HARDWICK COMMUNITY TELEVISION BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING MINUTES
MEMORIAL BUILDING, HARDWICK, VERMONT – JANUARY 28, 2015
PRESENT BOARD MEMBERS:
Monty Shatney, Board President; Kurt Bos, Treasurer; David Mitchell, Secretary;
John Klee, Rachel Kane
PRESENT STAFF:
Leif Goldberg, Executive Director; Robin Grant, Technical Director and Recording Secretary
Called to order at 6PM by President Monty Shatney
Monty moves minutes of Nov 3, David seconds. No discussion.
Vote unanimous.
Monty presents the balance sheet. Looks good.
Moves to accept balance sheet as presented, John seconds. No discussion
Vote unanimous.
Monty moves to accept the profit/loss sheet as presented, John seconds. No discussion
Vote unanimous.
6:02PM
Station Report by Leif Goldberg:
There was a training session in January. Originally it was scheduled before the holidays, but there was not much response. So it was pushed into January. There were 8 trainees, a varied group, all ages, and some high school students.
[6:03 Jon Lussier arrives]
The goal was to get people familiar with the camera, and interest them in coming back. A couple of trainees have returned, a home-schooled high school kid joined Robin at the ball game [Robin says he did very well]. Another came in and did a Select Board meeting with Leif, and she was hired as a camera operator for the Woodbury school board productions. Leif wants to schedule a series of editing sessions with Robin. Only about 2 or 3 people per sessions given the number of editing computers we have and the small office space.
[6:05 Rachel Kane arrives]
A Father-Daughter team that was also at the training session in January has expressed an interest in doing the book readings at Galaxy Bookstore as their project.
We recently updated the software on the computers. Our old Final Cut 5 no longer performing certain critical functions has finally forced us to upgrade.
[6:07pm Nancy Kellogg arrives]
The OSSU meetings are in production, they are paying us for this.
Page 1 of 3 HCTV-‐BOD Meeting Minutes -‐ 2/2/15
The Woodbury School boards are paid for for the next four months.
Leif doesn’t like dealing with Facebook, would like to get someone else to do it. It is a tool for outreach, so it has it’s importance. It is suggested that we hire someone or go to the high school and have a student volunteer do it.
Leif would like to re-vamp the website this year, we have been talking about doing it, but never have. We use the site to live-stream and present everything the station produces, and also puts up for playback certain of our producers materials.
Rachel says that it would be more desirable to have a consistent person, if we use a high- schooler they would change often.
Nancy suggests Mary Gagnon who is recovering from surgery and spends A LOT of time on Facebook.
6:10pm
Technical report by Robin Grant:
Robin expands on the computer situation: The editing tower died, so we got a newer one, with an upgraded OS, and installed Final Cut 7 on it. Robin and Leif tested it and found that it worked very well and solved all the problems we had with FCP5. Since then Leif and Robin have installed the same OS and FCP7 onto the MiniMac and the VMX iMac. Robin mentions that the Office iMac will also be 10 years old this year and he and Leif intend to replace it as well. David Mitchell was a great help in replacing the BBS computer which also died this year. The equipment is holding up and doing well.
Budget:
There’s a new contractor line, they get $50 per shoot. The last years budgets say ‘assistant’ and has a zero, in the new version that line says ‘Independent Contractor’ and the amount spent last year was $200. For this year Leif put in $400. Monty asks about the revenue for these shoots, and Leif says that is reflected in the Underwriter line. We are getting $80 – $100 and paying the operator $50. Rachel likes the expanded programming because it adds richness to the station and doesn’t drain our resources.
Monty asks why the ‘repairs’ line went down? Leif says we’ve been replacing hardware rather than replacing it.
Jon asks about advertising budget line change. Leif says that it’s actually $500 a year, the twice-annual Gazette ads that we buy are just under $250 each, almost $500 a year and we get that all of that money back from Comcast. But the Gazette never billed us for the second one. Leif called them just at the end of the year to get that, but the checks were not processed until this year, so the second of last year’s ads are shown on this year’s budget.
Jon asks why our surplus is way less than last year? Leif says we were several thousand dollars under our payroll budget last year which provided a lot of that surplus and the proposed budget assumes full payment to the employees. Jon is just a little concerned at such a close- to-even-budget because he does not want have to tap the CD we have on long term deposit. Leif says we bought a lot of stuff this year, more than we had originally budgeted and we have not had to tap that CD, and yet we have even more money available than last year.
Jon moves to pass the budget as presented, David seconds. No discussion.
Vote unanimous.
Leif mentions getting someone to do the Facebooking. Jon says we could provide a stipend out of the web budget. Robin warns against re-allocating too much of the web budget because the site desperately needs to be updated. David says he is sure he can find a motivated student to take on the TV Station’s Facebook because Social Media is a huge part of new jobs and it looks good on resumés.
6:32pm
Fundraising:
Nancy suggests that we solicit donations for a small raffle at the spring fair.
Leif asked for a coin-drop from Hardwick, they said those are filled for this year.
Monty says that he checked in Woodbury about a coin drop and they said no. Apparently there’s no recent history of coin-drops in Woodbury.
Nancy was thinking more of a small raffle, one dollar tickets, on sale for a short period of time. Leif suggests a ’50-50′ raffle. And Leif reminds us all that it requires all of us to really get out there and sell a lot of tickets.
Monty asks about the amount we are trying to raise. Jon says that with the first year’s raffle we made something like $2200. Last year we only made $465, but there were many more give- aways. Jon says that’s an OK amount, but not for months worth of work. Rachel reminds us that, while we are getting more from the town this year, by doing a fundraiser we show the town that we aren’t solely dependent on their appropriation, that there is an active organization behind the station.
Rachel suggests a vote for a TV station animal mascot from one of the townspeople’s pets, where people vote with dollars. Leif likes the idea and mentions the MGM logo concept.
Rachel thinks that this can also bring people into the station, to find out what the latest numbers are.
6:45pm
Monty asks what our viewership is, Robin says that Comcast won’t tell us anymore. The last time we heard was right after Comcast bought Adelphia, and it was 435. He says that we can only guess our viewership by how much our income has increased over the years.
Jon suggests we put on a show at the Town House and split the gate with the performers, broadcast live and live-streamed the show.
Rachel likes the idea of a show. It’s a splash, for sure. But why would an act want to split the money with us? Robin suggests that we’d provide them a recording, as well as attention, but we’d have to have really good sound.
Jon suggests the Craftsbury Vibrations as an act to talk to.
Robin suggests a live telethon like he and Stephanie did last year for the Gagnons.
6:55pm
Other Ideas or Issues:
Rachel asks what our goal is for the fundraising? Jon says it would go to the Capital Fund.
We are a technical business and our stuff only gets older every year. He says the station has been doing more and more in the time he’s been in the board.
Jon mentions that the minutes were not on the site. Leif says that they had not been approved. Monty says that draft minutes can be put up, by all means do so.
Monty adjourns the meeting at 7PM.