MARSHFIELD, Wis (WSAU) – City leaders in Marshfield have named a new provider to run Marshfield’s Public Access television station. That’s following the recent death of the station’s previous operator, Dan Comer of VidCom Media.
City administrator Steve Barg says Branden Bodendorfer from Tri-Media will take over operations of the channel, at least for the next year. “Several months ago, as you probably know, Dan Comer of VidCom passed away,” Barg said. “Since that time, Branden Bodendorfer has come forward. He’s with Tri-Media. We believe that he has good vision for what can be done, not just in terms of covering government meetings but also perhaps reaching out beyond that to provide some more marketing promotion about our community.”
Mayor Chris Meyer explained that while the city controls the cable channel, it contracts out the day-to-day operations and needed to get that contract “reassigned. “We have a contract with a private company, Vidcom, to produce or to run our cable access channel. The owner has passed away, and so our contract specifically says we must OK the assignment of our contract to somebody else, if something like that were to happen,” Meyer said.
Alderman Ed Wagner was one of four council members voting against the move, since he thinks the city should pursue a more comprehensive communications strategy instead, including the hiring of a full-time communications manager for the city. “If we come up with a communications strategy, like our strategy plan says we apparently wants to do, then we should probably have somebody to run that as a public information officer for the City of Marshfield.”
Alderperesons Feddick, Hendler, and Zaleski joined Wagner in voting against awarding the contract.
The contract reassignment will last through March 31st of 2017, at which time the city could either take bid proposals from other video production providers, or the contract could be extended to Tri-Media for another two years.
by Terry Pezl, WSAU
