Nevada County PEG Station Collaboration Project

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

Nevada County partnered with our community’s Public, Education, and Government (PEG) cable TV station non-profit operator (Nevada County Digital Media Center – NCDMC) to assist them in avoiding a planned organizational shutdown. Our community was at risk of permanently losing local independent PEG stations and the associated local community video content creation and broadcast. Dramatic cuts in funding are causing public access stations across the nation to close down at an alarming rate and ours was similarly threatened. Utilizing PEG franchise funds (no County general fund dollars used), the County purchased a new state-of-the-art video broadcast "station-in-a-box" technology platform and hosted it in the County datacenter. County staff worked closely with devoted NCDMC volunteers and their Board members to successfully transition over to a new platform. The solution includes new “cloud” technology that allows community producers to upload and schedule content from any location with an Internet connection. This solution enabled NCDMC to operate without a costly station engineer on staff and allowed them to move to smaller, less expensive office space that is not restricted to the limited Comcast fiber optic service area. This partnership solved many problems for both the County and NCTV. Utilizing cable franchise fees, cooperative agreements and cutting edge technology solved multiple problems for the County, partner cities and NCDMC - ultimately keeping the non-profit in business and local PEG programing on the air.