Board Meeting Minutes – 1/21/16

MRVTV Board of Directors meeting

Thursday, January 21, 2016, 5:30 MRVTV studio, 5031 Main St. Waitsfield, VT 05673

Present: Liz Levey, Michael Hock, Dan Eckstein, Deborah Feldman, Lisa Italiano, Alex Maclay, Tony Italiano and Lisa Loomis

  1. Welcome/Additions, changes to agenda (we corrected the date on the original)Michael called the meeting to order, in Lisa’s absence, at 5:50 pm.
    Dan wonders whether we are going to discuss the FCC question from our last
    meeting at tonight’s meeting. Dan suggested, and the board agrees, that we will put this on our agenda for a future date.

  2. Approval of minutes of board meeting of 10.20.15
    Liz moved to accept the minutes to our October 20, 2015 meeting. All in favor, motion passed.

  3. Station /programming update: Alex/Tony
    Programming
    : We’ve been busy with municipal programming. One of ourstudent videographers is filming local basketball and hockey games. We are accessing a good deal of statewide content from VMX, especially ORCA. Alex wishes that we had a station calendar on a third channel for 24/7 viewing, Tony mentioned that it would most likely require more sophisticated software.Welcome to Reality, our locally produced reality/comedy show is now airing live on MRVTV at 1:00 pm on Wednesdays. Last year the VMX was about 240 280 titles, about a 60/40 split with local programming, although, the local programming in number of minutes is much greater. Alex and Lisa will encourage the new Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce to produce a show possibly highlighting there new four areas of focus: Local Food, Wellness, Innovative Economy and Recreation. There will be a candidatesforum for the two open seats on the Waitsfield Select board. We will also find out about elections in Moretown and Warren as well. We have some new producers: Seth Davidson, Anne Dillon, Amanda Campbell and more people are coming in to learn more about the station.

  4. Financial update: 2015 Budget vs Actual and proposed 2016 Budget: Alex/Lisa Roger gave an updated funding figure to Alex and the latest budgetary information will be confirmed.
    Lisa moved that we table the approval of the budget until we have the final figures and all information needed to make a decision electronically.

    All in favor, the motion passed.
    Employees have not received bonuses or salary increases since 2014.
    Lisa moved that we give our employees a 2015 merit bonus of 1.5% of their salaries and increase their salaries by 1.5% in 2016, reflecting their merit, retroactive to January 1, 2016.

Discussion:
The board might consider always having a cost of living increase as a common practice with the option of also offering merit or bonus pay options as well. We may consider taking action to revise our bylaws to codify the practices of MRVTV regarding employee compensation. Tony thanks the board for their
consideration of MRVTV’s employees. Lisa amended her motion to include ameeting of the personnel committee to address changes in the bylaws to codify the employee remuneration processes.
All in favor, motion passed.

  1. April 1st Fundraising event organization Alex
    Fundraising committee- Alex, Lisa I., Liz & Deborah. We have roughly two months from today to pull it together.
    PHANTOM restaurant, April 1
    st, Friday night.
    Brainstorming:
    Phantom will be offer food and drink for sale. We might offer to have the tickets include the price of the food and maybe your first drink. Possibly a tasting menu. Get the MRVTV pint glasses and offer the drinks at regular price and another price that includes the glass. Could we pay the band out of Friends of 44 and let the fundraiser make its own money? Could Sean Lawson brew us a special MRVTV beer?
    Lisa L. and Liz could develop the PR schedule and do some promotional programming on the station.
    Schwag: Pint Glasses/Coffee Mugs

  2. Technology update: Tony

    Website: The website was hacked over the summer. When we went mobile friendly, GMAVT never really had the capacity to support what we needed. Then we got hacked. The website was down for one day. We were bombarded with files. Joanne Knight was working with GMAVT and Tony let Roger, Lisa and Alex know, and Richard Pitoniak was able to assist Joanne and to get her what was needed to solve the problems. Joanne had been monitoring and updating the website with plug-ins etc. without charging the station. From now on, we will pay Joanne an annual stipend of $200 to continue to manage that aspect of the website. Tony closed out 2015 by copying all files and has offsite copies of all the recordings. All recordings of local content are now up to date, categorized and in the station. Based on prior approval by the board of capital funds the following purchases have been made to support the new workflow:

    A new SONY camera, similar to the one we lost in the flood, which is now cheaper than it was in 2011. SONY makes another similar, slightly smaller camera that has XLR at a cost of about $1600 $1700 each and plans to purchase one of these and also a second camera.

    A 27” Mac that will be wired to the server and the workflow (purchased used with Adobe included) Tony is seeking support from other public access stations to learn more about using the new cards which are very small and have the potential to be easily confused/lost/dropped etc. The

current system will be able to handle 3 cameras. If we get up to six cameras, we will need another workflow computer. Now there are five cameras that can go out and three in the studio so we always have the capacity to do what is needed. The Town Office will be going live in June and there will be more work to do to enable that to happen.

  1. Other business:
    Producers Manual- do we need to update language? We will plan to review the manual at a future board retreat to update and revise. Alex will seek out similar documents from other public access stations. Are there considerations, specifically for live programming that we need to address? (1
    st Amendment rights et. al., composition of the board, what factions of our community are represented on the board, a Harwood connection, willingness and ability to participate in the common good of the station)

  2. Adjournment
    Lisa L. moved that we adjourn the meeting. Liz seconded. All in favor, motion passed. Michael adjourned the meeting at 7:25.

Respectfully submitted by Lisa Italiano