LRPA close to hiring part-time station manager

LACONIA — Lakes Region Public Access television is close to hiring a part-time station manager, according to board of directors Chairman Chan Eddy, who says that the job has been offered to a candidate who has a strong sales and marketing background.

The station has been managed in recent months by interim Program Director Shane Selling, who is also a consultant to LRPA-TV. Selling was named to that position in early January after the directors, citing financial challenges, fired long-time station manager Denise Beauchaine.

Eddy said that the board of directors approved a new fee schedule when they met Friday which will see member communities billed $5.25 per MetroCast Cablevision subscriber, a rate which will see Laconia pay $26,772.50 compared to the $40,000 it has been billed in recent years. Laconia has 5,090 MetroCast subscribers.

He said that the Scott Dunn, Gilford town administrator and chairman of the Lakes Region Cable TV Consortium, was able to obtain updated and accurate numbers from MetroCast on the number of subscribers in each member community.

''We had the number of total subscribers, but that included Internet service subscribers as well. He was able to get that broken down into just video subscribers so we could make accurate calculations,'' said Eddy.

He said that Gilford, where Eddy was recently elected as selectman, recently approved $21,939.75 in funds for LRPA-TV, a vote he abstained on because of his affiliation with the organization. Gilford has 2,727 subscribers and based on the new fee will be billed $14,316 in the future.

Meredith, which has 2,216 subscribers and will be billed $11,634 and Belmont, which has 1,652 subscribers, will be billed $8,673. Franklin, should it choose to again be affiliated with LRPA-TV, has 1,979 subscribers and would pay $10,389.75.

''We're making less than previously and there will be a shortfall in our revenue but we're looking to correct that,'' said Eddy, who noted that Belknap County Commissioners have included $5,000 in their recently approved budget, which will allow the station to continue to cover important meetings of the commissioners as well as the county convention.

Last year was a trying year for LRPA-TV, which at one point was looking at going out of business at midnight on Wednesday, October 22.

The board of directors held an emergency meeting in mid-October at which they voted unanimously to send out bills to member communities requesting the original amounts that would have been paid rather than those adopted as part of a new business plan the board had hoped to implement earlier in then year.

Laconia, Meredith and Belmont agreed to pay those bills, and were later joined by Gilford, providing sufficient funds to keep the station in operation into 2015.

The board recently voted to withhold its signal from 13 towns in the Lakes Region that declined its offer to dues and contribute to the LRPA-TV operating budget.

Alexandria, Alton, Barnstead, Bridgewater, Bristol, Deerfield, Gilmanton, Hebron, New Hampton, Northfield, Pittsfield, Sanbornton and Tilton were scheduled to go dark on March 20. Only Alton had been a paying member of LRPA. The other towns did not provide programming to the public access channels, but received the signal via MetroCast channels 24, 25 and 26.