MCTV15-Channel 15- Public Access TV- Its history

Diana Limjoco Pollard founded Mountain Community TV-15 (MCTV-15) 501-C3,non-profit, community service TV station, now managed by Siskiyou Media Council.

She originally approached the Mount Shasta City manager, Joe Riker, to put on a telethon to promote the Mt. Shasta Fireworks fund which she was volunteer fund raiser and executive director of in 1996 and 1997. The city of Mt. Shasta had a community access clause which would allow the public to use the station for public service shows. She was taken to the Community center where the Mount Shasta City council meetings were broadcast from. She was
flabbergasted to find that attached to the live feed, there was only 1 fixed security camera, stationed where it was difficult to see who on the council was speaking. She was then taken below the Community Center to a storage room, and in a tiny corner of the room was 1 old television and 1 old VHS tape machine to which the live feed from the security cameras could be taped. MCTV Channel 15 is broadcast on Northland Cable, and the only thing on the channel were live broadcasts of city council meetings, and plain text public service messages on a blue background. Diana called it the "big Blue"station.

The city had no provisions, budget, by-laws or anything at all that would allow the public legal access to their alloted broadcast time.

Joe Riker (MS city manager) was a staunch proponent of public access TV. With Mt. Shasta City council's approval, and having seen Diana's success in raising funds for the city's 45 year old tradition of 4th of July Fireworks show, they asked Diana to explore what it would take to allow the community use the station.

She gathered information on the Internet from other public access stations across the nation. She visited found Rogue Valley Community Television, a public access television station based at Southern Oregon University in Ashland about an hour's drive away.

Executive director Pete Belcastro generously showed her their by-
laws, how the station was run and funded. It was the fist public access station Diana had ever seen! He made himself available to her via phone calls afterwards whenever she came across a stumbling block. She is still grateful to him for his generous mentoring.

After printing reams of various by laws from other public access stations, she formed a volunteer community committee to go over them and find the clauses suitable for their little community.
The committee then mulled over names for the station, Mount Shasta Community TV, (MSCTV) was foremost, as all the towns in the county were within view of the second largest stand alone mountain in North America, Mount Shasta. However, Diana with her usual forward thinking, felt that when the station expanded to the other towns and cities, it would limit and perhaps even alienate the other towns, who might say that the name of the station only represented the founding City of Mt. Shasta. She came up with Mountain Community TV, to cover all towns and cities in Siskiyou county within view of the mountain, hence the name MCTV-15 was born.

She presented the collective idea to Mount Shasta city council, and with the city Manager at the time, Vince Reinig, station Northland Cable, Cable, as her champions she requested a contract got it, which allowed her to legally grow and expand the station on behalf of the city.

There was still no public support nor city funding for her efforts so she and her husband at the time (and still best friend)Tony Pollard, funded most of the operations for the first 3 years. The Mt.Shasta Chamber of Commerce Exec. Director at the time, Bonnie Kubowitz(at the time), encouraged Diana to have MCTV15 join the organization to get business recognition and support and was an avid source of information and support of the cause. The city council appointed Audra Gibson as their representative on the new board of Directors who believed in Diana's vision.

Board members changed several times, as Diana was strict about participation and wanted a working board. In 2001, with the pro-bono legal contribution of Tim Stearns, a Mt. Shasta attorney and Mt. Shasta
city council member, she and her board applied for 501 C (3) non-profit public service corporation in order to legally acquire tax deductible funding.

While the board researched the continuing legal issues at hand, Diana ran the daily operations and broadcast shows with the tireless help of Mt. Shasta resident Joan Lucas, who was the first MCTV 15 program director. Diana was backed by the technical advice on broadcasting by Vince Reinig, Manager local Northland Cable company, who also believed in the vision of public access to benefit the communities. Diana says that is was Joan and Vince's unwavering daily support that gave her the impetus to keep going when public support was slim.

