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SCRANTON – Electric City Television’s Executive Director Mark Migliore has spent the last several years behind the scenes ensuring that the views of city officials reach the public in the comfort of their own homes.
He now hopes the people of Lackawanna County will see things from his perspective.
ECTV, whose studio is located on Wyoming Avenue, has been the sole provider of public access television in the area for the last two years, replacing Scranton Today after 10 years. A recent amendment to an agreement between the city and Comcast could be a fatal blow to the area’s public access, according to Migliore, who has worked for both providers.
The amendment places a $100,000 grant for public access use into a special city account, where it awaits the approval of council before being released to a provider. Council President Janet Evans, who has publicly criticized ECTV’s service and mounting debt, said she would like to put the job out to bid before awarding the money solely to ECTV.
Migliore said Evans and other critics aren’t seeing the full picture.
ECTV, a nonprofit organization, has operated under the impression that they would receive more funding from the city in the future, as was promised to them by many city representatives. The station, instead, has been run on a shoe-string budget.
Migliore has been deferring payment for his services since October 2009, and employees Heather Davis and Anthony George haven’t been paid since January 2010. With their future in question, they released a statement on their website asking their viewers to contact council and ask them not to “pull the plug” on their operations.
“It was a surprise, but we knew the whole time that their intentions were to have a say in how that money was spent. What we didn’t anticipate was that they would attempt to take money from this station and give it to a new start-up,” Migliore said. Evans called the statement “false” and “irresponsible,” as she had previously fought to get cameras back in council chambers.
Migliore said ECTV has been criticized for not delivering on many of the services they promised but never provided, such as on-demand internet streaming of any broadcast. Those plans suffered because of a lack of funding. State funding for the web service was secured more than one year ago, but it still has not materialized.
Working within the system has had mixed results for the station. They received $90,000 from the city’s Office of Economic and Community Development when they began, but most of the money went into building a studio and purchasing equipment. Originally running out of an old church basement, ECTV was evicted from its studio after a Commonwealth Court decided that they had not met requirements for a zoning variance. As a result, much of the money they had spent developing the basement was lost.
The new studio runs on a minimalist set and equipment that is used to its full capacity.
“We met all the obligations for the (OECD) loan to be forgiven. If you’re an organization, and you apply for a loan or a grant, what you do with that money belongs to the organizations that was granted the award,” Migliore said, countering Evans’ claim that the city owns equipment purchased with that $90,000.
ECTV has been running on an annual budget of only $145,000, less than half of their originally proposed $300,000 budget. They applied for and received $37,500 from the county over the last year and a half, and they have gained revenue through fundraisers and fee-based work, but the station has still accumulated $115,000 in debt since June.
Migliore believes that ECTV is performing well despite their limitations. The station broadcasts at least 20 programs a day as opposed to Scranton Today’s capabilities which allowed for six programs to be shown on a continuous loop.
He also criticized Scranton Today for operating “on the back of the Scranton Public Library” for seven years, using their facilities “until the Scranton Public Library Board said ‘no more.’”
Scranton Today, like ECTV, also ran for many years without a contract, oversight committee, or city input on programming, yet there was no “public outcry” when they were the sole public access provider, he added. “We tried to do the right thing with this, and all we did was get dragged through the mud. Who wants to take that on?” Migliore asked.
“I challenge anybody to do what we do on the money that we did it under the circumstances that we did it. Step up to the plate; let’s see how you do.”
Migliore said he doesn’t understand how council could expect ECTV to continue to work, ironically taping council’s own meetings, while simultaneously “cutting us off at the money.”
“We served the city of Scranton for two years, and the message we got from council was, ‘Thanks a lot. Now there’s the door.’ That’s how we feel.”
He explained that he would like council to at least let them finish the four years of service they had originally proposed. He claims the station has become politicized despite being originally chosen by an independent committee.
“We’re not being judged on the merit of our performance. I think that the PEC channel is supposed to serve the needs of the people, not the politicians. I know for a fact that lots of e-mails of support when into city hall over the past seven days. Not only were they not read, they were not even acknowledged by council,” Migliore said.
“I don’t know what people they’re making their decisions for, but it’s not everybody.”
As of Friday, Migliore said he plans to continue operating ECTV for the foreseeable future.