The Hudson Board of Selectmen received a detailed update on Hudson Community Television during its most recent meeting, with Selectman Heidi Jakoby, the Board’s liaison to HCTV, reporting both encouraging viewership trends and a revenue payment from Comcast that came in higher than anticipated. The update offered a rare bit of good news for the station, which has been navigating the financial challenges facing public access channels nationwide.
Jakoby began her report by highlighting HCTV’s growing online audience. She said Director Mike Johnson has been working to expand the station’s digital footprint, particularly on Facebook and YouTube, where viewership can be reliably tracked. “Facebook is up 19%,” Jakoby said, noting that the station recorded 100,414 views in the last 30 days, a significant increase over the previous month. She said staff have been “working really hard” to use Facebook analytics to better understand audience engagement, and that HCTV’s YouTube channel is also being populated with more content to broaden reach.
While online viewership continues to rise, Jakoby noted that HCTV still cannot obtain watch counts from traditional cable television. “Unfortunately, we can’t get a watch count from the cable TV,” she said, explaining that the lack of cable metrics has long been a challenge for public access stations trying to measure their full audience.
The more pressing issue for HCTV has been declining revenue from cable franchise fees, a trend affecting public access channels across the country as more households move away from cable and toward streaming services. Jakoby said the station recently received its latest quarterly payment from Comcast, and while the amount was lower than in past years, it was still higher than expected. “They got their next payment from Comcast and it was over $90,000,” she said. “It’s not great, but they’re hanging in.”
Jakoby said HCTV staff had feared the payment would be significantly lower, given the steady decline in cable subscriptions. “They thought it would be even lower, and it is lower, but it’s not as low as they had feared,” she said, adding that the station continues to adapt to the shifting media landscape.
During his liaison report, Board of Selectmen Vice-Chair Bob Guessferd provided an update from the Library Board of Trustees, noting that the library is in the midst of hiring its next director. Current Library Director Linda Pilla is set to retire in September, and Guessferd said the search has drawn strong interest. “They’re going through their process of hiring a new director with Linda Pilla retiring,” he said. “They’ve gotten a lot of candidates, so whoever we get as library director is going to be a very qualified person. It’ll be a good thing to keep the library going the way it has been.”
The next Board of Selectmen meeting is scheduled for Sept. 1 at 7 p.m.