81 New Programs

44 programs produced by NMTV staff

1 program produced by city staff

37 programs produced by the public

51 hours of new programming

SHORTFORM CONTENT

Each month, North Metro TV staff researches, shoots, and edits several short, topical stories for social media and cable channel 15. NMTV also works with city staff to create videos and stories at city request. The stories relevant to each member city also air in between scheduled programs on the city cable channel.

24,038 Online Views from 7 Videos

The USA Cup logo displayed on the side of the National Sports Center.

Most Viewed Online Story

USA Cup Returns to Blaine

7,115 Views

North Metro TV staff has covered two marquee sporting events in Blaine. It started with USA Cup as National Sports Center staff gave the station a preview of the annual youth soccer tournament, which brings 17,000 players and their families to the city. Finally, North Metro TV returned to the 3M Open. NMTV staff is always excited to hit the green in pursuit of a hole in one story at this PGA tournament. New PGA press rules limited station access this year, but the news team was able to coordinate with city communications staff to cover Blaine’s Women’s Leadership Breakfast and world number one golfer Scottie Scheffler’s press conference. See the story about the USA Cup here and the 3M Open story here.

Celebration of Giving

The Spring Lake Park Lions Club presents the local school district with an oversized novelty check for $50,000. In July, the Spring Lake Park Lions gathered for their annual Celebration of Giving, presenting seven local organizations with checks to support their good works. In all, the club donated almost $100,000, with the proceeds coming from charitable gambling. NMTV staff visited the Abel Park Building to profile this amazing event. See the story here.

Candidate Kick Off

Blaine City Councilmember Tom Newland appears at a League of Women Voters forum. NMTV staff taped their first 2026 election content with a League of Women Voters Candidate Forum for Blaine Ward 1. Station staff will work with the League to record several more forums at local city halls and at the NMTV station. The cornerstone of the station’s coverage, though, will be the return of Local Decision, which will see approximately 75 local candidates invited to participate in one-on-one interviews that will air on NMTV cable and social media channels. See the forum here.

EV Chargers at Circle Pines

Mayor Matt Percy and the Circle Pines City Council cut the ribbon for the opening of a pair of electric vehicle chargers. The City of Circle Pines held a ribbon cutting celebrating the installation of a pair of electric vehicle charges at city hall. Mayor Matt Percy said the chargers offered a good bargain for both the city and drivers as the city used grant dollars to purchase and install the devices and will pass the electricity on to consumers at cost. The chargers are part of the city’s environmental stewardship plan. See the story here.

SPORTS & EVENTS

NMTV presents high school sports games and community events live on cable channel 15 and on YouTube.

1 New Event with 72 Online Views

Centerville Fete des Lacs Parade

CABLE CHANNEL CONTENT

Staff also routinely produces longer form content especially for cable channel 15 and for the city cable channels. Typically 30 minutes to one hour long, these programs highlight more complex issues.

NMTV staff produced 7 new, full length programs, creating 5 hours of new content.

CLASSES AND PUBLIC ACCESS

North Metro TV offers its facilities and equipment to members of the public and helps them make and air their own programs! Staff teaches classes on a variety of topics, including video production, film history, and even how to use the internet. Public Access programs air on cable channel 14.

3 Live In Person Classes with 23 Attendees

This Is Orson Welles at the Mary Ann Young Center

Senior Citizen Tech Support at the Mary Ann Young Center

The Oscars: 90 Years of the Academy Awards at the Mary Ann Young Center

4,075 Attendees for Archived VOD Classes

Public Access Producers produced 37 new programs with 31 hours of content for Channel 14.

NMTV is also home to a popular home movie transfer program, which helps community members put their old video tapes, photos, and film reels on digital formats.

Home Movie Transfers

46.5 Transfer Hours

7 Video Tapes

$221.65 in Fees Collected

ONLINE VIEWING STATS

While North Metro TV does not have access to cable TV ratings, we can track how many people watch our shows and videos online on platforms like Facebook and YouTube. These statistics reflect both new and existing, legacy content.

