Imagine Michael Carswell’s shock the first day he came to work as the station manager for Atlanta’s City Channel 26 on Dec. 6. He had spent seven years as a cameraman for Channel 2 WSB-TV, one of the most profitable local television stations in the nation. Now, he was working for a government television station that was so broke producers were re-recording new footage on old videotapes.
“My initial thought was that it was going to be a challenge,” Carswell said. “But a challenge I was going to enjoy. I saw an opportunity to create something from the ground up.”
It might be a long way up. At its core, Channel 26 is supposed to be a service to Atlantans, providing full coverage of meetings and speeches, as well as other useful information.
But city residents and followers of the channel have complained about the rebroadcasting schedule, claimed that it focuses too much on Mayor Kasim Reed and that the production quality is poor.
“I think that some of the cost-saving measures we have taken have hurt us,” Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong said. “We are limping along.”
Sonji Jacobs Dade, the city’s communications manager who runs the station out of Reed’s office, said she was unprepared for what she received when she inherited the station.
“I walked into a television studio that had four dedicated employees and no budget. Zero,” said Dade, who hired Cars-well in December. “We had no money and equipment. They hadn’t bought new DVDs in six months. One person was editing tapes on his own equipment.”
Dade quickly lobbied the council for $60,000 to buy new cameras, tripods, editing equipment and yes, DVDs. Another $60,000 was allotted for 2011, but that is still just a drop in the bucket.
“We haven’t had any upgrades in a decade, so we had to create a new foundation,” Carswell said.
If Atlanta is looking for a model, the closest — and best — is five channels down at Fulton Government Television.
There, Shaunya Chavis-Rucker, the director of the Fulton County Office of Broadcast & Cable, has built a full-fledged television station, stocked with professional producers, anchors and reporters.
Aside from Chavis-Rucker’s own show, “Fulton Today,” FGTV pumps out 20 original shows a month. More shows — all shot digitally — are being tested and designed now.
“When people stop me and tell me how much they like the programming, I appreciate that, because they have a choice to watch us,” said Chavis-Rucker, a former Channel 2 anchor. “We are trying to make people forget that we are a government station.”
But it wasn’t always like that.
When Chavis-Rucker was hired to make an “immediate, noticeable change,” to the station, it was in the “dark and dingy” basement of the Fulton County Public Library. By 2003, she had spent $700,000 in cable subscriber fees to build a new studio in the Fulton County Government Center.
One recent Wednesday, while a county commission meeting was being filmed, Chavis-Rucker walked down to her studio. A team of engineers manned the control center. Behind them, four sign language experts waited their turn.
“We’ve evolved to this,” she said.
But unlike Atlanta, Fulton County has a nice stream of money flowing toward the television product. In most cases, cable companies pay municipalities P.E.G. fees to supplement the cost of equipment associated with public (P), educational (E) and government (G) television stations.
Gwinnett County, for example, gets $103,000 to $104,000 annually.
That is the same case in Fulton, which gets $67,000 annually in G fees. Before the incorporation of several cities in the northern part of Fulton, the county used to get $214,000. That extra $147,000 now goes to places like Sandy Springs and Milton.
Back in Atlanta, while the city does get cable franchise fees — “five percent of the cable providers’ gross revenue — “it is completely shut out of government television fees.
In 2007, after the Georgia Assembly passed the Consumer Choice for Television Act, which allowed cable companies to choose between creating local or statewide franchises, they were allowed to opt out of paying P.E.G. fees.
“The cable companies had no obligation to give dollar one,” said Martin Clark, an attorney in the city’s law department. “But we were able to convince Comcast to go with a local franchise, which allowed us to negotiate assistance for public access.”
Atlanta got a $500,000 payout — spread out over three installments — from Comcast. But all of that money went to the public access channel, where residents are allowed to create their own shows.
Clark, who was on the team of attorneys who negotiated with Comcast, said he did not know why the previous administration decided to put all the money into public access, instead of government television.
“They have not been given the resources or professionals to do the job,” Chavis-Rucker said. “They are just like we were 10 years ago.”
With a staff of four, Carswell has had to make do. All day, they are constantly in motion, either filming a meeting, or following Reed around town.
But since his arrival, there have been subtle changes. City Talk, the lone original 30-minute show, will go from occasional to monthly; weekly schedules are posted twice a week; and crawls running beneath programming are updated with city news.
Instead of 30-minute shows like FGTV, Carswell is producing three-minute segments “that tell a story over time.”
“The first step is to take baby steps. We want to be useful, informative and timely,” Carswell said. “We are not just covering press conferences and meetings anymore. ... There are stories all over the city that are important to people.”
But that is going to cost money, which the city just doesn’t have right now.
“Everybody would love to see more funding and be able to upgrade the equipment,” Councilwoman Felicia Moore said. “But with budgets being the way that they are, our priority is to keep them on the air the best way we can. We can’t do everything we want to do to have the station we want to have.”
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