College Advisory Council – March 3, 2005
Communications Committee Report
1) Committee reviewed City Currents and made some recommendations for
improvement:
1. Consolidate constituent group reports and minutes in a “Reports” section at the
end of the newsletter. List in alphabetical order by constituent group/committee
names. Consider three column pages for this section to save paper.
2. Establish a column for submissions from the Office of Research/Planning to
summarize overviews of recent studies and surveys. Rather than including raw
data in City Currents, summarize trends and their significance for the reader and
direct the reader to original reports/data web links for more details. One purpose
of this column should be to entice the reader into wanting to know more about
these studies.
3. Distribute City Currents electronically using Board of Trustee Agenda electronic
distribution process as a model. Continue to distribute hard copy for now, but
plan on transitioning to the electronic version to save paper and money.
4. Emphasize to departments and constituent groups that reports and news are
welcome and encouraged in City Currents.
2) EAtv-Ch27 Update
1. Comcast technicians have completed fiber pulls to the Ocean Campus for EAtvCh27 and will soon connect the channel headend to Sutro Tower via fiber. This
will significantly improve the signal to home viewers.
2. RCN cable technicians will soon pull fiber for their system into Ocean Campus
and connect the EAtv-Ch27 headend to their system.
3. Cable franchise negotiations continue. There will be a meeting with a
Telecommunications Consultant, Dean Smith, and EAtv management on
Monday, March 7, to being the community assessment process for PEG
channels.
4. DTIS has informed the Broadcast Electronic Media Arts Department that typical
Comcast agreements nationally provide capital funds but no operating funds.
Currently the district provides capital funds for EAtv . The City and County
franchise fee provides some of the operating funds augmented by the district.
3) Newspaper Kiosk Proposal – follow up
1. Journalism Department Chair Juan Gonzales and an AdCamp representative
presented follow up information regarding a proposal to site newspaper kiosks at
various campuses in the district. AdCamp builds, installs, and maintains the
kiosks and places ads on two sides of each kiosk. The district has free use of the
third side. Based on enrollment, the company will pay the Journalism
Department $50-$75 per month for each kiosk. Estimate for Ocean Campus
would be $6000/year. Other campuses would be less because each would have
only one (at most two) kiosks.
 Some felt strongly that revenue from advertising to support departments
was not appropriate and that more general fund money should be
allocated to the Journalism Department. Others pointed out that there is
no “extra” money available, that the Journalism Department has won
numerous awards, is doing a great job, and urged the committee to
support the project.
 The AdCamp representative assured the committee that the company
will work with the college to ensure appropriate ads are selected and that
kiosks are properly maintained.
 Committee members pointed out that the Kiosk at the Downtown campus
should be worth an additional amount per month because of its prime
location.
 Following a passionate debate, committee members voted 5 to 1 to
recommend the proposal to the College Advisory Council.
2. The committee recommends that a district policy regarding advertising on
campuses be established.