Thurston Community Media (TC Media)— which has been providing broadcast of local government meetings and public access programming for years — saw its contracts with Thurston County, Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater governments end Dec. 31.
Over the past few week, the jurisdictions have announced their plans for broadcasting public education and government programs themselves.
The move means the management of channels 3, 22, 26 and 77 has been split up between the jurisdictions, which will each be in charge of broadcasting, live-streaming, scheduling and programming their own meetings. TCMedia is becoming a 100% nonprofit model, receiving no local government funding.
Channel 3 will be shared by the City of Olympia and Thurston County. City spokesperson Kellie Purce Braseth said the city is launching Oly TV 3, a web portal where folks can watch council meetings live and on demand. The City of Lacey will manage channel 77, now called Lacey TV 77.
The City of Tumwater is continuing to contract with TCMedia for broadcast services until the city is able to begin in-house production. Tumwater will manage channel 26, now called Tumwater TV. City spokesperson Ann Cook said barring any glitches, the city is hoping to be live by the beginning of February. The county is also continuing to work on standing up an in-house communications team.
In addition to streaming council meetings, the jurisdictions have plans to beef up their original content, and the quality of their videos. Captioning and translation functions are in the works, and so are apps for streaming. Videos can be streamed online through Xfinity, Roku and Amazon Fire apps.
Braseth said the first original video the City of Olympia plans to do is a video profile of the new mayor, Dontae Payne.
“We want to do this well, we want to be spectacular, we want to win an Emmy, and we also want to create processes that are documentable and repeatable and well done,” she said.
Public access
TCMedia has been granted the right to continue managing Channel 22 as the public access channel, but without funding from the local jurisdictions, the nonprofit is having to pivot.
TCMedia CEO Deborah Vinsel said the nonprofit will continue to schedule and broadcast programming on Channel 22 created by them and by community members. That includes, for example, the Procession of the Species in April, local candidate forums, club and organization meetings, and more.
But the nonprofit doesn’t get paid to run the public access channel. Eighty-four percent of its $852,000 budget in 2023 came from contracts for service with the four jurisdictions. The other 16% is TCMedia-generated money, through equipment and facility use fees, training, services for productions, consulting, tech support, fundraising, grants and donations.
Vinsel said the change in funding model for TCMedia will be a big shift. The budget will now have to be funded almost entirely by fees, fundraising, grants and donations. But the shift isn’t undoable, she said.
“We continue to operate and we’re asking the community that if they value media by, for and about the community, that they support local media platforms, including us,” Vinsel said.
She said people can go to TCMedia’s website to make a financial donation. And the nonprofit is participating in a number of fundraising campaigns, including the Give Local campaign.
