk back and forth to each other, so I'll pause there and then I can say a little bit about what we're doing to address this revenue loss, but let me just pause there in case you had another question. Okay well yes, I have a question about the financing of CCTV Town Meeting TV, Center for Media and Democracy, are you saying that when I watch our shows only on the internet, I am not financially supporting the station because I'm not a cable customer, is that it? Yeah so if you have a cable subscription, anybody who has cable on their bill is about a five and a half percent fee for public educational and government access channels, and that's true across the state, and that's true on Comcast and Burlington Telecom and Wadesfield Cable, you know when we started this work in the 80s there were 50 cable companies and now I think they're seven, so anyone who is a subscriber of those seven cable companies pay a fee that contribute to these community media channels, and they fund Town Meeting TV channel 17 which is now 1087 on Comcast and 317 on BT, and that money comes from cable subscribers, so we distribute on the internet, if you're watching on the internet you're not funding us specifically, right, so we you know CCTV which is the mothership in which was started in 1984 has run a variety of different community media programs over the 35 plus years that we've been in business, and Town Meeting TV we started in 1990, so it's one of the projects that we run, and Town Meeting TV is funded primarily by cable subscriber dollars, but as those cable subscriber dollars go down CCTV has addressed this revenue issue which we've known about since 1990 through a variety of ways, one of them is we create other projects that we can share expenses with like the Community Technology Center or Common Good Vermont, so over our history we've created other kinds of community media based projects, and we also raise money like typical nonprofits, so we have fundraising which you and others contribute to that's just straight up philanthropy, we do grant writing, we do underwriting, so we ask businesses to help support the programming that we do, and then we also have a production company, and the money that we make from that production company goes back to help support the the non, you know, the the community based content that doesn't actually generate its own dollars, so we've tried to diversify our revenue in a variety of ways in order to offset this decline in cable revenue, and we also are working the legislature to come up with a law that would create a different funding source, another funding source in addition to the cable franchise fee. Well how is that law progressing or what what would be the law? Yeah, so um so there are 25 community media centers and we were recognized as essential service by the legislature during the pandemic, so that was very exciting and we also received some COVID relief dollars from the legislature in order to recognize and fund all these virtual public meetings that we were doing and the support to education and the support to graduations and the community being able to speak and connect with each other during this period, so the legislature is I would say pretty strong fan of our work which is really good, and as part of that they funded a study which we call the PEG study, public educational government access PEG study, and that study hired a lawyer to do a legal analysis of financial options that are alternatives to this cable franchise fee that we all rely on, and there are five different ideas in there and the idea that I think has probably the most legs is a pole attachment fee which means that any telecommunications or communications company that attaches to the poles that you see in the streets which live in public property it's called the public right-of-way that's public property and that's the basis of the cable franchise fee that cable companies use public property to string their cables and then they compensate the state for the use of that public property, so I think that that principle applies and could be applied to other carriers and then to create a fund that would fund not only community media, public access, PEG access, but also universal service and E91 and other public benefits that come from the use of these cables and this public right-of-way, so that's I think one of the strongest ideas in the PEG study and we're just about to sit down with the legislative working group to craft some legislation to be considered next session. That sounds very exciting and positive and the expansion of broadband throughout Vermont would also augment that revenue wouldn't it? Well it could if it was a fee that was applied to all carriers not just broadband carriers. As I said the federal government has really tied the hands of the state on being able to tax internet services or broadband services, so you have to find a fee that applies not doesn't single anyone out any one type of company out and we think that this idea of a pole attachment fee has some legs. Now there's opposition to this idea even the Vermont Department of Public Service doesn't like it. Ideally they're consumer advocate and they should be friendly to us but they're not friendly to this idea, so we're going to try and find out some more about really what their objections are and so there's road to hoe. You know this isn't this is as I said we've been concerned with this since 1990 so what is it? It's 2021 so it's been you know three decades that we've been worried about this decline of cable revenue and tried to do something about it, so I'm not expecting we're going to have an immediate solution but we are seeing the revenue decline. The projections the trades magazines say that about 5% decline in cable revenue a year is expected so that means in the next seven years that could be a 35% decline and we can't raise enough philanthropic dollars or sell enough production services to offset that decline it's too fast so we clearly need a legislative solution to help offset. It's never going to fully replace the franchise fee none of these sources but together we I think we could preserve community media for the future. Well that also sounds like a tough road to hoe I mean it with everything going on right now and you