Diana sought and received free broadcast materials from other public access stations. Joan Lucas volunteered to review suitable materials to be broadcast. To claim the station for the community while the corporation was going through the legal process, she put on 1 show a week. Every Sunday night at 7pm. She had to drive to the community center, just before 7pm, unlock the closet, countdown to 7pm (which she normally lost track of) and inserted the tape in the old VHS deck, which would broadcast on Channel 15 for 1 hour. She did this through rain, sleet, hail and snow for 1 year.

With the efforts of Vince Reinig, the live feed was moved to a small corner above Mt. Shasta city hall and the Mt. Shasta Police department. Through Vince and Diana's requests at city council meetings, Mt. Shasta City bought and donated an automatic broadcast software, which could be programmed to run shows on a 24 hour schedule!

After a year of airing various shows once a week, for 1 hour on Channel 15, Diana still found very little community support.

The idea of a live show, taking the camera to the streets, occurred to her. In Sept of 2002. After consulting with Vince Reinig, she learned that the live feed where the equipment was now housed at City Hall, could be extended to the sidewalk below.

The next day, Diana and Vince, with the help of volunteer,Cindy Summers, as tech support and co-host, they literally took the live feed, extended it to the sidewalk, hooked it up to Diana and Tony's personal home video camera, and with props and banners rousted up the night before, the first MCTV-REAL TV show was born. Diana literally rounded up a crew of people in 14 hours, had T-shirts made with the MCTV logos donated by local T shirt shop, a volunteer set director, Marge Wheeler (who made the first cash donation to MCTV-15, aside from it's board members), even set log in sheets to be signed to keep track of who was on every show. Joan Lucas solicited coffee from a local shop for coffee on the set, and the local Ray's Food Place Supermarket donated cookies!

With an automated broadcast scheduling in place, she began run the programs on a 22 hour cycle so that there was hardly a time of day when the cable watchers could escape seeing the show she created called MCTV-REAL TV. These two combined actions turned the tide for public awareness for MCTV 15 public access station.

For three years as a volunteer, Diana ran the daily operations and development. She was Chairman of the Board of Directors, active president, Executive Director, media interface, first web master, and broadcast programmer of the new automated system. She helped with creative ideas and supplied the photo to render what is now the MCTV-15 logo, T-shirts for volunteers to wear. She rent paid for it's first public office at the Siskiyou Arts Council building in downtown Mt. Shasta so the community could come in and participate, as the office above city hall was too small and since it was also in the city council room, it would disturb the city's daily business.

Diana is proud that is her Filipino upbringing gave her the social skills and grace to succeed in aiding a American town and leaving a lasting legacy to the people who became her friends, their children and their children's children. Many of those friend's children are now grown and continue to interact with Diana on the internet in social networking sites like http://www.facebook.com.

In the fall of 2002 Diana moved to Arizona. She and the board voted former Mayor of Weed, California, Neva Barnett to be the new volunteer Executive Director and host of MCTV15 Real TV show.

The board she chose has grown MCTV-15. It now manages the public access stations for the cities of Mt. Shasta, Dunsmuir, and Weed, California with the help of many new extraordinary volunteers, like irreplaceable John Cumming for his video and broadcast experience, and the late but never to be forgotten, Shirley Hammond to name just a few. MCTV15 operates out of College of the Siskiyous, in Weed, California which was always a part of Diana's future vision for the station.

In 2002, just before she moved to Tucson,AZ., Mt. Shasta City, honored her with an award for her exemplary community involvement. The award was presented by Mt. Shasta city Mayor, Marge Apperson. The Mt. Shasta Chamber of Commerce also presented her an award for enhancing community vitality.

Although Diana maintains a home in Tucson, and a summer house in Mt. Shasta, California. she now resides in the Philippines, in beautiful Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines, and runs the U.S. corporation, Digital Web Group Inc., that she created with Dave Dewbre, from there on the Internet. She has since formed a new company, Green Tech Eco Center, making electric Tricycles for the City under the Mayor's (Edward Hagedorn) Clean Air Project.

She still participates in email round table discussions with the current Board of Directors and the new Executive Director Audra Gibson, one of her very first board members!