Post in more problems in communications dept at tonight's council meeting 5/12/08...

May 13 05:07 UTC

Well when it rains it pours I guess.

The screw-ups with the Roseville city communications department extend from
last Friday's debacle with the council packet to this Monday's insult of
Carol Kough, wife of former councilmember Tom Kough.

For those of you who tuned in to cable 16 this evening at 6pm to watch the
council meeting, you saw a picture of what was happening in the council
chamber, and saw Carol Kough's mouth moving when she spoke at public
comment.  Since I was at the meeting, I can tell you she talked about the
upcoming appointment to her late husband's seat.

The problem is, all you heard Monday night in TV land was some quiet public
radio station playing through the speakers.  There were ten of us in the
council chambers who actually heard what Ms. Kough said.  For the rest of
the public, you saw a moving mouth with public radio coming out.  It
probably looked like some sort of Conan O'Brian skit on late night TV.

The staff may be able to spend some time and money to fix this for some of
the replays later in the week, but the point is that these kind of grade
school mistakes should not be happening in an environment of highly
compensated professional employees.  As I said in my previous email, I
believe employee costs in the communications department are somewhere around
$200,000/yr.

Now some may say that missing 7 minutes of audio isn't a big deal.  Well
maybe if it is a football game you may be right.  But when it comes to
government television, it is the sound that matters, not the picture.  In
fact, the legislature records every meeting held down at the capitol.  Not a
TV recording, but audio tape recordings.

Some may also say that I am being hard on the communication staff for
raising this issue in a public forum.  Well for those who read further, all
I can say is that you will have to be the judge of this.

These audio problems are nothing new.  It has happened more times than I can
remember.  It seems to happen several times a year.

The city has been televising council meetings for close to 20 years now so
you would think that there should be policies and procedures that would
prevent simple things like this from happening in the first place.

I have told the city manager on more than one occasion that the problem is
training.

Now some may say how I can make this kind of claim that bad training is the
problem.  Good question.  The fact is that I have worked in broadcast
television (not public access TV or some other backwoods operation) for over
a decade.  I have worked for major networks and satellite facilities where
people around North America have relied upon the product that was delivered
by a team I worked on.  I speak from a position of having more broadcast
control room experience than anyone in city hall.  I know that good quality
training is the key to success.

One of the first things that an employee is taught with the system that
exists at city hall is that you always monitor the TV video and audio signal
coming from cable TV channel 16.  This is what you the customer is viewing.
Basically, if what the customer is viewing is ok, then everything is ok.
You watch and listen to this ALL the time, not once in a while.  The only
way you know the customer is receiving the program is if you monitor it
constantly.

This is where the problem is time and time again at Roseville City Hall.
The operator in the booth turns on this TV set I am talking about, but then
turns OFF the audio.

This is how we got to the situation Monday night where I believe it was the
Parks Director who left his office and had to run to the council chambers 7
minutes after the meeting started to inform them that there was no audio
going out to the viewers.  Interestingly enough, one of the communications
employees I believe was in his office while this was all happening, and it
appears that even he was not watching what was going on.  So to summarize,
it appears this time that it was the Parks Department that had to clean up
the mess of the Communications Department.  Last Friday it was the Computer
Department that stayed until 8pm doing cleanup.

Now I have told the city manager more than once that there needs to be some
decent employee training.  The people operating the cameras at these council
meetings seem new every month.  The turnover rate must be 200-300%.  I don't
fault the new people.  I fault the training received from the full-time
communications department, which is either flawed or non-existent.

The very first lesson past showing a new employee where the light switch is,
is showing them how to turn on the TV that has cable channel 16, turning up
the audio, and remembering that you need to monitor what the customer sees.

Forgetting to do this, is like forgetting to put on your skates when you
step onto the ice for a hockey game.

For those who labored through my comments, there may be a bonus for you.  If
the city is lucky, the audio of Ms. Kough's comments from Monday's meeting
may have been recorded to the video tape in the booth.  They may be able to
retrieve that missing material and fix the rebroadcast of the meeting
Tuesday morning or on Thursday.  I guess we will see.  But as I said
earlier, grade school mistakes shouldn't be continually happening in a
supposedly professional environment in the first place.

John M. Kysylyczyn

K Solutions LLC, owner

3083 Victoria Street

Roseville, MN  55113

email: <email obscured>

home office: (651) 484-1384

www.ksolutionsllc.com

Mayor of Roseville, MN  2000-2004