mentioned Common Good which was a wonderful program which you hosted for how many years Lauren? Yeah we started that in 2008 just when the markets crashed. Vermont had had a Vermont Association of Non-profit Organizations for many years and their model just of providing in-person training they just weren't able to keep it going financially so the community foundation put out a call and a request for proposals for a solution to help nonprofits be connected with each other and share knowledge and information and CCTV thought well we're really good party planners you know we can bring people together we're conveners this is you know one of our core competencies and we're also very good media producers so we made a proposal for a kind of novel nonprofit association that wasn't a membership based association but really was a shared hub or an exchange of knowledge and information and produced content and network building and so the community foundation gave us an initial grant and then for the next 10 years or so we raised money and ran that as a as a project part of CCTV it helped offset the other costs so we could share costs with town meeting television so you know having another project brings your rent down or your other overhead costs down so that was good and then we spun it off first to Marlboro College which closed and then with Morgan Webster who was running it she's now running that under the United Way of Northwestern Northwestern Vermont so Common Good has legs it's continuing under incredibly able leadership and still provides important services for the city and you know we've seen ourselves as an incubator so not all the projects we do we have to keep doing forever you know they they ideally could have a life of their own and Common Good Vermont I think is a good success story right and no Lauren where can you access Common Good Vermont you can go online and look up Common Good Vermont and there's a web and there's for summer camp think might it'll be virtual usually people get together in person there's workshops that they host or have third party they share information and really if you want to know that's a nonprofit sector it's a great place to go you know in fact yesterday I was on a call because I found out about it from Common Good Vermont with the independent sector which is a national advocacy group for nonprofits independent sector is another way of describing nonprofits and they were talking about the almost four trillion dollars in infrastructure that Congress is considering I mean that's just an epic amount of money I can't even absorb it but four trillion dollars that will have a big impact on the nonprofit sector because whether it's housing or weatherization or child care any of these aspects they're considering infrastructure broadly speaking and that a lot of that money will flow through our colleagues who work in this independent sector and we will be using these dollars to to make our communities more resilient and meet the needs the very pressing needs and as you know we've seen so many cracks in how our systems work especially during the pandemic so that's partly what those dollars are meant to address so I'm a little concerned about the scale four trillion but that's a good example of Common Good Vermont getting information out me signing on to a workshop me learning more about what's happening in the advocacy efforts for the sector which affect the work that we do and our colleagues okay now is the time over for comments for from community producers to this for the 10-year plan yeah the 10-year plan has been adopted I would say the public process was less than stellar but we did our best to let people know what was going on and so yes the the comments are closed we made we being Vermont Access Network which is this network of the 25 community media centers we were very much on the front line of those of those comments and involved in the 10-year plan I again I think because the Department of Public Service doesn't love our revenue ideas we didn't get as much positive language in that 10-year plan as I would have liked but we certainly tried on behalf of all of our producers and that can be found it's the Vermont 10-year telecommunications plan and it's I think the Department of Public Service site but if you just Google Vermont 10-year telecommunications plan you can read it it's epic yeah great there is a section on public access there is a section on public access in that oh okay great now let's let's talk about the underwriters which is new to the station and I was quite surprised by it when it was introduced it seems only a few months ago well our our year our funding year starts in October and the revenue projections for town meeting TV are as I said have been affected by these cable cord cutting and I will say that cable cord cutting is more rampant in Chittenden County than it is in other parts of the state there are actually parts of Vermont where revenue is going up because the way that Comcast sells its broadband internet service is packaging it with cable so if you want to get the internet they really package it so you get cable too so the numbers are going up in other places but in Burlington there's competition with BT and so in any event our cable revenue has gone down for town meeting television and the town meeting television has trustees which are representatives from each of the municipalities and they set a budget we help them cctv help them set a budget but they set a budget and this year they really couldn't afford what it cost for us to deliver the level of service to have for cctv to deliver level service so cctv agreed to fundraise to make up the difference because the trustees who are these municipal representatives hire cctv to run this town meeting television for them they don't there's no staff they're there's a contract act with us and so we have the development capacity and we said all right you know we'll we'll make up the difference which was about eighty ninety thousand dollars between what it was costing us you know to have the level staff that we have and deliver the services that everyone enjoys and what the cable revenue available is so we had to get creative quickly because we've only cctv maybe raised forty thousand dollars in a year and