Towards The End Of An Era

By now, I sure that many of you have heard or read that Howard County will be discontinuing their GTV cable television operation, effective June 30 of this year.

The staff at the station found out last Thursday in a meeting that was called by the county Director of Communications. We sorta knew something was up when he was accompanied by the Director of Human Resources, the Chief of Staff and the Chief Administrative Officer.

From what we were told, any GTV shows will go out of production, and Howard Community College will take over broadcast of “critical programming.” That’s typically defined as County Council meetings, hearings and legislative sessions.

Of course, the reason for cutting the station is as a cost saving measure — it costs about $500K per year to run the station with a staff of 7 full-time and 3 part-time employees.

Interestingly, the franchise fees that Comcast and Verizon pay to Howard County originally went into an account to offset the operational cost of GTV. Several years ago, that account was “temporarily eliminated,” and the funds redirected to the county’s general fund. And, it seems that no thought was ever given to the possibility of GTV developing a plan to become self-sustaining, at least in part.

GTV has been an award-winning cable television production facility, including Emmy Awards, Telly Awards, at least one Cable ACE award and many, many more in its 24 year existence. One would think that one of the richest counties in the state and the nation would want to keep such an asset operating.

As it turns out, though, this may not be a “done deal.” The decision to make this move was in the hands of the county administration. At least one County Council member is questioning whether or not this can or should be handle in this manner, and all the council members are concerned that the quality of the delivered product be as good or better than the service that existing GTV staff already provide. At least a couple of very influential county organizations are planning to lobby to have the decision reversed.

The next few weeks and months should be interesting, to say the least. I have no idea what my plans are, aside from the “business as usual” aspect of coming in to keep the station on the air. I do know that I will be building a “demo reel,” if for no other reason than posterity.