PCTV Eyes Adding New Services to Help Station’s Bottom Line
By Janine Bowen – Financially strapped Pleasantville Community Television is planning on changes that will expand its services and generate more revenue for the station.
The public access outlet, which has been struggling financially the last few years since contracts with providers Cablevision and Verizon were restructured, is looking to create corporate and educational videos, documentaries, webisodes and commercials for clients. PCTV leadership have been exploring businesses and organizations in Pleasantville and neighboring communities as potential clients.
“The public access piece is still very much alive, but we need private business to supplement our revenue stream,” said PCTV operations board member Juliette Saisselin Killion.
A franchise agreement with Cablevision, which first expired in 2005 but remained in effect for several more years, had provided PCTV $40,000 annually from subscriber fees as part of a consortium with neighboring towns including New Castle, Mount Pleasant, Ossining and Tarrytown.
However, when competitor Verizon was allowed to compete for subscribers, the consortium was dissolved. Since municipalities receive subscriber fees based on the number of households in their jurisdiction, Pleasantville, with about 2,800 homes, only generates $12,000 per year for PCTV.
In addition, the station used to pay $1 a year rent for its Jackson Alley studio. But the building was sold a few years ago by Jacob Burns founder and Executive Director Steve Apkon and Brian Ackerman, and the station now pays about $20,000 in annual rent, leaving PCTV struggling to find a way to remain afloat.
Currently, PCTV receives funding from the village, sponsors and public donations. But its leadership is now focused on attracting outside business in addition to the public access work to augment the budget.
“We’ve touched on a lot of different industries, so [PCTV Station Manager] Shane [McGaffey’s] experience is very broad,” Killion explained.
The PCTV board has begun the process of creating more visibility for the network and attracting outside customers. It has recently joined the Westchester Chamber of Commerce in hopes of networking with local businesses and has targeted potential clients, including banks and political campaigns.
In order to allow more time for McGaffey to focus on outside business, PCTV is also making some changes to the way public access shows are handled. McGaffey has proposed recording all public access programming, such as village board meetings, directly to DVD with all title cards and stills for the show provided beforehand. Previously, shows were recorded to tape, then edited and transferred to DVDs in order to be uploaded to PCTV’s website and formatted for mobile devices.
“Starting from 2009, not only are we running a television station, but we’re running a website where we upload all the shows,” McGaffey said. “When you go from a model of just putting it in one place to having to upload them so that they’re available on all platforms … that becomes very, very time consuming. With the editing of the public shows and with the running of the website and the television station, that’s where we got to a point where it was harder and harder to have actual time to do private business.”
By eliminating the editing, which can take about four hours for each show, McGaffey will have an additional 20 hours a week to spend on filming for private businesses. PCTV board members believe that with the extra time and business, the station will be able to bring in $30,000 in private business revenue by 2015, as opposed to $17,000 this year.
In addition to the changes in operations, PCTV hopes to focus more on fundraising, an effort which started with their Halloween party last year. In May, the station will be hosting a gala to honor Pleasantville Chamber of Commerce President William Flooks, which they expect will raise about $7,000. The goal is to host at least one event a year to raise money and increase awareness of the services the station can provide.
“It’s another way for us to … not only shore up the reduction in funding we’ve received in the past through the cable companies, but also to be able to raise the funds that we need to support the studio equipment needs, the studio website needs and maybe the purchase of an HD camera,” said PCTV board member Nick Antonaccio.
Board members would also like to purchase a high-definition camera in the near future in order to make the services more attractive to outside clients. Currently, all PCTV programming is filmed with a standard-definition camera. A new camera hasn’t been bought since 2006.
“Technology has changed, and we haven’t,” Antonaccio said.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
