Pittsfield Council Backs Community Media Funding Legislation
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City Council is backing state legislation that updates the funding model for community media, including Pittsfield Community Television, to account for declining cable revenues.
Last week, the City Council supported House Bill H.91 and Senate Bill S.2556, "An Act to Modernize Funding for Community Media Programming." The legislation aims to support public, educational, and governmental access to media centers as more people cut the cord from cable and switch to streaming services.
Councilor at Large Peter White, who petitioned for his fellow councilors' support of the bills, thought that was "pretty easy for us to look at." State Sen. Paul Mark is one of the sponsors of the Senate bill, and state Rep. Leigh Davis is a sponsor for the House bill.
"The state Legislature will hopefully pass a model where streaming services that use our public infrastructure would be charged a similar fee to what our cable companies negotiate with communities, because having community access television is extremely important," he explained.
"Anyone watching us at home is doing it through what was created through that cable access fee that was charged, that we used to pay on our cable bill, however, is no longer there for anyone who's cut the cord."
The legislation would establish a PEG Access Facilities Revenue Advisory Board that recommends an annual assessment rate for streaming services to ensure PEG access facilities maintain revenue levels, and a Streaming Entertainment Fund to collect and distribute the funds. It would apply to services with annual statewide revenues over $250,000.
Since 2019, Pittsfield Community Television has lost more than $969,000 in inflation-adjusted revenue and has been forced to reduce staff, Executive Director Shawn Serre said. He said these bills would help replace some of those losses by "bringing the funding model up to date with viewing habits of today."
PCTV is funded by cable franchise revenues and its own fundraising as a nonprofit organization, he explained, and in the past 40 years, the city has not spent any taxpayer money to support PCTV or provide any of its services.
"Many more people are using streaming services today than watching cable, and with cable revenue declining, so is PCTV's funding," Serre reported.
PCTV provides the city with coverage of city and school meetings, high school sports, candidate and election programming, special events such as the Fourth of July parade, veterans ceremonies, and thousands of hours of other programming throughout the year. It also offers facilities, training, and airtime for community-led broadcast programs.
"It's where many people, including our high school students, have learned to produce media and go on to careers in the field," Serre said.
"In addition to the three cable channels, we operate live streams of our programming and maintain an archive of 26,000 video programs spanning decades of city history. We also manage and operate WTBR-FM."
White pointed out that PCTV can be streamed for free, but that takes money.
"And if we don't want it coming from a request out of our taxes, there needs to be a funding source that replaces what used to come from the cable companies," he said.
Tags: PCTV, public television,
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