Open letter: Common-sense reforms for MCTV

To: Ann Stillman, County of San Mateo, [email protected]

From: Barry Parr

Subj: Making MCTV work for the public

Ms. Stillman:

Thank you for holding a public meeting on the future of the Coastside’s Public, Educational, and Governmental television station, which is currently operated by MCTV. I wanted to share my thoughts with you in advance of the meeting.

I agree with the Civil Grand Jury that MCTV’s programming does not meet the needs of the community. However, I’m confident that if MCTV were more open it would do a far better job of serving the community.

I’m going to lay out the problems that have created the current programming crisis on MCTV, and offer a set of reasonable reforms that will improve the quality of MCTV’s service to the Coastsiders who are paying its bills.

The Problems

MCTV:

• Operates as a private corporation, despite the fact that 100% of its funding comes from public agencies through fees and taxes assessed on the Coastside community.
• Is managed by the members of a single family and overseen by a their hand-picked board.
• Is closed to public participation in its governance, holds its meetings unannounced and in private, and does not publish its minutes.
• Claims copyright to publicly-financed recordings of public meetings. MCTV reserves the right to deny re-use of these recordings and does not permit public agencies to make copies of DVD’s of its meetings for the public.  This allows public agencies to skirt public records laws.
• Claims copyright to all videos produced with its (publicly-financed) equipment by independent producers from the community. This benefits station management to the detriment of the public which paid for the equipment.
• Claims the right to cablecast and distribute to other stations without limitation for twenty years for all video not produced with its equipment that it shows on Channel 6. Again, this benefits station management to the detriment of the public on whose behalf they are licensed to operate the station.
• Requires that all submitted videos be reviewed by station management to assure that they do not express a point of view. This cuts at the very heart of the intent of setting aside a cable channel for free speech.
• Cannot be reached by telephone or in person during business hours.  MCTV is unreliable about returning messages left on its voice mail or emails sent. This discourages the public from having a conversation with the station that is licensed to operate a public channel on its behalf.

Recommendations

The licensing authorities (San Mateo County and the city of Half Moon Bay) should require the Coastside PEG station licensee to:

• Permanently license videos created at public expense for reuse and editing by the public.
• Hold its meetings in public and with proper notice.
• Treat its records as public records and honor public requests for information and documents within reasonable times and at a reasonable cost.
• Keep regular posted business hours when the station manager can be reached directly, both in person and by phone, by all members of the community.
• Publish a plan for public outreach with concrete goals and a set timetable.
• Allow individual producers to retain copyright to noncommercial recordings they produce using station equipment.
• Accept all videos created by residents of the Coastside which copyright-cleared and are not libelous or obscene, provide adequate promotion, and cablecast programming from the public when the public is likely to see them.
• Acquire a set percentage of its revenue from the community—through sponsorships, memberships, or fundraising—and to increase that percentage by a set amount per year.

Finally, the licensing authorities should appoint an ombudsperson to handle requests, complaints, and suggestions from the community and participate in future requests for proposals as a community representative. This would avoid the problem of the station’s unresponsiveness, while relieving city and county authorities of fielding complaints from the public.

As I said, these are reasonable, common-sense reforms which will greatly enhance the public’s use of its public access channel while not unduly inconveniencing the licensee. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Barry Parr
Montara