Community Corner

Community TV Eyes Cabrillo as New Home Base

Faced with a major budget restriction in 2014, Santa Cruz Community Television has been looking for a new home and Thursday executives toured the old theater arts buildings on the Cabrillo College campus, which were abandoned four years ago when the school built its new theater complex.

Kathy Bisbee, the executive director of the Gilroy-based Community Media Access Partnership, toured the buildings Thursday with a team of representatives from Community TV and Cabrillo, including CTV director Lynn Miller.
Representatives of the campus and TV station sketched a proposal that could work for both parties.

CTV would pay rent and repairs on the buildings while Cabrillo could hire staff to work in the studios and computer labs.  That way CTV can use its funding for buildings and Cabrillo could offset the station's needs with staffing.

CTV had been funded by revenues from the monopoly cable provider, Comcast, which collects an annual fee to provide local 56 hours a week of shows on channels 25, 26 and 27. New legislation which goes into effect July 1, 2014, limits the funds only to buildings and equipment and doesn't allow for salaries.

As a result, CTV is looking at merging with the Community Media partnership to cut management overhead and build a bigger operating base.

They explored a new home at the Tannery, but now are looking at Cabrillo, which already supplies many unpaid interns to the station and could expand its media presence with an in-house TV station and studios. 

The talks are exploratory, so far, and neither party was ready to comment.

CTV is now located in downtown Santa Cruz.




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