After barely maintaining their county funding for years, in 2007 the Hillsborough County board of County Commissioners stripped their share of financing the Tampa Bay Community Network (a/k/a Speak up, Tampa Bay!) the local cable access channel in Tampa/Hillsborough County. Such funding had been a contentious issue for years before the board stripped it away (who can forget the Ronda Storms/White Chocolate wars of the early aughts?).
Combined with the fact that Bright House Networks then moved the channel from the lower rungs of the cable universe into up in the 600's, it would be an understatement to say times have been challenging for the public access channel. However, TBCN continues to survive, thanks to the funding it still receives from the city of Tampa.
Although the odds still seem stacked her, TBCN's head, Louise Thompson, spoke before the BOCC on Wednesday to propose that the county chip in funds for programming that would appeal directly to two groups of constituents that the board is on record as having said they want to help: seniors, and the unemployed.
