[INSIDE HAWAII INC.]
Kealii Segool Lopez, president of Oahu Community Television, hopes to expand Olelo's community centers that train local residents how to create television programs.
Olelo looks to expand
community centersThe public access chief also
must deal with lost city fundsWhat are the latest figures on Olelo's public benefits?
Kealii Segool Lopez
New position: President and chief executive of Olelo, replacing Lurline McGregor, who stepped down earlier this year.Background: Lopez served as Olelo's associate executive director for eight years and its chief operating officer for the last four years. She previously managed Kamehameha Schools' distance learning project.
Lopez started her career as director of community programming for Oceanic Cable.
One of the things that Olelo does provide is training on how to create television programs. We trained over 900 people in 2003. This is an upward trend, which we would anticipate, because we've opened new facilities.
Most recently, we launched a facility in Palolo. So training is definitely a good trend. I'd say the value of equipment-use time has increased. The estimate for 2003 was $5.3 million. If the public had to pay for commercial use, that's what it would have cost the public to produce programs.
We use that also as a benchmark, so people have a sense of the value, and again, that's also increasing. Another way that people don't have an understanding of the programming on the channels is they're entirely created by people from the public.
In 2003 we had about 644 volunteers who helped create these programs and worked on each other's productions. They worked an estimated 35,000 hours.
We have multiple facilities. Our central location is in Mapunapuna. The Kahuku community media center is at Kahuku high and intermediate. Our Leeward center is at Leeward Community College. Our Palolo center is at Jarrett Middle School and our Waianae center is at Waianae High School.
What's the future plan for the community centers?
I think a lot of people would like to have a community media center in their community. We're estimating we can open another two to three centers in the next few years.
Equipment and facilities could run up to initially $220,000. The challenge is really the ongoing operating costs, which for each of the centers would be upwards of $100,000 a year per facility. So one of those things in our desire to open these facilities is partnering with our organizations or businesses.
We partner with the schools and they actually provide the facilities free of charge. We're able to leverage the funds into providing services.
The challenge is right now that Olelo tends to bring the bulk of the funding required for the project, and what we're going to need to is look for partners who can similarly bring funds to the table.
What are your other goals?
We're looking at how to engage people in using the resources. We'd like to have more people using the channels to tell their own stories, etc. We ran a campaign in 2002 called "Vote 2002." We're repeating this year. We'd like to be a good community partner ourselves and have ways people can increase participation.
One is "What's Your Vote?" where we bring different groups of people together and talk about what should voters talk about when considering candidates. It will be about issues, however, not candidates. We found that program to be very successful and we're doing it again this year.
Another thing is we're doing several weeks of live debates on our channels and it will start airing Sept. 7 and it's 40 live debates. I think one of the values we're able to bring to the table is neutrality.
Another is "Candidates in Focus," which is another forum for candidates to provide their information for seven minutes, to share with the public their platform. We tend to package all of those so the viewers can see all the candidates in their own race.
We also have a "Youth Xchange Network," which is basically a student video contest. Sony donated 20 video production cameras for the winning schools, and it was just a wonderful opportunity.
How do you gauge a program's success?
One way that we gauge it is feedback from candidates who participate.
So a big portion of that is how many of the candidates tend to continue using the services, if we hear from party chairs, if their interest increases, they're seeing the service as a greater value, and one of the things we want to do this time around is viewer surveys that get some feedback.
Olelo brought in $4.4 million from cable franchise fees in 2002. How about more recently?
This year will be $4.8 million, all from Oceanic Cable franchise fees. A quarter of our operating fees go to the Hawaii Educational Networking Consortium, about $900,000 in 2003. Also we paid out grants to the City Council and administration of a little more than $40,000 each.
Mayor Jeremy Harris recently vetoed a $275,000 contract to broadcast Honolulu City Council meetings on Olelo. Won't this mean less public access to city meetings? What's your reaction?
I understand the city has budget issues. I think the Council and the mayor have to wrestle with priorities.
I think the real challenge is the Council, by having their meetings broadcast to allow the public to have great access to government, by not allowing the city to put funds aside to help offset the costs, the public is at a disadvantage.
Now you have to go to the meetings. I think it's a very difficult decision. I for one can't say that I know any better than they do what's more important. Olelo does provide funding to the City Council and administration to create programs but it's just a portion of what it costs to contract that out. Olelo's funding is still available but it's not enough to provide for the significant coverage the Council has provided over the years.
How will you respond to this?
We're actually meeting with the Council staff to start taking a look at what can be done at this particular point. My sense is it's going to be relatively challenging right now.
Olelo provides $40,000-plus as our contribution to that contract. I think it would be very difficult for Olelo to meet that full funding base, so we'll have to work with the city and the contractor to figure out what can be done.
A good example is right now the state Legislature also contracts with a provider who videotapes all legislative hearings, and in that case, the state has seen the value in that and has put the funds aside.
In fact the state covers 100 percent of that and Olelo provides the video equipment and we keep that up to par.
I think there's really a challenge for the city at this point to identify either alternative ways to fund it or I would imagine some reduced coverage. I think it would be very problematic for the city to eliminate it entirely.
Does Olelo carry any commercial programming?
We only do non-commercial.