SOCIAL MEDIA VIEWS

59,461 Videos Views

77 New Subscribers

4,383 Content Interactions

272,005 Impressions

In addition to airing on our cable channels and on social media sites, many of our programs – like city meetings – are available On Demand on our website and on Roku, AppleTV, and Amazon Fire.

VIDEO ON DEMAND

2,253 VOD Views

420 Livestream Views

NMTV WEBSITE STATISTICS

4,405 Users

14,041 Page Views

CITY MEETINGS

North Metro TV staff members manage all aspects of city meeting video production for our member cities. This includes providing staff to record and direct the meetings, scheduling replays of the meetings on cable channel 16, providing online and Video On Demand copies of meeting, adding bookmarks to VOD meetings for easy viewing of individual topics, creating podcast versions of meetings, creating and managing closed captioning of all meetings, and seeing to the repair and maintenance of city hall video equipment.

This month, NMTV staff recorded 23 city meetings with 14.5 hours of video.

Meetings are scheduled for replay on cable based on schedules requested by each City. Additional, full length video programs, produced by NMTV staff, are also scheduled on the channels. Shorter videos and promos are loaded onto the CG servers, rather than being scheduled as separate playbacks. These short videos play back in a repeating cycle, along with graphics pages, and air on the channels between scheduled programs, 24 hours a day. The following data represents how many times a meeting was entered into the Tightrope scheduling system and played back on each City channel along with the total length of all programmed content.

Blaine – 133 replays, 83.75 hours

Centerville – 62 replays, 39.5 hours

Circle Pines – 128 replays, 60 hours

Ham Lake – 58 replays, 18.75 hours

Lexington – 93 replays, 60.75 hours

Lino Lakes – 65 replays, 31 hours

Spring Lake Park – 93 replays, 55.75 hours

Closed Captioning

Closed captioning is an additional service provided by North Metro TV. Every city meeting is closed captioned live via our Tightrope system. That process is assigned a per-minute price by Tightrope. Once the meeting is recorded on our servers for repeat airings, that version of the meeting must be captioned separately. This is accomplished through a system owned by North Metro TV and does not incur additional costs. The following data tallies the number of minutes of captioning provided to each city for the month.

Blaine – 74.25 live minutes of closed captioning, 74.25 minutes of post closed captioning

Centerville – 179.25 live minutes of closed captioning, 179.25 minutes of post closed captioning

Circle Pines – 75 live minutes of closed captioning, 75 minutes of post closed captioning

Ham Lake – 76.75 live minutes of closed captioning, 76.75 minutes of post closed captioning

Lexington – 18.25 live minutes of closed captioning, 18.25 minutes of post closed captioning

Lino Lakes – 126.25 live minutes of closed captioning, 126.25 minutes of post closed captioning

Spring Lake Park – 118 live minutes of closed captioning, 118 minutes of post closed captioning

City Meetings On Demand

NMTV has created a Video on Demand service, with agenda item bookmarking, for our cities’ meetings. To accomplish this, each meeting goes through several steps. The meeting must first be transferred and transcoded from the playback server to the video on demand server. Once that is done, a staff member must go through the meeting, entering a bookmark at the start of each agenda item and entering the corresponding chapter titles. Next, the meeting is linked to the NMTV website’s city meeting page for Video on Demand. Finally, PDF copies of the meeting agenda are attached to the video. The following meetings were bookmarked and/or placed on VOD for the Cities this month:

Blaine – 3 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

Centerville – 4 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

Circle Pines – 3 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

Ham Lake – 3 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

Lexington – 1 meeting placed on VOD

Lino Lakes – 4 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

Spring Lake Park – 2 meetings bookmarked and placed on VOD

City Meeting Podccasts

NMTV provides a city meeting podcast service. Depending on each city’s wishes, any or all meetings can be converted. All podcasts are available across six platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Amazon Music/Audible, iHeart Radio, and Pocket Casts. Links to each platform are available on each individual channel’s website and at northmetrotv.com/podcasts.

