SANTA CRUZ – On April 15, from 5-7pm, Community Television of Santa Cruz County (CTV) will hold a reception at its 816 Pacific Avenue studios, celebrating the reopening of its doors after a hiatus to reinvent its entire model of delivering community media services. These changes were required due to statewide funding cuts for community media, and resulting in a new budget that is over half the organization’s previous budget. The public is invited to attend.
The event will feature station tours, presentations about how to get training and rent equipment, and videos outlining the new programming planned. Speakers will include Community Television Executive Director Kathy Bisbee, CTV Directors of Content, Production and Technology, Jeromie Whalen and Nick Brandt, and Treasurer and Tax Collector, Fred Keeley.
The media center will now provide fee-based services including professional paid production services to non-profit organizations, government agencies, and businesses, and offers low-cost youth media literacy programs. CTV will continue to provide free or low-cost quarterly public service announcements to local non-profits, churches, arts organizations, and government agencies.
Certified volunteers that go through a three-month program will handle many of the day-to-day operations of CTV including studio productions and will receive credit for CTV’s new fee-based editing suites, studio and other production services.
“We are hopeful that this group of committed and certified volunteers will provide the necessary support and continued operations at CTV, along with establishing many new systems, workflows and fee-based services designed to support a new model in community media,” said Kathy Bisbee, executive director at CTV. “We think other media centers may see signs of hope in this new model, and we can show them what worked and didn’t work at CTV.”
CTV contracts with the County to operate three cable channels, 25, 26 and 27 on Comcast, and channels 71, 72, 73 in Watsonville on Charter cable. The channels cablecast local government meetings, educational content, and are available to the public to air individual television shows and community events. The station is rebranding their channels to better serve the community. The three channels being rebranded are:
Channel 25: YouDotGov Channel
“Providing government transparency for Santa Cruz County, YouDotGov delivers LIVE and streaming online coverage of eight local agencies via local cable and online channels.”
Channel 26: Cruz Channel
“Channel 26 is a local cable and online channel offering community-based, professionally-delivered local and regional curated content.”
Channel 27: The People’s Channel-
“Channel 27 is a local cable and online channel featuring an uncurated free speech zone for any community member to create and share locally-produced content.”