all of a sudden now our goal was more in the order of a hundred thousand or a hundred and ten thousand so we thought we would explore underwriting which is something we did with common good vermont and we had some success there and we set a goal of about ten thousand dollars and that's basically to ask businesses to you know underwrite our work appear on our newsletters appear on our channel appear on programs appear on the website and actually not on programs but on our bulletin board for five hundred dollars for a half a year a thousand dollars for a full year so we were able to raise about five thousand dollars that way from friends you know people that we knew it's it's hard to cold call it's hard to call companies out of the blue and say would you support this takes a lot of effort so I don't think we're going to meet our ten thousand dollar goal in underwriting but I think we could probably annually raise somewhere in the order of five to seven and perhaps you know build that over time but this year was an experiment on the underwriting and as I said the people who funded us you know law firms that are advocates MMR momo's market which is Aaron Malone runs which is on the old willard street market actions circles which is an advocacy group and there are a few others and Hanson dream us there are a financial services and Ben and Jerry's you know so we've had some people that are in our circle supporting us in that way but the good news is we've raised about seventy thousand dollars in philanthropy in in small donations and that's you know doubling what we've done in the past and that's because we've been asking more frequently I think that's probably the reason we've also benefited from a few major gifts which have been incredibly generous met Lauren when you say the board of the trustees is that the board of trustees for for CCTV no CCTV is a nonprofit CCTV center for media and democracy and we have a contract with the government access channel trust and those are trustees and those are representatives from each municipality and so they're the caretakers of the government access channel in our region and when we started that in 1990 because CCTV did the advocacy work with the support of the municipalities the municipal leadership said well we don't want to hire staff and you know we this we want to make this as simple as possible so we will contract for the services to run this channel on our behalf purchase equipment hire the people produce content cover meetings serve community producers you will deliver these services to us so we CCTV and its board and its staff has a contract with the town meeting television trustees to run town meeting TV known as channel 17 but 1087 17 and 317 for them so that's how that works so we have this arms length relationship with the trustees and we run the channel on their behalf okay and how what what is the role of the board the the town meeting TV board oh the town meeting TV trustees essentially they they are the caretakers of the funds that Comcast and Burlington Telecom pay to them and also municipalities are now making contributions for coverage and internet service and hybrid meeting coverage so they're the caretakers of those funds and they're responsible to essentially sign a contract with us CCTV or any vendor that they choose but they've chosen us to do it to operate the channel on their behalf so they have their own audit and they have their own financial management and they they meet and they talk about policy programming policy and they talk about financial management like oh we have this money should we invest it for example and when it comes to policy for example you know when we have election election years we have we dust off the election policies and have everybody look at them just to make sure that they're up to date and they're in keeping with the times or if there's a dispute about some election coverage that elevates the trustees they'll look at it and they'll give us an opinion on how to change the policies so they that's really what their job is is policy and finance right but and that's separate from the board for CCTV board right right because you have a separate and so that's that's my question what is the function of the CCTV board yeah so CCTV is the nonprofit that was started in 1984 and our job is to build community through media that's you know sort of the simple version and that board is responsible for hiring the executive director they're responsible for financial management of the organization they're responsible for strategy and future thinking and basically they hire the ed which is me and then i'm responsible for hiring everyone else to run the programs and so tan meeting tv represents about 70 percent of our revenue and our labor um so that's a big project of cctv's the contract that we run so we need to fill fulfill the contract obligations and then we have this production company which generates about nine or ten percent of our revenue and our labor and then we have our fundraising arm which is about 12 percent of our labor so that's my job is to oversee that on behalf of the board but the board as i said is finance strategy policy okay and how often does the board meet they meet about monthly yeah right now um we've been doing some strategy work so to focus on what our strategy our strategy is going forward in order to sharpen the services that we offer and rethink how we spend our dollars and how we face this declining cable revenue that's a big question on the table um how much of that burden of uh making up the difference of the town meeting contract should we continue to do are there new programs that we should be considering is there a different way a better more innovative way of delivering our services these are the kinds of questions that we um the board considers and we're looking at how do you get on the board yeah you we have some openings on the board right now we made it small we small what's the word that we um i want to say we smalled the board it's okay we made it smaller better than smelt yeah yeah the board right now is five we could have as many as 13 and we were in in the past five years we were in discussions with what is now the media factory about potentially merging with them and we didn't