There may be some good news in all these budget cuts

The Dallas City Council's Quality of Life & Government Services Committee will hear recommendations tomorrow that I'm betting committee members are not going to like. It involves severe cuts in current city services.

One thing that may be accomplished, however, is that the city may take the first steps to creating a city television station that is on a par with all the other city-owned stations around the country and not the laughing stock it is now. The reason why Dallas has such a deplorable TV station goes back 30 years now to when the city granted its first cable television franchise to an outfit that was then called Warner Qube Cable Company. Now the way every single municipal-cable company franchise in the nation works is this: The franchisee pays the city X number of cents per subscriber to that municipal government each month. That "X" can range from 25 to 50 cents, depending on the franchise agreement. The city then uses that money to operate its cable television station.

When I was the Public Information Officer in Dallas, I spent significant time researching Dallas deficiencies in this area and one of the things I learned was that City of Los Angeles, to use just one example, collected about $16 million per year which it used to finance its television operations. It had a first-class TV studio, great 24/7 programming and a top-notch staff to operate it. It was a first-class operation and was one of the more popular TV stations Los Angeles cable offered. Compare that to Dallas. How often does anyone watch Cable Channel 16 around here? Then Mayor Ron Kirk used to ask me all the time "Why does every other city have a great city cable channel and we have such a rotten (paraphrasing there) one?" Before I had a chance to present a full report to him, however, he had resigned to run for the U.S. Senate. I still regret I missed that golden opportunity to change things.

Look at the programming offered on Fort Worth's cable channel, on Denton's. Why does Plano's city cable television run theatrical movies on its cable television channel while Dallas has programs in which City Council members try and fail to imitate penetrating talk show hosts? It's because when that first contract was signed with Warner Qube, Dallas made a policy decision "not to be in the television business." As a result, it created this monster -- an independent supposedly non-profit corporation designed to operate all the community's cable outlets and it was this corporation which gets those monthly franchise fees. Not only that, the city supplemented this giveaway with additional moneys from the General Fund. The city was (and continues to do so) giving away millions of dollars a year and getting absolutely nothing in return.

Whenever I made a fuss about it during my time as the city's PIO, the non-profit would make this grand gesture toward Channel 16, which was really no gesture at all. The result of their overtures would have meant throwing even more money its way.

The outfit has operated under a number of different names. It used to be called DCTC and now calls itself iMedia. Look at its Web site, and tell me where you find a listing of Dallas' city TV channel. You won't find it because iMedia doesn't give a damn about the city's channel, only the ones it created. It is using all this money -- the franchise fees plus another $363,546 annual "gift" from the city that is supposed to operate the city's television station for its own selfish operations.

What you will find on the site however is a plea to attend the city's town hall budget meetings to make sure this $363,546 keeps coming iMedia's way. You see, the city manager's proposed budget for FY 2009-2010 cuts this money. And it's about damn time, too. I know I could have created and operated a superb TV station on just the money collected from the franchise fees alone. These clowns at iMedia (DCTV) who have been stealing from the taxpayers for years and giving us nothing in return (except to allow some of their closest friends to "rent the barn and put on a show") should be able to do the same. If not, let it go out of business so those franchise fees can stay with the city where they have belonged all along.

I remember attending a statewide convention of municipal public information officers and most of the forums had to do with municipal cable television stations because they were the principle means of communicating with their respective public. That convention was divided: 15 percent of those attending genuinely felt sorry for Dallas because our hands were tied by DCTV and 85 percent considered Dallas a laughingstock. It's probably way too late to change this, but eliminating this funding is a necessary first step.