5.a. SWCSR 08-06-2015 Sherburne Wright Cable Commission
Equipment Report
August 6th, 2015
Announcers
We had to cancel a fair amount of shoots last year because our announcers fell through. In some
cities we haven't been able to find people who will announce. We seem to always find people
willing to run camera but most volunteers are either too shy to announce or know nothing about
sports announcing.
We have an opportunity to use a person who has announced for us before when he was a student
at Big Lake High School. He was the best student announcer we've ever had. He came prepared
to each shoot with rosters and notes on each team. He was meticulous in gathering stats and team
information and he has good diction. He currently announces for St. Cloud State and does an
excellent job there.
Since he would be driving from St. Cloud he is concerned about mileage to the cities farthest
from there. We would like to use him for about 10-12 games this year only in cities where we
can't find an announcer. A recommended rate would be $100 per game with$125 for games that
go into overtime or have extra long delays. The cities pay meeting cable casters in that range
depending on the length of the meeting.
We would not use him all the time and we would like to use this rate for other equally qualified
announcers that we come across. We would still use the volunteer model first and would only
use this option when we had no one else available.
Action Requested: Approve paying Daniel Papp $100 to $125 per game for announcing
select sports and community events
Journalism Student
I contacted one of the professor's in the U of M Journalism school to ask if he could recommend
a suitable student to assist us with our City Works videos. He wants me to create a job listing that
he can post. The employee committee is working on this. Phil Kern has helped by sending us his
intern job description and information.
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Charter and Government Channel Technical Problems
At the last meeting I reported that Charter had sent me an email asking us to use the 800 number
to report problems. I'm pleased to say that so far they have been very good in answering direct
service calls and emails from us. We had a much lower converter failure rate this last quarter as
the local office seems to be pro-active in trying to figure out when the computer will trigger the
converter shut-offs.
Please continue to report any outages or converter problems to me.
Trailer Summer Season
We spent some time this spring getting the trailer ready for our spring and summer shoot
schedule. Our first parade went well as Mark will report. It was especially rewarding to show the
trailer at the Expo at Delano High School. Students loved the trailer and I dare say that we were
one of the most popular booths. Mark has more in his report.
We want to do more events like this so please let us know if you have a similar show in your
community where we can represent the Sherburne Wright Cable Commission.
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Delano HS Expo Trailer Tour
2nd Phase of Cities HD Upgrade
As mentioned before we have finished with the camera install work to upgrade our camera
systems in Buffalo, Delano, Elk River and Monticello for HD recording.
Our next city for camera upgrades was Big Lake. We finished that install on schedule. Our cost
per city has turned out much lower in the first phase due to taking advantage of a special trade-in
offered by Newtek and AV Solutions and aggressively managing install costs.
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Big Lake Control Room Upgrades Delano Bucket Truck Camera Delano 4th of July Announcers
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Elvis in Elk River Elvis has a new bodyguard Delano 4th Parade Main street
Staff training has been going well and every city seems to be very happy with their upgrades.
In the area of presentation equipment we are continuing to upgrade our computers that either still
have Windows XP on them or are old and not working correctly. Some cities have had these
special workstations for a long time and they are reaching their operation limits. We are
replacing them before they cause the cities problems during meetings.
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I continue to work closely with Commission Chair Tina Allard and Merton Auger our Treasurer
on day to day commission issues. We have had a very busy summer shoot and movie event
schedule which is still going. We have 10 straight days of either trailer shoots or movies starting
tonight.
Special Note: We have had some cities report that they are missing windscreen and mic clips. I
just received another order and can get some to your city if you let me know that you are out.
The clips had been on back order for awhile and hard to obtain.
Equipment Repairs, Upgrades and Miscellaneous Notes
Buffalo -2 Staff training sessions, Meeting room install, Sympodium monitor install, software
install plus other software upgrades, installed new DVD recorder, audio system install.
Elk River- installed 3 new wireless mic systems, new disc printer, new GoPro camera, Meeting
room work, training with staff, help staff with edit equipment,Nexus outage, software updates,
mtgs. with city staff re county coverage.
Rockford—Software upgrades, We had an issue with sound in the playback rack but otherwise
everything is working well.
Big Lake—playback issues, software updates, replaced Sympodium remote, helped hire cable
caster, work on upgrade.
