Princeton Community Television (PCTV) board members have discussed the idea of soliciting new private funding and they have issued a call to action to keep the station from going dark.
The board met on April 17 in the old Princeton Borough municipal building. Board members said they were informed that members of the Princeton Council have not provided any funding for the station in 2019 and they said negotiations regarding funding have stalled.
“PCTV is here for the community. Every three years our contract runs out with the town, so we have a discussion with the town about the next three years and a successor contract,” said Lew Goldstein, chairman of the board.
“We need to be actively involved with making sure our future is sustainable, which means we should be doing private fundraising. We ask for your support as a board,” Goldstein said to residents in attendance at the meeting.
Goldstein said the board members have sought the advice of the council members to make certain they are on the right track.
PCTV is intended to provide an outlet for members of Princeton and neighboring communities to broadcast locally produced programs and other quality programming, according to the station’s mission statement.
The station’s contract expired in December 2018. According to officials, prior to 2015, PCTV received 100% of all cable television franchise fees that were paid to the municipality to help pay salaries and station expenses.
In 2015, which marked the beginning of the station’s most recent contract, that percentage was reduced to 70% because municipal officials wanted to keep the cable television franchise fees, officials said.
During the current negotiations, according to board members, municipal officials have said they are only willing to share, not pay, since it is not taxpayer money, $60,400 in the franchise fees to PCTV by year three (2021) of a new contract.
PCTV received $232,000 of the $317,928 of the cable television franchise fees that were paid to the municipality in 2018, according to board members.
According to Comcast, a franchise fee helps a municipality support its cable television related needs and interests. The fee is not related to the line of business cable, internet or phone to which an individual subscribes. These fees usually appear in the form of access programming channels for town-specific public, educational and government information and are federally regulated.
“Princeton TV has yet to receive funding from the town for 2019. So we are running off of the money our board had set aside for capital improvements,” said George McCullough, the station’s executive director. “We will be doing OK for about a year. Hopefully our negotiations with the town are going to be resolved soon.”
Outside of soliciting independent and private funding, there will be changes to the membership fee to help with funding, board members said, explaining that PCTV members will see the individual membership fee increase from $25 to $35.
“If you want to make programming and have PCTV staff involved there are now fees involved. That means for people who need directing and editing, their fees now attach to those services,” McCullough said. “If people want to do Facebook Live we are also requesting people pay up front.”
Board member Leah Pontani said the board is forming a strategic plan for the next three years.
“We are going to be looking at grant funding, private opportunities, reaching out to businesses and people in the community. We want to have a plan so if we get another three-year contract we do not end up in this position again,” she said.
With negotiations at an impasse with the town council, both sides are in a cooling off period and will try to resume negotiations at a later date, board members said.
No representatives of the municipality could immediately be reached for comment on the morning of April 18.