Blaine – uploaded 3 city meeting podcasts, 94 total downloads

Centerville – uploaded 4 city meeting podcasts, 492 total downloads

Circle Pines – uploaded 2 city meeting podcasts, 44 total downloads

Ham Lake – uploaded 2 city meeting podcasts, 35 total downloads

Lexington – uploaded 1 city meeting podcasts, 34 total downloads

Lino Lakes – has decided not to convert city meetings to podcasts

Spring Lake Park – uploaded 2 city meeting podcasts, 104 total downloads

City Meeting Transcripts

NMTV also provides a city meeting transcription service. Depending on each city’s wishes, any or all meetings can be transcribed. The transcripts are generated using an online platform called Otter.ai, which creates an interactive transcript that is broken down by speaker. Anyone using the transcript can click on any word to hear the meeting audio. Once created, links to each transcript are sent to relevant city staff, who often use the transcripts to help with creating meeting minutes.

Blaine – not participating

Centerville – created 4 city meeting transcripts

Circle Pines – created 3 city meeting transcripts

Ham Lake – created 3 city meeting transcripts

Lexington – not participating

Lino Lakes – created 4 city meeting transcripts

Spring Lake Park – created 3 city meeting transcripts

Equipment Consulting and Technical Support

The NMTV Station Engineer is also responsible for overseeing the maintenance and repair of city hall video systems related to recording city meetings. He is also available to answer video questions and consult on city equipment purchases. The City Meeting Manager routinely backs up the Station Engineer and also provides technical support. The Engineer provided the following services to the cities this month:

This month, engineering services focused on creating detailed training videos and documents, as well as “how to” and “troubleshooting” guides for each city’s control room. TJ Tronson spent considerable time familiarizing himself with each room and their most common issues.

STATION AND FRANCHISE ADMINISTRATION

Co-Executive Directors Eric Houston and Danika Peterson manage the North Metro TV station and staff and act as franchise administrators. Franchise administration is the day to day management of the member cities’ cable television and broadband internet franchises. This includes resolving customer concerns, ensuring both quality service and availability to all households, ensuring maintenance of the rights of way, negotiations of new franchises, regular renegotiations of existing franchises, collecting PEG and franchise fees, conducting regular audits of franchisees, and handling any legal issues through the Commission Attorney.

Broadband Franchising

Monitored developments at the FCC regarding a Notice of Proposed Rule Making
Monitored litigation involving the City of Lake Elmo

Project Pedestal

Continued attempts to contact Century Link and create a streamlined system for reporting and repairing damaged phone company infrastructure, like pedestals and wires
Checked on status of damaged pedestal in Lexington – no progress
Made repeated inquiries regarding low hanging wires in Centerville

Staffing Changes

Posted Production Manager position, evaluated resumes, conducted interviews, hired most qualified candidate
Filed appropriate documentation with Unemployment Office
Continued to coordinate with local partners regarding changes to NMTV staffing and productions
Began work related to hiring a new Video Engineer and creating a smooth transition for member cities

Staff Communication

Continued regular meetings with station staff to foster communication and understanding and to create a more efficient workplace.
- Conducted employee annual reviews
- Continued with regular, twice monthly producers’ meetings
- Continued with monthly full staff meeting
- Continued with monthly NMTV Sports team meeting

Cable Customer Service

We receive a steady stream of phone calls from Comcast customers who call us in error after finding our number on their bill. We typically provide them with the proper number for Comcast and recommend calling them directly to resolve the issue. If they cannot resolve the issue in this way, we invite them to call back. We received 4 such calls this month.
- 3 general billing questions
- 1 request to add additional services

Miscellaneous

Reviewed Legal Report
Read industry articles
Attended webinars and meetings hosted by MACTA
Created meeting agendas and packets
Wrote monthly report
Administered employee payroll and benefits

Viewer Comments

Each month, the Co-Executive Directors field viewer comments over the phone and via NMTV social media channels. Here are some of this month’s highlights:
- Derrick Funk Taylor commented on the Facebook post about his daughter Sierra’s fundraising in Circle Pines:
  - “Thanks for the coverage and story!”
- Miles Ericson commented on YouTube about the Spring Lake Park Lions community donation:
  - “I love this city!”