Sunday, January 27, 2008

Hey ConcordTV, it's almost February

Tonight, I was watching a rebroadcast of the Concord School Board meeting on the ConcordTV [formerly CCTV] on Channel 6. They were talking budgets and tax rates and other interesting [to me] items ... BTW, did you know that a $1 added onto to Concord's tax rate would yield $3.8 million?
I was cooking while listening to the board talk and then the meeting ended. We then all sat down to eat and I started bringing items into the dining room when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a strange billboard: "Happy Birthday!" with a cartoon birthday cake. Below the cake it stated, "If it's November, it's your birthday!"
I did a double-take. Did I just see that? If it's November, it's your birthday! Sure enough, I did.
Note to ConcordTV: It's almost February.

You would think that with five - yes, five - employees, over there, four of them full-time with another part-timer paid for by the city, they would be able to change the billboards more than every few months. Although, I will admit that the School Board meeting looked a lot better than it used to look. So, someone over there is doing something right [They just are not changing the billboards].

Speaking of ConcordTV, earlier this week, I received an email with a slew of event notices in it. I scrolled down and saw this entry:

CONCORD TV OFFERS TRAINING SESSIONS, JAN-MARCH, including “Planning Your Program, Intro to Camera, Studio Production, Intro to Editing. The fees are low -- $10 – and you can trade volunteer hours in lieu of fees. Get the word out about your group.
I went to the channels' Web site and saw that they have a few classes set up. Specifically, eight between now and mid-March. So, they hired a full-time training person and the most the guy can put together is eight classes over more than two months? What is he doing the rest of the time? He clearly isn't changing the billboards which run over and over again. What can he be doing? Wow, that sure seems like a good use of our tax dollars, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Elsewhere on the site, you can find a producers' page - with nothing on it - and a forms and documents page, the place they used to post their tax filings and other things. Guess what? That's blank too.
There is a "Values" page, with all kinds of talk about the first amendment and democracy, inclusiveness and diversity, etc. ... that is, of course, unless you are interested in probing documents which show programming numbers or anything else, like some people have asked for. In the end, it all seems so weird. It wasn't that long ago, May 2005 actually, when CCTV Board member Anthony "Skip" Tenczar screamed, "We have nothing to hide!" But the board hid behind the city solicitor and former City Councilor Kathy Rogers to keep from releasing any of their records. Sigh.

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