Tom Loucks and Mary Cardona pose with the WCM banner.
Wisconsin Community Media celebrated Community Media Day on October 20 by attending the League of Wisconsin Municipalities Annual Conference in La Crosse. WCM Executive Director Mary Cardona and Tom Loucks, Director of Communications for the City of Marshfield, who is also on the WCM Board of Directors, manned an educational kiosk at the event.
We talked to municipal officials about the benefits of joining WCM and met with several state-wide organizations that would love to have more media attention. WCM is hoping they can work with some of our member media centers to get coverage of these community-based events. We are very excited about the programming that could be generated through these collaborations that would be relevant across the state.
We also talked about the need for legislative action to save local PEG channels on cable television systems by holding operators to a minimum standard that would require modernizing how they carry PEG channels. We brought a split screen video demonstrating how the SD signal is very fuzzy compared to the HD signal and we provided a handout for people to take home with them on the topic.
We also had a handout on the level of cable subscriberships and how municipalities can find out how many customers a video service provider like Charter Spectrum has in their community by requesting the annual report cable companies file with the State. More than 50% of households subscribe nationally. Our final handout explained Video Service Provider (VSP) fees and how state aid makes up for the legislature’s reduction of the fees VSPs (cable companies) pay. Municipalities must ensure this state aid is always included in the biennial state budget.
Governor Tony Evers and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes were a surprise last minute addition to the conference. Both spoke at the Thursday lunch. Their arrival drew a standing ovation. We caught them working the room after their remarks.
