Vernon Communications Cooperative is based in Westby.

Whether you’re a native of the area or a newcomer, the residents of Vernon County love to live around the beautiful hills and valleys and the rural landscapes that make this Driftless area special. Unfortunately, this beauty has proved to be a formidable obstacle for telecommunications. First there was the struggle for phone service, then cable television, and now broadband. But the people here have never settled for being disconnected from each other, or from their communities, or from the world at large. They’ve always known that connectivity is essential if you are going to participate in a modern economy. In 1951 when the “business case” could not be made to attract a for-profit telephone service to the area, a group of farmers formed Vernon Telephone Cooperative with grant assistance from the Rural Electrification Act. Today, it’s been renamed Vernon Communications Cooperative, because it now offers telephone, broadband, video service, and community television.

As a cooperative, Vernon Communications is owned by its members -- the subscribers to its services – and governed by a board elected by its members. All profits called “capital credits” are returned to members. The board can reinvest in the system or return its profits to members if it is in their interest. In recent years, the board determined that a larger membership base would be needed to help keep prices down in the face of rising equipment costs and cable program service fees. Vernon Communications wanted to expand.

In the 2021 – 2023 Wisconsin Biennial Budget, the State of Wisconsin set aside $100 million to fund grants to expand broadband to unserved and underserved areas. This in addition to federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and more from the federal Infrastructure Act. Vernon received a federal ARPA grant to build “fiber to the premises” that will reach 50 businesses and nearly 1,000 homes in Crawford County. With a Wisconsin Broadband Grant, which the co-op applied for jointly with Monroe County, fiber is being extended to more than 200 businesses and over a thousand homes in Monroe County. Both projects will create a larger potential base of members. All subscribers receive speeds of 50 Mbps up and 50 Mbps down. This is far faster than the FCC minimum standard for broadband, which is 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up.

“Fiber is the new lifeline,” said Reggie Nelson, Network Engineer with Vernon Communications Co-op. “But there are plenty of people who don’t have access to high-speed broadband in this area. People want to be able to view videos and work from home. Many of them need high-speed connectivity to send large files like CAD drawing files and to conduct Zoom meetings.”

When Covid hit, the co-op stepped in to make sure online school was accessible to all their members. Nelson said, “There were a few low-income members with children who did not subscribe to the Internet, and they needed it, so we found a way to turn it on for them until the school district found the funding to pay for it. We didn’t want to see anyone left behind.” This kind of community spirit is one of the things that keeps Nelson inspired at work. “It’s the community involvement that keeps me here. All of us serve people that we see on a daily basis,” he said. “We run into them in grocery store aisles, or at events and fundraisers. We want to be a valuable member of our community.”

As a small company offering video service, Vernon Communications would not have the clout to negotiate reasonable prices for program services like the Discovery Channel and HBO. Years ago, small cable operators got together and formed an organization called NCTC, (formerly the National Cable Television Cooperative, now called the National Content & Technology Cooperative). NCTC negotiates contracts with program providers on behalf of its members.

Vernon Communications Co-op launched the Community Channels in 2007. During Covid the use of these channels really took off. Currently there are 23 churches putting services on our channel 15. “Volunteers take the time to record the services and Vernon Communications gets them on the local channel.

“We’re very community-driven here at Vernon,” said Nelson. The channel is open to program ideas from the community and welcomes resident-produced programs. Jane Schmidt produces a very popular daily fitness class. “If the channel goes out, people call,” said Nelson. Dan Small of Dan Small Outdoors lives in the area and produced a show about fishing on Otter Creek. The ski jump competitions at Snowflake Ski Jump near Westby are also a popular video subject. Sometimes when a viewer tunes in, they just see the live tower shot of Vernon County. “Some people use it like a weather report,” said Nelson. “Sometimes you’ll see the snow coming down, other times it's a shot of blue sky and green trees.”

Each of the six school districts in Vernon’s territory has a channel. You can click through them on channels 2 through 7. Some schools program their channels with fresh content daily, others use it for daily announcements, sports and school activities, while others use it to promote fundraisers. The Westby School District produced a Veterans Day Program. LaFarge Forest School specializes in outdoor programs for its students in grades 4K through 2nd grade. Much of its programming is recorded in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, a very unique area. High school sports coverage is very popular along with other school activities throughout the year.

Working at Vernon Communications for the last twenty years has enabled Nelson to play a part in the telecommunications history of the Driftless Area that has always seen hard work, cooperation and community pay off. “In my work here, we are bringing the benefits of high-speed fiber to this area of the state. It’s bringing good jobs to the area and it feels great to be a part of that,” Nelson said.

Justine Braun, Video Production Specialist, listens to feedback after informing the De Pere city council about winning awards in the 2022 WCM Media Fest.

Justine Braun, Video Production Specialist for the City of De Pere, makes a clear distinction between the kind of coverage the city provides through De Pere TV with the kind of coverage it receives from the local broadcast affiliates. “De Pere gets a decent amount of coverage from the local Green Bay broadcast affiliates,” she said, “but the focus is very much on micro level stories – they come out and do a story when something happens. We show up and do stories about all the good that people do in our community and explain how our community works. We are able to tell a wide range of stories in a lot more depth, so people end up with a much better understanding of local issues.”

Located just outside Green Bay, the City of De Pere has a population of 25,000. It has been offering local government coverage on Channel 4 for more than thirty years – ever since the city signed its first cable television agreement with Time Warner. “People often refer to us just as Channel 4,” said Braun. “We are lucky we have a great spot on the dial where people know where to find us.” She says “lucky” because after Charter Communications (Spectrum) bought the state’s Time Warner franchises in 2016, it never moved any PEG (Public, Education, Government) channels from their original low channel numbers. Everywhere else in the state, the company moved the PEG channels to the 980’s and 990’s right after Wisconsin enacted a state-level franchise system in 2008, making it hard for viewers to find them.

