Monday, November 17, 2008

Service interruption

Without being too self indulgent, I've not had any time to devote to Bignews Margate of recent and that may well remain the case for a while.

I hope to get round to giving you a long winded bitch about something any day now, one area that particularly concerns me is Kent Councils mission creep by this I mean our local authority KCC involving itself in business by supplying things like temporary workers, taxi and bus services etc rather than leaving entrepreneurs to do it properly.

One of my readers was kind enough to point out that one of their enterprises Kent TV ( which is funded by Kent Taxpayers) has made available its last minutes, an interesting read.

Its probably best to read the document as KCC intended by clicking here if you cannot be bothered and who would blame you I've pasted in the text below. My own view, is that things are not going as planned like no significant advertising revenue, anyhow should KCC confine themselves to service like education, social services and roads, I think so.

Still with Kent TV being free except of course to taxpayers I cannot imaging why Mrs Me parts with large sums of money to Sky TV?

Kent TV Board. 23 September 2008 Present: Peter Gilroy (Chair), Ian Chittenden, Geoff Miles, Paul Wookey, Richard King Apologies: Cheryl Armitage, Ray Parker, Steve Phoenix, Ann Sutton, Martin Jackson, Gary Beautridge In Attendance: John McGhie, Tanya Oliver, Louise Elliott (minutes)

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting.
The minutes around Income Generation were discussed as it had become unclear what parts were still being pursued and what parts were not. We were moving away from the scatter gun sponsorship and still pursuing the possibility of large corporate organisations sponsoring channels. All other minutes agreed.

2. Ten Alps Report. John McGhie presented the report. Overall viewing figures have increased steadily although a slight dip in August. Kent TV covered a summer of festivals which Kent played a large part. Total visits so far are 770,000 with 4.3m page views and 493,903 unique visits. Clarity was given over viewing figures from a Kent County Council building. It was agreed that a note should be sent to all members explaining this. There was a discussion around the company that provide the statistics to ensure that they are completely independent from Ten Alps to avoid controversy. John McGhie will share more detailed information with Board Members. Kent TV has started uploading content onto other websites which helps raise the profile and overall our number of core viewers is on the increase. The decision has been made at Kent TV that the weekly reviews would change to monthly reviews The Your Say section has also been suspended pending a revamp of the entire section. “What’s On” is working progress at the moment and is being tested. An October soft launch is planned. The section will publicise all events in Kent, both large and small. Kent TV has been short listed for ‘Website of the Year’ at the EDF Regional Media Awards. One of our Video Journalists, Tom Chown, has also been short listed for ‘TV News Journalist of the Year.’ The results will be made known in October. A suggestion was made that the politics channel could be used by all parties / groups by having their own sections, but during election time all political videos will be removed. It was suggested that John McGhie contacts the three KCC leaders to see what they think. Richard King and the rest of the board agreed that videos should be dated so that you can see how up to date the videos are.

3. Board Membership Applications.
The advertisement for member(s) of the public to join the Board had good press coverage in the Kent on Sunday, KCC website and Kent TV. Despite this we only received 6 applications. Decisions took place about what should be the next steps, it was agreed that a letter should be sent to all of the 6 applicants informing them that we are extending the deadline. An advert would be put in “Oi” magazine and John McGhie would look at embedding the advert into other film website to attract more attention.

4. Marketing and Advertising sub-group update Various discussions took place around the next steps for this sub-group. Ten Alps have offered to commission Mongoose Media to compile a report regarding out-sourcing out advertising sales. There were too few Board Members to make a formal decision so it was agreed to pursue this for a more detailed discussion next time. Peter Gilroy is in talks in Microsoft and IBM around sponsorship of a channel.

5. AOB
A discussion took place around who the next chair of the Board should be as Peter Gilroy will be stepping down in the New Year. It was agreed that this should be discussed at the December board meeting and the hope was expressed that Peter stay in post until at least the end of the Kent TV pilot programme.


6. Dates of next meetings
17th December 10-12 The Board Room, Maidstone Studios

1 comment:

  1. The Kent Messenger has reported that the county council is considering spending a further £400,000 on Kent TV.

    http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kol08/article/default.asp?article_id=51242

    ReplyDelete