Cokato—We had some equipment issues in their playback rack that have been repaired,
installed new RAM in Nexus, re-wired entire playback rack, fixed power supply problem in
SmartBoard, several software upgrades, new staff training.
Monticello - Service calls for channel outage, sent in Nexus for repair, audio repairs, replaced
broken Apple TV, worked with staff and IT on wifi problems with equipment, microphone
replacement., meeting room equipment repairs.
Delano - School Expo with trailer, software upgrades,replaced aging Sympodium workstation,
installed software, repaired mic connections, repaired conference room interface cables and
changed housing, replaced control room rack battery backup, installed portable monitor
Dassel- worked on playback system, installed Lobby monitor, ran extra cable TV lines,replaced
defective DVD recorder, found replacement for their failed TriCaster. Helped Dassel with a
crazy Charter billing issue also thanks to Bob Vose for his help!
Watertown—repair faulty video wiring, software upgrades, audio repair work, cable TV
problems.
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Maple Lake—Parade coverage, new staff training, software upgrades, channel outage repair,
network problems to Nexus.
SWTV and Commission—Handling day to day commission questions, phone calls and email,
Meetings with commission Chair and Treasurer, Prep Trailer for Parade, work on cable reels,
replace parts in SWTV Nexus due to channel outage, software updates, Phone calls with
Commission Attorney Robert Vose, Phone calls and emails and phone calls with Charter.
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Sherburne Wright Summer 2015 Equipment Upgrades
Here is information on the equipment that we are requesting for this quarter.
Leightronix
The Live streaming boxes are being discontinued to support a new streaming format.
Leightronix has a list price of$3995 on the new units and are offering a discount of$2495 per
box with trade -in and we have 6. I negotiated with them and got them to lower it substantially
to $749 each with a trade in of the old box. That is a very big difference! This is because of the
relationship we have developed with them. Any new purchase will be at the higher price.
Truck
Mark Davis has graciously let us use his van to pull our movie and production trailers since we
acquired them. His van is nearing the end of its lifespan and we need to look at alternatives.
Our trailer weighs approximately 11,000Ibs. We are hoping to find a vehicle like a Ford E450 or k
Chevrolet 4500 equivalent with a super duty crew cab and lockable topper. We currently use a
tow package that adds stabilization with a Curt round bar kit#17063 that would be needed. qG
Generators
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We have had ongoing problems obtaining adequate power in many of our cities. Some cities
and schools do not have the availability of it in the locations we need to setup.
We need 3 generators to use with the production and movie trailers. We would like to get
these 3 models: Honda Eu3000is, Honda Eu200i and a Honda Eu2000a. The last 2 can work
separately but also have a kit to join them. Honda Parallel Cable#08E93-HPK123HI.
Newtek TriCaster
We will need to purchase 2 of the cheaper model TriCasters for the smaller cities to replace the
2 that are very old and can't be repaired. They cost $10,000 each and are $5000 cheaper then
what we have already installed.
Power Center
We need an Arrow/Hart Rhino Box model RB3001A to hook into city power at city parks and
buildings. They are around $756.00 Retail
Sherburne Wright Equipment Upgrades-Summer 2015
City Equipment Make Model Cost Notes Date
Buffalo Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
SWTV Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
Delano Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
Elk River Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
Big Lake Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
All Cities Tricaster Newtek 410 $10,000.00 To replace old units 2015
Tricaster Newtek 410 $10,000.00 To replace old units 2015
Trailer Honda Generator Honda Eu3000is $2,750.00 2015
Production Live Streaming Leightronix VieBit IncodeX $749.00 Trade-In discount 2015
Trailer Honda Generators Honda Eu2000i $1,200.00 List Price 2015
Movie Honda Generators Honda Eu2000a $1,400.00 List Price
AC Distribution
Box Arrow/Hart Rhino Box RB3001A $756.00 List Price 2015
08E93-
Parallel Cable Honda HPK123HI $49.99 List Price
E450/ Super Duty Crew
Vehicle Truck Ford E450 or Chevy 4500 4500Style .(o ? Cab 2015
equivalent ----l_ Lockable Topper
Needs to pull#11,000Ibs.
Tow Kit Curt Round Bar Weight Dist.Kit #17063 $502.00 List Price 2015
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} $31,151.99 Total
Action Requested: Approve purchase and/or replacement of listed equipment.
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