At the last council meeting the topic of providing financial assistance to NCTV once came up. NCTV17 is running in the red and may no longer be financially viable without help from the City.
According to the report NCTV appears to need roughly $300,000 per year for a number of years to remain viable.
If NCTV did dissolve, it has been repeatedly asked who would record and broadcast council meetings. In fairness, if the council meetings were no longer broadcasted, would anyone but the Watchdog and Jim Haselhorst even notice? Numerous communities manage to record and post their meetings without a full blown TV station doing it.
NCTV does good work and it would be sad to see them go. Numerous community leaders have come to speak in support of helping them. Sports teams and coaches, in particular, have come to argue that NCTV highlighting youth sports and local star athletes is a very valuable part of our community.
Despite the organization’s clear quality and value, NCTV’s request raises a number of questions:
1. Is it not concerning that a news outlet would be under the thumb of our elected officials to this degree? Are we to assume this local State run media would over indulge on puff pieces showcasing our councilmen if this financial arrangement proceeds?
2. Are the headwinds facing NCTV really short term? Social media has changed everything in our society communication-wise. We no longer need news media to find out who won the game or who spoke at the event last night.
3. If we rescue NCTV, who is next? The Exchange Club is facing bankruptcy. Should we save them? Lots of groups and causes need financial help. Will we prioritize the groups best positioned to promote our City Council for aid?
The amount of money requested does not sound prohibitive for a city as blessed as Naperville. The Watchdog would have no problem giving NCTV high priority and max consideration when it comes to SECA awards. But since it seems to be largely our youth sports community who are really calling for the continued coverage … they should be the ones paying the freight for this.
There have to be a good 2000 to 3000 kids playing youth sports in Naperville. A $50-$100 per year programming fee from each would appear to go a long way toward saving NCTV while not opening the Pandora’s box of bailouts and local “State run” media. If their parents don’t care enough about this news coverage to pay such a fee then why should the rest of us?
Like many other services, those who are the primary users of the service should be the ones who largely pay for it.
Last year Naper Settlement received $1 million in additional funding from SECA . Let’s use some of that for NCTV 17.
Naper Settlement received these funds as part of a commitment made when the two new buildings were approved by city council. The major donor for the construction of these buildings (for which they are named) required the city to make an equal matching commitment of funds before they would pledge their funding for this project.
I did not support this and spoke out against the city providing these funds. There is something seriously wrong with a donor requiring the city to commit matching funds before they pledge their funds. There is also something seriously wrong with naming buildings after donors when the city used taxpayer dollars to cover half the construction costs.
Sorry, but Naper Settlement funding is another one of my pet peeves when it comes to city funding.
I was under the impression that NCTV already receives SECA funding. But it has been awhile since I last looked at the details of who is receiving SECA funds, so I could be mistaken about this.
NCTV is unique among the groups operating in our community in that they don’t provide funding for community needs (families in need, victims of abuse, food pantries, etc.) but instead provide directly for the needs it fills. Further, NCTV does have revenue streams that come from sources other than donations or fundraising events. So it is not totally dependent on community charity for its financial needs, unlike the Exchange Club, Rotary, Jaycees, etc. Also, the Exchange Club, Rotary, Jaycees and several other such groups in our community are part of larger national organizations, something NCTV is not. So any comparison to any of these organizations is apples to oranges. Meaning if the city bails out NCTV it is not opening some type of floodgate for bailouts.
There is no denying that recording of city council and other city committee meetings is a very important function. Providing citizens with a means to find out what is happening in these meetings and in city government is vital even if only used by a handful of residents. How used the live broadcasts are is difficult to say, but again, if you have the equipment to record these meetings, you have the equipment needed to broadcast them. So this function could be filled by a variety of groups, including the A/V clubs of our local high schools. I am sure these students would love an opportunity to put some hands-on experience of this type on their resumes (sorry Curriculum Vitae these days).
Should the city bailout NCTV? As I have posted in the past, I am not sure about this one. But if the city can afford to provide half a million dollars to preserve a mansion no one has talked about in over three years (which is how long it has been sitting without any preservation or restoration work being done), then is 300K to bailout an organization that is actively benefiting the community really that big a give?
Our morning NNLF coffee chat in the North had us considering our dramatic public access controversy over at NCTV. While enjoying the tastiest coffee available in town*, NNLF’ers who have significant media background considered this issue at length, and have developed this policy statement:
NCTV should gift themselves to School District 203 in its entirety. The new media
production curriculum would provide a rich opportunity for our students. And it would be completely under the financial control of our schools, who can get any taxation needed to fund operations approved easily, as they have endlessly shown. Being of students, for students and by students would help grow the 80% concentration on student athletics to a more reasonable 99%, without any additional use fees imposed on parents.
This is about the AV Club kids getting access to state of the art tools, and the lab to find their inner creative voices. Quentin Tarantino? AV kid. Tony Hawk? AV kid. Nancy Pelosi? NOT an AV kid. We need to make sure that the creative voices raging in our kid’s heads have a chance to be voiced en forte. What future Emmy Award winning New Journalist might be waiting for the right production suite to be at her fingertips? The hard-driving documentary film about baseball that is going to come from three friends who started playing T-ball together in Naperville might not get made? They need that critical start on a path that is going to lead them to Cannes.
Totally win-win-win for all stakeholders, with identifiable savings to the taxpayers, better utilization of a nice resource, and going to Springfield for the kids is a much more sustainable source of funding.
*We will not hijack the ‘Dog’s space with sponsorship messages. It’s tacky.
No bailout. We will be bailing them out again next time. They need to go lean and do fundraising to keep the lights on.
I have seen some who are against DEI initiatives funding due to budget shortfalls support this. hypocrites
NCTV does receive some funding through SECA as a City obligation, but there may be restrictions on those funds. I personally support NCTV, but hope they can address underlying issues and make course corrections as needed to try to have a balanced budget
It should also be considered that NCTV operated for decades in our community with a balanced budget until the Pandemic. Every organization in this country was negatively impacted in one way or another by the Pandemic and several are still struggling to recover.
So would it be wrong for the city to help out NCTV, which everyone agrees does provide services essential to the community, for a while, until it can reorganize and recover from this global event that none of us had a choice in being part of?
You may have already mentioned this but NCTV17 has a long term problem. Loss of funding due to less cable customers. Folks are cutting the cord so less fees from cable.
Much like less gas tax revenue due to less cars buying gas.
Just bringing this worthwhile topic to the top of the Current Events That Shame Us pile. The discussion is being addressed elsewhere in an inappropriate manner, and we should all make efforts not to befuddle our hearty debate. Especially this close to the beginning of the Vetrnætr season.