Board Meeting Minutes – 7/21/15

MRVTV Board of Directors meetingTuesday, July 21, 2015, 5:30 pmMRVTV studio, 5031 Main St., Waitsfield

Present: Lisa Loomis, John Daniell, Michael Hock, Brian Shupe, Lisa Italiano, Tony Italiano and Alex Maclay. (proxies present for Liz Levey, Dan Eckstein, and Rob Williams)
1. Welcome/Additions, changes to agenda

a. Lisa L. called the meeting to order at 5:42 pm. 2. Approval of minutes of board meeting of 4-23-15

a. Michael moved that we accept the minutes. John seconded, motion carried. 3. Station/programming update: Alex/Tony

a. Alex: School programming diminishes in the summer. The opening for the documentary was held in May and the event with the kids at Blueberry Lake, withClearwater’s support, was a good event. Municipal meetings have been very popular as of late. We haven’t spent as much on contract as of late. Tony will do modest filming of the Bridge Street construction area. Should we do the same thing for the construction of the new Town Hall? There have been three programs about the Valley Arts Foundation with Karen Nevin, such as the recent one with Laura Arneson on the VT Music Fest. Locals have commented on how nice the coverage of the parade was. As the legislature has wrapped up for the summer, that has slowed down as well. Alex mentioned some people have questioned why we have shows from outside our community. Michael commented that we might want to havea statement, something like, “Things of local interest, not just local things!” toexplain that we don’t just show purely local content.

b. Tony:

  1. MRVTV to date 170 programs

  2. VMX to date 136 programs

1. Because our programs are longer, in general, our local content uses

more air-time than VMX content.

  1. There is a proposal for a new program, a talk-show format, with three

    gentlemen, one from Moretown. They are interested in promoting the show and want to have it LIVE. Tony agreed to meet with them to help them to further develop and film their show.

  2. Warren Elementary School Board meeting of 7.15.2015- 383 viewers to date, thus overtaking all other programs online.

  3. Valley Arts foundation is creating their own promos, between one and two minutes.

  4. Yestermorrow is producing the lecture series, they are uploading them to YouTube, Tony loaned them his personal audio equipment to improve the quality of the series. This is a positive benefit to the VMX community as a contribution from MRVTV.

  1. Video Camp- Curtis Wilcox, Harwood Senior, was the assistant and did a great job of the three campers and together they produced a video. For next year Tony may try to have an iPhone camp, or other device related camp. We need to consider the cost to the camper if we are hiring talent to teach the camp.

  2. Tony shared the website to show us the features that are available to viewers. Tony has made a great effort to talk up the server and the video on demand.

  3. We need to have a “Coming Out” party for our Cloud presence and then letpeople know the stats about viewing and then ask for donations.

  4. Add signage that includes MRVTV.com so that we can encourage people to visit the website. Let’s order some stickers to share. John offered to help.

  5. Can Tony make a 10 minute video to share the features of the online content

    and the website?

4. Financial update: 2015 YTD and 2016 Budget discussion Alex/ Lisa

Advertising/Community outreach is underfunded. Please delete prior budget information from Alex. This is updated. We reviewed the budget to date. The heating oil rate may be locked in soon at around $1.40 per gallon. Everything else is near the 50% rate, appropriate for this time of year.

The accounts have been moved to the Northfield Savings Bank due to theclosing of the People’s Bank branch in Waitsfield.
Friends of 44- This is sub-section of MRVTV who is the fiscal agent for Friends. We will move it into another savings account at NSB and call it Friends of MRVTV rather than Friends of 44. The funds we raised from our event in the fall were put into that account and we will be able to transferover funds to support the “Cloud” costs.

Lisa I. made a motion that we move Friends of 44 into NSB savings account and change the name to Friends of MRVTV.
Brian seconded. Motion passed.
Michael moves to accept the financial reports. Brian seconded. Motion passed.

5. Fundraising/sponsorship committee formation - Alex Three current ideas:

  •   Benefit Bake at FlatBread (Lisa L. will contact GGeorge for the average“take” on one of those events)

  •   Big Basin Band – We will ask Liz about the possibility of BBB for our 2015 fundraiser. Tony will ask Liz about this with the complete understandingthat if she says no, it’s OK.

  •   Sponsorships
    We may need to revisit the status of our station vis a vis the federal regulations to see

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if the same regulations apply to us as apply to WMRW. We also may want to

investigate what other public access stations are doing in this regard. The process and the guidelines go hand in hand. What we need is a proposed draft of guidelines for underwriters is needed for us to discuss and possibly adopt in the future. Potential language:

“MRVTV is made possible, in part, by a donation from ________.” Lisa I. (and Liz?) will work together to do some research and perhaps propose some language about sponsorships to the board for the next meeting. Tony and Alex will help. Brian made a motion that Lisa I. and Liz will do some research and bring their findings to the next board meeting. Michael seconded. Motion passed.

  1. Technology update: Tony
    Tony bought the new microphones for the studio and they are excellent.
    The resolution of the station, John notices, on cable is very poor. Can we do anything about it? MRVTV compares very poorly to the other stations on cable. Tony has had meetings about the possibility of using copper cables when the signal hits the modulator. It will be interesting to find out where the signal is degrading and if there is anything we can do about it.

  2. Other business: Next quarterly meeting, was set for Thursday, Oct 15th, 5:30 pm (confirm/Doodle other options?)

a. Action items from prior agenda

8. Adjournment
Brian made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7:01 pm.

Michael seconded. Motion passed, meeting adjourned.
Note: These minutes were approved at the 10-20-2015 MRV TV Board of Directors meeting.