actually at that time um over we actually have been talking for about 10 years with them about that they managed to merge um we were not included in that and that's fine but we thought we would keep the board small in the event that we did a merger and we haven't and so now we're in the process of building the board back up and so there is interest if there i mean you might i i would like people that are our users people who are involved in the work that we do um to consider board involvement and so we're starting a recruiting this summer for new board members and how will you go about that you can well on this show you're talking about it so but how what is your plan to get new board members well i think um there's the board is can has basically discussed or two sets of criteria one is representation from the community so that we are better representing the community that we serve and both in terms of age because you know the the people financially support cctv's work skew to older and that makes sense because we've been doing this for 35 years and those people have gotten older with us so broadening the base to the younger people and broadening the base to people with different ethnic backgrounds and also um political and just generally maybe different thinkers and people so there's that representation diversity and then there is skill sets you know it would be help helpful to have people that are active producers it would be helpful to have people with some legal experience some people with some development shops and and contacts in the community because you know very often our our board has not historically been a board where everyone's got to raise a certain amount of money but we do need to have board members that have an appetite to help us to be champions and ambassadors and also to feel good enough about what we do to ask other people for support so i think that sort of sums up the conversations that we've had on the board level you know enthusiasts people who love free speech they love this work and they feel that they love it enough they're willing to spend some time helping this organization achieve those goals okay well lauren we've we've gone through about half an hour now and you've given us so much information and i'm speaking on behalf of the community producers today i hope that this program can be sent to all of the community producers when i received a the appeal from megan or rourke the channel director to comment on the 10 what i can i still call the 10-year plan it she it listed the whole list of community producers and i said wow you know it looked like about maybe 70 community producers and i haven't caught up we've seen all those shows at all and on behalf of community producers i appreciate the the ability to get on the air with so many different we have a broad range of views and politics and issues and uh concerns and uh it's it's wonderful to have an inequality to uh to get on the air so uh so i appreciate that so much so i i don't mean to interrupt you but i think that you're really asking me about the survey that megan or rourke our channel director at tellmeaning tv sent out to community producers to find out what you would like given that the pandemic is over and we're about to open our doors again physically in september and i think it's that survey that you're actually asking me about so and i'm sorry because i'm such an advocacy wonk that i only think about these things like a 10-year plan so when i hear that i think i misunderstood what you were asking me about so that plan um that survey is and i want to just encourage people that is a valuable assessment of what our active community producers on town meeting tv are interested in going forward so i would that's not too late to complete that megan is very interested to hear from community producers and i think that you had a couple of questions on your list um i know we might be over time but the great thing about community media is you can go over time um and so did you want to ask those questions or is that something you wanted to save and ask for ask megan i mean i think you had some questions about priorities in terms of right well one of the questions i would like to ask today is that uh there is the featured shows format which every week the station sends out the featured shows and there may be four of them maybe maybe fewer and uh then you can hit on the button that says view full schedule but in my opinion that minimizes the shows that have been done during the week or during the time frame and i would like to know or i would like a change in that i think that it is is not good journalism and after all we are doing media journalism video journalism and uh it's it's it's not uh it's not uh the standards of video journalism that i want to that i aspire to as a community producer and and i want a uh something that will give an equal voice to anybody who is doing a uh a show on on the station because by showing preference to those or highlighting shows in the week this and this is my opinion it minimizes the other shows and and recently because of the pandemic i suppose i didn't even know that some of my shows had been shown maybe once you know and uh i you know i i was unaware of it so well that's interesting feedback and i appreciate that i think um just to give you a little background on that newsletter that newsletter is part of an overall marketing strategy that we have so that we promote programs not just on our weekly newsletter but on social media once they're when they're produced and one of the sort of challenges of producing a hundred hours of programming every month which is collectively what we all produce is to help people focus on um things that are timely issues that for example at a city council meeting might have gotten a lot of public attention or um programs that are dealing with something that's happening that week like juneteenth or something along those lines so there's always been a lot this kind of push pull between public access first come first served which we do i mean we serve everyone that comes in and then um curating the content so people who are viewers have help focusing on what's in this hundred hours of incredible content and so the idea behind the marketing is to elevate programs