A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
CAT-7 Cable Coordinator Eric Lipponen monitors the screens during Tuesday's Cloquet City Council meeting. Lipponen's position was cut to half-time starting in 2019 to help balance the budget at the community access television channel.
In addition to local newspapers, political junkies in Cloquet frequently sought another avenue for the latest candidate comments in advance of last fall's election: CAT-7 TV.
The local community access television channel - which broadcasts on Channel 7 for Mediacom subscribers and YouTube for those who don't use cable TV - had a starring role in election coverage, from broadcasts of Cloquet City Council meetings, to candidate forums, to the local political talk show "Harry's Gang," which hosted every city council candidate at least once in advance of the election.
Now the city of Cloquet is implementing cuts in staffing at CAT-7 to correct a budget that has been consistently in the red, a move led by city administrator Aaron Reeves. He told the city council Tuesday that the changes were spurred by a looming budgetary crisis for CAT-7, which is entirely funded by a franchise fee paid by Mediacom to the city of Cloquet; those fees are deposited into the city's cable TV fund.
In November, Reeves said the Mediacom franchise fees, based on Mediacom's local revenues, had fallen to between $101,000 (2017) and $108,000 (2016) per year. The city expected 2018 revenues of $125,000 going into the cable TV fund, while CAT-7 was spending about $107,000 in personnel costs alone. A large chunk of that money went to pay cable coordinator Eric Lipponen, whose salary was roughly $58,000 plus benefits, which cost the city another $28,000.
"It's not sustainable," Reeves told the Pine Knot News in November.
At that time, CAT-7 employed Lipponen full-time along with three part-time employees. Lipponen was the station's only full-time employee, like cable coordinator Jeff Korpi before him.
Effective Jan. 1, Lipponen's job became part-time (20 hours instead of 40) and he no longer gets benefits for himself and his family, a move initiated by Reeves.
The Pine Knot News submitted a public data request Dec. 21 for information about CAT-7, including the budget and expenses for the past five years, records of cable commission meetings and all complaints and/or disciplinary records for Lipponen. Those requests had not been fulfilled before the Pine Knot News went to press this week.
A request for the 15-year franchise agreement with Mediacom signed in October 2015 was provided. That agreement gives the city a franchise fee equal to 5 percent of Mediacom's annual gross revenues locally until 2030. Although city officials expect cable revenues to drop in future years, Mediacom's nationally combined results for the third quarter of 2018 reflected a 4.6 percent increase over the same period the prior year.
