The Cupertino Courier
News
News bulletin: City Channel is a winner
By Crystal Lu
The Cupertino City Channel has only three full-time staff members. And they all have the same title: media coordinator.
"We all do everything from programming to machine maintenance. Our staff is so small that each of us has to wear many hats," said Reinaldo Delgado, who started as an intern in 1989 and has been a full-time employee since graduating from San Jose State University in 1994.
Despite its staffing limitations, the City Channel--which is broadcast to Cupertino's Comcast customers on Channel 26--continues to accumulate industry awards.
The station won four Pegasus Awards in 2007 and has been named one of three finalists for Outstanding City Meeting Coverage for the 22nd Government Programming Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA). The Pegasus and the NATOA awards are both national competitions.
Delgado and staffer Robert Kim are traveling to Portland early next month for the NATOA awards. The other finalists are stations in Denver and Washington, D.C.
"Those two cities are much larger than Cupertino. I'm sure they have bigger staffs, but we have a wonderful small team," said Pete Coglianese, who has worked for the Cupertino City Channel since graduating from Santa Clara University in 1986.
Founded in January 1983, the City Channel was the first government cable channel in Santa Clara County.
The three full-time staff members are supplemented by two contract employees. Although the City Channel staff is too small to put on regular newscasts, it covers major incidents as they occur. During late August's wildfire, Delgado and on-call contractor Ron Olds went to film the fire scene. Delgado interviewed firefighters and reported the news with voiceover.
The crew will produce a news program for the upcoming city council election, inviting two local newspaper reporters to interview candidates on Sept. 27 and 28. They will also broadcast live on election night, Nov. 6.
Most of the City Channel's self-produced programs are live coverage or edited recordings of city meetings, community forums and events. In addition, City Channel programming includes satellite feeds from Annenberg Channel, a private foundation-funded network that produces educational programs in Washington D.C., and the California Channel, which airs the proceedings of the California Legislature.
Since last March the City Channel has been on radio at 1670 AM, through which it repeatedly broadcasts event announcements and news briefs all day.
"We've added quite a few new tools in the past year," said Kim, who was a contractor at the station from 1988 to 1992 and returned as a full-time hire in 2006.
Kim raves about the station's new 3N system, which can send information citywide by every possible means of telecommunication such as e-mail, cell phone, landline and fax. It was designed for emergencies and first used for the late August wildfire.
Through Comcast, the City Channel currently broadcasts to around 60 percent of the households in Cupertino. Its audience will increase in the near future when it gets a channel from AT&T U-Verse.
