Topical Solution

Tonight, at the City of Kissimmee Commission Meeting, the city's own propaganda network is on the chopping block. The ratings are in and the numbers are not looking good for the city owned station. Viewership is down even though the Public Information Office and the Access Osceola team have doubled their list of info-tainment products available for viewing. So what is the answer?

The WayneWho staff has developed a plan that we think is a good compromise between the needs of the public and government alike. Cut the staff of Access Osceola in half and remove Kissimmee's Public Information Officer from any real roll with the station. Get rid of the nonsensical FEC programming that runs now and go back to informational slides and video shorts to keep the public informed on what is going on in the community. Stop outsourcing Access Osceola as a video production company for free, but allow outside companies to produce videos that run on the channel. When the Chamber has a debate let them contract a private firm to shoot and edit the video instead of paying Access Osceola staff to do the work. The same goes for the work that Access Osceola has done for other organizations, let the organizations contract out the work and then Access Osceola staff can add the content to the channel. Removing this workload should allow the amount of staff to be reduced but keep the station running.

We know many of our readers who never read 'those damn blogs' are coughing up donut chunks right now because we said save the station, so let us explain.

In many respects Access Osceola is a luxury item. It is not required by law and while it serves a critical purpose, it not necessary to the daily functioning of our county. On the other side of the argument, government needs to do everything possible to keep its electorate engaged. There is also a public safety component that should be factored into the decision. With the city expanding its range of listeners by adding a radio station component to the mix, the station has the possibility of not only informing the public, but disseminating emergency information as well. This we believe is the key reason to keep the station open.

The station was originally started to broadcast public meetings to help keep the public informed on what government was doing in an effort to make the operation of government more transparent. In the beginning that idea seemed to work fine as the viewership grew because people wanted see what commissioners really did. Once the viewers realized the ignorance of commissioners during commission meetings and their frustration level grew because they had to watch as mistake after mistake was made from the bench, they tuned out just as quickly as they had tuned in. Why would the public tune in to watch government increase taxes and fees when there is no way to stop it anyway? The citizens, either in the room, or in the home viewing audience, cannot change the wrong track mentality of government, so why tune in only to go to bed upset? Basically what we are saying is that it is the governmental bodies broadcasting their lunacy that have killed the ratings more than it is the channel change from 9 to 199. Our argument is that while the full meetings should continue to be broadcast, there is more that can be done to fill the time between meetings that would attract viewers that do not require full production sets and crews to accomplish. Our suggestion is to simply go back to the power-pointless slides. Focus on community calendars and information that is relevant to the average citizen. Lists of places to help feed Osceola families are more important than the FEC programming now currently running.

As we have already stated, it is the mission of the station that should lead to keeping it on life-support right now. That mission can be found in the fact that the station has the ability to act as an emergency beacon for our community. Silver and Amber Alerts, emergency Police and Fire information, and of course disaster information after an event. This should be the the mission of the station instead of shows like 'Tea Time with the PIO.'

To end we would like to stress that we are not attacking the individuals who are employed by Access Osceola. We just believe that Access Osceola should not hold the positions that many of these employees now have. We also believe that the Public Information Office needs to be refocused away from television production duties. The city should have a public face that is able to speak on the issues and stances the city has. We can see a perfect example of this with the PIO at the Osceola County Sheriff's Department who does an excellent job of providing straightforward information to the public. It probably helps that the PIO at the Sheriff's office can be seen out in the public, going to meetings and participating in local public events, but in the end performance should be the real measuring stick and this we leave to the commission to determine.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Celebrate Sober / Arrive Alive!

We would also like to congratulate the Osceola County Commission for doing the patriotic thing and voting to spend American taxpayers' money on what it was intended for, help for our neighborhoods.