not because they're favorites but because either they're timely it's something happening that week or um it's an issue that a lot of people are concerned about and we actually have video on it that will add information to them for them to understand an issue more like the trash hauling for example issue or reapportionment you know things that maybe aren't that exciting but are important to a lot of people so um I think that the idea is to rotate that so that there is representation of all the pro community producers as well but that's the line that we're walking there and that what you see in the newsletter isn't the only way that we are putting spotlights on programs that are produced but putting spotlights on programs that are produced I think is a way to help viewers uh sort through what is a lot of content and and to and we hear that a lot I mean that's sort of from the viewer perspective for years that is like the number one thing help me understand what's important to focus on and I wouldn't say that we help people understand what's important to focus on but we're trying to just shed light on the things that are pressing at any given time um as well as represent the variety of content that we have so if you have specific ideas about how to change that in the newsletter um that would be great to put on that survey we I'd love to hear that and Megan would too well I I do have some ideas and one would be to to give an equal an equal equality in viewing of of the programs that are are offered because um and who who by the way chooses the the spotlight I mean yeah that's collective I mean when we have a staff meeting we'll say you know what happened at the meetings is there's something we need to focus on that would be helpful for people to understand what happened in Essex on separation what happened in South Burlington on that traffic exchange you know things like that so the staff will will recommend things to our marketing director and then she'll put that all together and you know if if we're doing 100 programs a month we're doing 25 a week and so really the idea is to drive people to see what's happening and then connect them to all the other content that we have so it's it's not meant to be exclusive it's actually meant to like draw people in so they're interested enough to see all the things that we're doing well I feel excluded and I felt excluded many times and especially during COVID time and I feel that on behalf of all of the community producers that I look forward to more equality in programming and what and as far as it's being open access TV it's uh as I understand it it's open to all viewpoints and even if the dominant viewpoint and for the marketing board is is not what a particular show has then I don't see why that show should be minimized so I do have a complaint and I'm I'm I'm offering that complaint in our program and uh I'm I look forward to some kind of a a an address to it some kind of a remedy to it so are you concerned about production or promotion I'm I'm concerned about viewing access to viewing that when you highlight a handful of shows for the week that's often I mean if if that is what people asked you to do I mean that's what you're doing it's it's to highlighting programs at the expense of other programs and I can speak personally that my programs have been minimized at the expense of of other programs and maybe there isn't like when you have and by the way in my long long life I've worked in in journalism in both Gannett newspapers and all different kinds of newspapers in different states and I realized you know the importance of the front page and the right hand column the left hand column the contents in the center and all of that but uh there there has to be some way to give an equality to the uh the programming and I know and that's all I'm going to say for now Lauren and I don't I don't have any particular way of um of solving the problem myself but I for me it is a problem yeah I think I I appreciate that and I would also just clarify that on the air um programs are all aired the same number of times so there is an equality in terms of what appears on the air and on the internet they're certainly available all the time so I think if I was to narrow down what your concern is it has to do with the marketing and the promotion and it might be helpful to get a little more insight from the staff that do the work to understand their thinking and then also to discuss it with the channel director with Megan um because I think that would be the quickest way to get some response yeah so I appreciate you know all the content that you do and our goal is never to minimize the work right but I'm speaking on behalf too of the of the many many community producers I didn't even know existed because of the way it is presented so that and that's what I'm asking for is a different way of presenting or highlighting so but and that's all I'll say because I uh I appreciate so much our brief conversation now and uh we've gone over time you know usually half an hour is good enough for any focus show that I do but thank you so much Lauren Glenn Davidian for speaking with me today and for giving me the opportunity to provide programming for viewers on town meeting tv center for media and democracy well Margaret I just have to say you are fearless and the community content and the programs that you have covered have really provided different points of view for our for our community to see and that is my dream and hope that we do that and we only I'm not saying we only do it because of people like you I mean certainly we try to do that internally with the staff but but your community production is giving our community at large different ideas and ways to think about how to make the place we live and the world we live in the best possible place the most equitable and just and you play a big role in that and I really appreciate it it's always just a pleasure to speak with you thank you Lauren always a pleasure to speak with you and you just you just defined the wonderful your wonderful um motivation for all that you do thank you so much Lauren thank you channel seven scenes center for media and democracy town meeting tv and thank you my next thank you michael blood thanks take care everyone