After months of careful consideration and input from our partners at IBEW Local 46, Cascade Public Media has made the final decision to move forward with outsourcing our master control functionality to a third party service. We have selected Public Media Management (PMM), a service providing content distribution and master control solutions from Sony and WGBH.
We appreciate that this change directly affects four of our team members’ positions. We are tremendously grateful for the contributions that all of our master control operators have made to our organization by ensuring KCTS 9 is on-air and broadcasting to the community we serve. Severance packages will be provided to affected team members.
The transition is scheduled to be completed by the end of March 2020. KCTS 9 viewers should not experience any interruptions to television service during this time.
In today’s media industry, moving to shared support services is common among commercial and nonprofit public media outlets. There are approximately 59 public television stations using third party master control solutions. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), who provides funding to public broadcasting organizations like ours, will provide an additional $150,000 in grant funding to help transition to joint master control operations.
Finally, Cascade Public Media is still engaged in discussions with IBEW regarding our Donor and Audience Relations (DART) team. No timeline has been established, and we will share a final decision once it has been reached.