WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The face of and driving force behind the town's community access television station will retire this summer.

 

At Monday's Select Board meeting, the president of the board of WilliNet announced that longtime Executive Director Debby Dane will leave the non-profit on June 30 and move to California, "following her 5-month-old granddaughter."

 

"The search committee has begun its work to find a replacement hire," Mary Strout told the Select Board. "Deb will be hard to replace, however the board is confident we will find an individual well suited to move the organization forward."

 

"Now, I'm speechless," Chair Stephanie Boyd replied on hearing of Dane's departure.

 

Earlier, before Strout made news, Boyd praised the town's Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) Access station, founded in 1994.

 

"As everybody knows, WilliNet holds our community together, gets our town meetings and committee meetings online as well as all of the work in the town," Boyd said. "I know, after looking at so many towns' public TV stations over the last month that we're very close to the best. Maybe we even are the best.

 

"I can't say enough good things about WilliNet, the website, the programming, the professionalism. It's really, really incredible. We should all be very grateful for the hard work of Deb [Dane] and Jack [Criddle] and the rest of the team."

 

Part of that team, including Dane, was before the Select Board on Monday to renew the operating agreement between WilliNet and the town, which, for decades, has designated the nonprofit as the town's provider of PEG programming and the recipient of money generated by a portion of the monthly service fee paid by cable television customers.

 

Strout and Dane told the board that WilliNet is challenged by the prospect of declining revenue because the number of cable customers in Williamstown — like everywhere else — is on the decline.

 

"WilliNet receives over $100,000 from Charter/Spectrum, the terms of which are delineated in the cable contract," Dane told the board, alluding to the 10-year licensing agreement the Select Board renewed with the cable company in September 2024.

 

"Charter/Spectrum pays a percentage of their revenue. … Over a third of the households in Williamstown continue to pay for cable TV. And that funds three cable channels, 1303, 1302 and 1301, that cablecast local programming."

 

Williamstown, however, is not immune to national trends.

 

A Pew Research Center study found that 83 percent of U.S. adults use streaming services; just 36 percent subscribe to cable.

 

In light of those numbers and the fact that the trend could continue, WilliNet's board proposed a renewed operating agreement with the town that acknowledges the possibility that declining revenue will make it impossible for the nonprofit to continue its current offerings.

 

Those offerings expanded considerably in the last five years as WilliNet expanded its own online offerings, including the creation of an app for popular streaming services Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire.

 

That expansion came at a cost, and continuing streaming services will mean ongoing expenditures.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic and the availability of state and federal funds for municipalities allowed WilliNet — at the encouragement of Town Hall — to acquire technology that enabled wider distribution of the PEG programming through online services.

 

"The state and federal money allowed us to purchase equipment for digital, high-definition, live, online distribution of all programming that, previously, our cable TV-funded budget could not afford," Dane said. "However, as our draft [agreement] indicates, WilliNet's banked COVID funds that finance the online distribution will be depleted in the next four to seven years. WilliNet will not be in a position to replace the servers at their end-of-service life, along with software licensing."

 

Therefore, the WilliNet board's draft agreement renewal with the town included three paragraphs that call out the financial uncertainty, proposing that the non-profit agree to providing, "its current suite of online platforms, as long as doing so is financially feasible."

 

Boyd questioned why the town and WilliNet should commit to an agreement that ensures, "the first thing to go [is] the service we like the most?"

 

Boyd countered with her own version of an agreement that struck the phrase, "as long as doing so is financially feasible," in all references to online and streaming platforms. Boyd also added a clause that would see the agreement between the town and nonprofit reviewed "every two years or upon request of either the Town of Williamstown or WilliNet."

 

Dane pushed back on both amendments to what the WilliNet board proposed.

 

She said the town's agreement with the nonprofit should be for the same term, 10 years, as the town's license with the cable company that funds WilliNet. And she noted that the town is legally bound by the contract with Charter/Spectrum that generates that money.

 

"The Select Board has committed to a 10-year contract with Charter that says as long as they're providing cable, as long as there is one person here and they're still getting cable, that there's three channels you guys signed for and WilliNet is the place for those cable funds," Dane said.

 

She said she did not know if it was legal for the town to decide that the PEG money paid by the cable company will be directed toward streaming services to the detriment of cable access.

 

"Of course, everybody wants it to be online," Dane said. "We want to go where the audience is. Of course, we all want that. But our funding, and what the Select Board signed is a 34-page document, and part of it says, 'As long as there is cable, it's to go to cable-access TV.' We would love to use that money elsewhere, and if town counsel says we can use that money in other ways, great.

 

"I think the town needs counsel on PEG. It's committed to PEG access. It's your agreement. We're here because there was a cable advisory committee over the years."

 

That cable advisory board, a town body at the inception of WilliNet in the mid-1990s, long since has been defunct, shifting the authority to the Select Board.

 

Reached for comment after Monday's meeting, Dane said she agreed that in addition to the legal question of whether the town can direct fees from cable TV users to a streaming service while cutting PEG cable channels, there is an ethical question of whether the town should do so.

 

Two members of the currently four-person Select Board, Shana Dixon and Matthew Neely, said they were ready to sign the agreement proposed by the WilliNet board. A third, Peter Beck, said he "generally liked" WilliNet's proposal but wanted feedback from town counsel on a couple of points before finalizing the agreement.

 

At one point, Town Manager Robert Menicocci said both the commonwealth and the federal government are looking at potential fees for streaming services to help make up for the PEG revenue lost as more Americans "cut the cord" and drop cable TV.

 

Neely pointed out that whatever the board and the nonprofit decide, market forces are driving change in the industry.

 

"You said there were a third of the households in town [currently on cable] ... you lose 100 a year," Neely said. "It will be online only in a few years. Something is going to change. It's not just us saying, 'You've got to have it online.' It's like, it's only going to be online."

 

Boyd asked Neely where WilliNet would get the money to continue as an online service in that case.

 

"I'm not going to be on the Select Board when that happens," Neely joked. "And Deb's going to be in California."