TEMPLETON — Templeton Community Television (TCTV) is facing a funding crisis, and Director Steve Castle laid out a detailed plan to save it during the August 27, 2025, Templeton Select Board retreat goal-setting meeting.
“I’d like to make a proposal for an investment in our community,” Castle told the board. Later adding, “TCTV cannot generate enough income to stand on its own. It needs something regional. There’s this thing called the internet, we can reach it with that.”
According to Castle, the reason TCTV cannot support itself is because cable revenue is declining as more people cancel their subscriptions and transition to streaming.
Castle said their solution is Montachusett TV—an umbrella digital media platform designed to expand TCTV’s reach beyond Templeton and attract new revenue streams. Castle said Montachusett TV was launched with help from a Massachusetts Office of Business Development grant, and he compared it to a newspaper’s business and arts section, designed to serve both Templeton and the wider region.
“We support democracy by doing the meetings; we want to boost business development, grow young leaders, and, of course, we support free speech and free press in a responsible way,” Castle said.
Castle introduced his expanded team—staff, interns, and contributors—including social media manager Alex Harrison and two high school interns trained in cutting-edge video technology. Castle noted that TCTV received a free social media audit through the Wachusett Business Incubator. He also said the station plans to offer media conversion services to help residents do media transfer to digitize outdated formats like VHS tapes and LPs. “We got a lot of interest in that right away,” Castle said. “‘Oh, my parents have a ton of tapes I’d like to get converted.’”
During the meeting, Castle presented a comprehensive business plan, which included leveraging drone footage, 360-degree virtual reality video, and hybrid broadcasting tools like Zoom-enabled “meeting owls” to provide cost-effective coverage and new community services. He requested $150,000 in funding over five years to support TCTV’s operations and growth.
“We can reach a million people a year,” Castle said. “If we add the digital signage to that, we could reach millions before that.”
Castle explained that TCTV deliberately adopted a community media center model about a decade ago, rather than operating as a traditional studio-based public access channel. This approach, he said, avoided costly overhead and expanded access to services and media tools that residents are more likely to use.
“We are a community media center, and we made this choice back in 2015 when we were negotiating the present cable contract,” Castle said. “Instead of being a studio-based public access channel with a big studio and a lot of overhead for that—at the edge of town, that nobody ever visits—we consulted with our attorney and a consultant that he brought in, and they encouraged us to go to a community media center model that opens it up. Instead of just renting/loaning out complicated camera equipment and audio video equipment that a lot of people don’t want to use, we can do everything. We can do graphics, we can do photography, and we can do multiple medias.”
Castle outlined several options for how Templeton Community Television could be structured and funded in the future. He explained that under Massachusetts law, PEG (Public, Educational, Government) access operations like TCTV are allowed to operate either as an enterprise fund or a revolving fund. Castle noted that while the town currently uses an enterprise fund—which offers more stability—shifting to a revolving fund could offer different advantages worth exploring. He also floated the idea of merging TCTV with departments like economic development or IT/AV, joking that the resulting acronym—“TCTV, IV, IT, AV, ISB, EDC”—was too long to keep writing and suggested the town might adopt a more streamlined name for such a multi-functional media and tech operation.
Castle also discussed the long-term possibility of transitioning to a nonprofit model using a separate 501(c)(3) organization to produce both TCTV and Montachusett TV under contract with the town—an approach that mirrors how similar operations are managed in other municipalities. “I’m not advocating that right now,” Castle said, “but I think it’s something that we can consider as we move forward.” He explained that forming a nonprofit would take time, noting that “it’s going to take three to five years to do that because it has to get established,” and that certain grants are not available until a nonprofit has been active for at least three years. As part of this longer-term vision, Castle is finalizing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Wachusett Business Incubator (WBI) to help manage digital revenue streams—such as Montachusett TV—via an external fiduciary, since the town itself does not use PayPal.
Following his presentation, no formal action was taken on Castle’s business plan because the August 27, 2025 meeting was a goal-setting retreat intended for discussion and planning, not for voting or making official decisions.
