TEMPLETON — The director of Templeton Community Television (TCTV) warned the select board during their meeting on July 23 that the station is facing a funding emergency due to a dramatic drop in cable subscriptions — the station’s sole revenue source.
“Unfortunately, the Comcast TV subscriber numbers are down again,” TCTV Director Steve Castle said while presenting TCTV’s fourth-quarter report during the select board meeting on July 23. Later adding, “We get virtually all of our funding from cable TV subscribers. So, with the cable TV subscribers plummeting, as they are, so is the cable revenues, and we are in trouble. No other way to put it.”
Castle added that he hoped the board could put TCTV on the agenda soon for a discussion of ways the station could be funded.
“I hope that you can put us on the agenda soon so we can discuss ways that we can be funded,” Castle said. “We have some ideas about that. Everyone wants to be creative about budget now and I think we have some creative ideas that we [at TCTV] can help the town [with] and stay afloat.”
While preparing his report, Castle said the town clerk provided him with the most recent household count for Templeton: 3,776. Of those, 2,174 do not subscribe to cable TV, leaving just 1,602 cable subscribers.
“There will now be 2,174 non-cable TV households — 500 more than cable subscribers,” said TCTV Director Steve Castle. “And this only flipped in the last year. That’s how quickly we’re losing it.”
Castle said that starting in 2019, the number of cable subscribers declined each year — first by 25, then 50, then 100, and then 200.
“And that’s when I started sounding the red alarm,” Castle said. “We’ve known this was going to happen for a while now since…we talked about this back in 2016, but it has, you know, certainly accelerated.”
Castle said the decline plateaued briefly but never truly leveled off, noting that the town continues to lose cable subscribers each year and can expect the trend to continue as more people switch to streaming.
“This is an equity issue and I find it very ironic that the state wants me to get equity for everyone including 40 outbuildings that are filled with tractors and livestock and turns a blind eye to cable TV subscribers,” Castle said. “This is an equity issue. They’re paying virtually all our bills and we need it to be able to get more revenue from that. So, please put us on an agenda and I’ll go through our business plan and what we can do. I would really appreciate that. I think we have to have these conversations before the next budget cycle.”
Castle continued stating that TCTV is kicking off sponsorships and the station will be announcing channel sponsorships soon.
“We have a couple sponsors ready to hop aboard and channel sponsorships will be announced soon, and in the media business, as they say, there are more in the pipeline,” Castle said. Adding, “So, we’re getting some good response for that. But, again, this is, you know, pennies on the dollar. This is going to net us a few thousand dollars at most.”
Castle estimated that TCTV’s channel sponsorships could generate up to $30,000 in the upcoming fiscal year, but acknowledged the amount would fall far short of what’s needed to sustain operations.
“For TCTV we’ll probably max out at about $30,000 in sponsorships and that doesn’t help us too much,” Castle said.
Castle said TCTV News and its YouTube Shorts have “proven very popular,” as reflected in the station’s performance metrics. (Editor’s note: a quick scan of TCTV’s YouTube channel indicates that their shorts get about 40 – 1,000 hits per video, which is actually pretty good for a community television station.) He added that Montachusett TV is also growing and so is TCTV’s YouTube channel, which had about 60,000 views this year, up from 48,000 the year before.
“We need Montachusett TV to grow exponentially so it can provide revenue for TCTV,” Castle explained. “That’s been the plan all along.” (Castle said that, right now, Montachusett TV’s website gets about 2,000 visits a month, but it has been growing).
Castle then acknowledged a $70,000 Digital Equity Implementation Grant awarded to the Town of Templeton through the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI). The grant was submitted by the Montachusett Regional Planning Commission (MRPC) with assistance from Castle and the TCTV team. Although the funding will support digital equity efforts involving TCTV, Castle emphasized that the work tied to the grant falls outside the station’s current budget and noted that TCTV is already facing a $53,000 shortfall in personnel funding this fiscal year.
“And the digital equity grant…is certainly appreciated, but I will remind everyone that this is work above and beyond what we are already budgeted for, and we’re $53,000 short in personnel this fiscal year,” Castle said.
Castle noted that the grant is reimbursement-based, meaning the town must front the costs of implementation before MBI disburses funds. That presents a financial challenge for TCTV.
“I don’t know how that’s going to work and I’m going to look for guidance on how a reimbursable grant like this works,” he said. “I don’t think it should be coming out of TCTV’s money. We don’t have enough for it to be able to do that and to do everything else that we do.”
He suggested that the town set up a separate account to handle the grant funds. “I’m not sure how reimbursement grants work like that,” Castle added. “I understand it’s after six months they will reimburse you. I was hoping this would start on July 1st and I would frontload a lot of the labor to try to get some of that back by the end of the year, but we don’t have enough. You can’t put it any other way.”
After Castle ended his presentation, Select Board Member Robert May asked Castle how long he anticipates it will take for Montachusett TV to make money.
“Well, I hope within the next year we’re making money on it and that’s the plan,” Castle replied. “And as far as being able to help fund TCTV, we have a three-to-five year plan, and it may take seven, but that’s what I want to present to you is a three-to-five year plan to make TCTV and the cable department really sustainable, and Montachusett TV is a big part of that. It it has infinite potential. We just have to get the views up. There are 250,000 people in this region that we could reach and it gets good reviews. We just have to reach them now…we’re ready with an ad platform for it, however, we need to be able to take money online for that.”
Castle added that businesses could sell products via TCTV and Montachusett TV’s websites and they could get a cut of it, and/or they could sell digital signage and then develop relationships with people in the region who would advertise on and/or sponsor the platform.
“The problem with municipals is that there’s so many guidelines that you can’t have PayPal and you can’t have this and that’s where the deadlocks happen,” Candace Graves, the vice chair of the select board responded.
She added that when TCTV can’t bring money in via the internet and/or on platforms like Paypal, it’s like hitting one’s head against a figurative wall.
Another concern Graves raised was the $53,000 shortfall. If TCTV is operating under the assumption that the town will provide that amount, she said, it’s not going to happen — it’s not in the budget and was never allocated. Like every other department, TCTV will have to operate within its means. That, she noted, is what worries her most about how it’s currently being managed.
“If TCTV runs with the perception that the town’s going to give up $53,000, it’s not happening,” Graves said. “It’s not in the budget. It wasn’t provided. So, it has to run with the shortfall like every other department does.”
She added that the $70,000 reimbursement grant further complicates things. While the town has discussed establishing a revolving account and hiring a grant writer, she emphasized that even when grant funds are available, there must be a system in place to access and manage them.
“I mean I don’t know where the $70k reimbursement is coming from. I mean, we have a very tight budget. I mean, we barely could get, you know, other towns did like Proposition 2 ½ and stuff,” Graves said. “We didn’t do any of that. We lived within our means. We passed a budget. It’s very tight. And there were cuts in it — every department has a cut. Everything didn’t move along. And… everybody has to live within that. And whatever we’re getting in for revenues is what we’re getting in for revenues.”
Graves said she didn’t know where any extra money would come from, or if establishing a grant writing account would require a vote on the floor at the May town meeting. These, she said, are things the board needs to consider.
“I don’t know where extra money is — or is that something that has to be voted on the floor in May, you know, to do a grant writing account or something?” Graves said. “So these are things we need to think about — without having, you know, different issues with our staffing and our big-level staffing. These are things that the select board — we’re going to have to try to help move along and try to help the town.”
Select Board Chair Jeffrey Bennett concluded by thanking Castle for his time and said he would follow up ahead of the next meeting to continue the discussion.