De Pere’s dedication to bringing local government to its residents means De Pere TV covers twelve city boards and commissions: City Council (two meetings each month), Board of Public Works, Finance/Personnel Committee, Board of Park Commissioners, Historic Preservation Commission, Plan Commission, Business Improvement District Board, Redevelopment Authority, Board of Health, the License Committee, the Sustainability Commission, and the Police and Fire Commission. “Our mission is to make government accessible,” said Braun. “We want our residents to hold us accountable, and by carrying city meetings, we give them an opportunity to do that,” she said.

During the COVID pandemic, the city transitioned to a hybrid meeting style, where residents can view and participate in meetings online. The next day, cable subscribers can view the coverage on Channel 4. “We replay our meetings in blocks of three, with the most recent meeting starting the block on the hour, repeating three times each day,” said Braun. Viewers can also catch archived meetings on YouTube and on the city’s website, where a Granicus IQM2 System integrates agendas and minutes with video coverage of meetings using indexing software. “Anyone can watch our coverage, not just cable TV viewers, although we consider our cable television channel to be our first and foremost platform,” said Braun.

Braun also produces The Mayor’s Corner, a monthly half-hour program hosted by De Pere Mayor James Boyd. “I’m most proud of this show,” said Braun. “While it had been done before, it had not been done in a while when I arrived in May 2021. I worked with Mayor Boyd and developed a new format that took us out of city hall.” Every month Braun takes a two-camera set-up to a location somewhere in the city where the mayor talks with an interesting guest. Sometimes it's a member of the city staff, like the police chief or the parks director, and sometimes it’s a community member like Kim Thompson, who is the De Pere Sister Cities International Coordinator. “Most people don’t get to see their local officials as their neighbor and have an opportunity to meet them and share their concerns. With this program we bring government a little closer to people’s everyday life.” Braun likes to complete an episode with a short, highly edited segment that complements the interview. The program about De Pere’s sister city, Amal, Sweden, ended with a feature about a visit from Swedish delegates, following them as they toured the city and spoke with city staff and officials.

Braun is a graduate of UW-Oshkosh’s Radio, TV, Film Program. While a student, she served as the Operations Manager and the Station Manager for Titan TV, the educational access TV station on the Charter Spectrum system. “You could say I worked for community television for three years while at UW-Oshkosh.” Braun moved around a lot after graduation, working in local news at WAOW in Wausau first as an intern and then as a full-time staffer responsible for promotions and PSAs. She also worked in a communications position for Easter Seals and Goodwill in North Dakota. She returned to the area when her husband was offered a position with a local television broadcast affiliate.

“I was excited to work for the City of De Pere because it gives me the opportunity to tell community stories. When I worked in the non-profit sector, I learned that there are so many great stories to tell, but most non-profits are not set up to tell them. Now that I’m with the city, I can share all kinds of interesting things with citizens, like the fact that the city makes its own salt grind for the streets. We explain why we do that and how we do it. I get to tell our residents how our city works and how our tax dollars are spent.”

Braun has part-time help from Jamie Christensen to cover the night-time meetings and she also works with Communications Specialist Andy Pantzlaff, who is responsible for the city’s general communications and social media channels. Braun puts her lengthy experience crafting PSAs to work by creating feature shorts promoting city government and “what we do to serve them and what lengths we go to serve them.” Braun considers these two-to-three-minute promos designed for social media to be her specialty. With her marketing hat on, Braun has produced segments about the fire department, which recently celebrated its 150-year anniversary; the city’s sign shop, which showed viewers how signs are made step by step; and the long-awaited Southern Bridge project, which may soon become a reality. The bridge would add a badly needed second bridge over the Fox River, which has always divided the town into east De Pere and west De Pere and caused a lot of traffic congestion downtown. Braun worked with the historical society to do a look-back on the history of the De Pere bridge, which you can see on YouTube here.

These documentary shorts are not only played on the city’s various social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube page), but also on Channel 4. Viewers of channel 4 also see some programs from outside sources like The Local Perspective produced by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities and WCM member media centers and Wisconsin Eye’s Rewind – Your Week in Review, which is now available to all WCM member media centers for replay. Braun is eager to add more local programming to the line-up. “We are expanding the content we do slowly,” said Braun. She is particularly looking forward to developing public health programs with the city-based health department. Braun is approaching these new projects with the goal of making them “accurate and easy to digest” as well as engaging – not “dry.”

Justine Braun happily poses in front of her production set-up.

One way that Braun has injected some excitement into her programming is with drone footage. Braun has become a licensed drone pilot. “Drone footage looks great in our marketing compilations,” she said, “and I’m also available to help the police and fire departments.” Braun is also looking forward to the purchase of a new Castus server that will automatically inject programs onto the channel for playback. She is also hoping to garner more sponsors for programming to augment the use of Video Service Provider fees that are set aside for communications. Kress Inn currently sponsors the city council meetings. The inn’s logo appears in a corner of the screen during the meeting and afterward, there is a 30 second underwriter spot. She points out that “everyone can see our programming, not just cable television subscribers” and hopes that she can attract more area businesses to support De Pere TV.

“Without a strong local media, people just do not know what is happening in their community,” said Braun. While she likes using social media to reach residents, Braun has concerns with it. “One person makes a statement and other people pile on and too often, no one in the whole string knows what is truly going on.” Braun sees her job as bringing facts to bear on community issues so that residents can make informed decisions in their role as citizens. “Things can fall apart pretty quickly without facts.”

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