Board of Directors Steers CNL2 Now, San Juans’ Newest Non-profit

Sunday, June 30, 2024 at 4:35 a.m.
By Jeff Noedel

John J. Nance.

Alan Budwill.

Lori Stokes.

Dave Schnuckel. A board of directors to be proud of.

What Jeremy Tyler and I started 15 months ago as a business built around a news blog for San Juan Island was transformed Wednesday into a non-profit community television and radio non-profit with a mission to serve all of San Juan County.

The profit motive is gone.

A mission to turn over much of the content generation to the community takes its place, and with it a mission to train scores if not hundreds of citizens and leaders into effective communicators on TV and radio.  Indeed, many shows in the CNL2 lineup will be “owned” by other non-profits.

On the 33rd weekly episode of CNL2’s Tuesday live show called “Hey…What’s Going On Around Here” cohosted by The Journal’s Heather Spaulding, I announced that the San Juan Community Home Trust would be the first non-profit in the community to host its own weekly show on CNL2.  That show, yet unnamed, will debut in August.  We hope many other non-profits, service clubs, and energetic artists and entertainers approach us with ideas for their own TV shows.  We will help make shows happen by harnessing the creative nuclei of the special few groups who choose to use radio and TV. We invite the best, brightest, and most imaginative among the thousand non-profits, service organizations, junior taxing districts, governments, institutions, trade groups, and businesses in the islands to stake a claim in our live linear line-up.

In situations where better mass communications can solve problems, the facilities and talents of CNL2 are ready and eager to help. For free.

Jeremy and I invested a lot of money and have worked without pay for 1-1/2 years to will CNL2 into existence.  It’s what entrepreneurs do.  It was not an easy decision to give-up the dream of CNL2 making a good return on our investment, and to donate to the community all that labor, retroactively.  But by this past April, we had lost faith in our business plan which was predicated on selling local advertising. In April, we were discussing closing all this down.

However, the audience was growing fast, and more and more people were wanting to be a part of it. It felt like a calling, a duty. So we kept going.

The turning point for us was a very encouraging meeting at the offices of the Community Foundation, where we found deep moral support for our efforts to build a new community asset.  And Foundation leaders expressed profound respect for what was shaping up to be our Board of Directors.  When the Community Foundation heard that the deeply respected John J. Nance was considering joining our Board of Directors, the Foundation leaders were even more supportive.

I have recently shared with Amy Saxe-Eyler:  The San Juan Island Community Foundation saved community radio and television for the San Juans.  Now, CNL2 will continue to grow into a jewel for the entire population of the County, and it will have been made possible by the SJI Community Foundation and the new CNL2 Board of Directors. As well as about a dozen individuals who walked in the front door with words of encouragement, and a few checks. As well our cherished first 50 subscribers, including 20 lifetime subscribers.

In our first official Board meeting last week (Thursday, June 27, 2024), we created nine Board positions and filled five.  John Nance was elected as Board Chair.  Three more board members, who increase the likelihood of long-term success, were also voted-in:

• Kind, wise, retired Seattle radio personality Alan Budwill
• Generous, irrepressible community activist and straight-shooter Lori Stokes
• Skilled, retired Seattle TV producer/director Dave Schnuckel

Some common qualities among these four individuals include kindness, accomplishment, a degree of genius, and humility.

I will serve as the fifth Board Member.

Jeremy – who is the quiet problem solver in CNL2 – will be the General Manager, whom I hope is at the helm of CNL2 for the next 30 to 40 years.

I get the attention with this thing, but make no mistake: CNL2 absolutely, positively would not exist for the 3,000 to 4,000 hours of Jeremy’s problem solving and creativity. Jeremy as GM is your best bet to see this thrive for decades to come.

On Thursday, the Board immediately made room for four more board members with the intention of appointing several community leaders from Orcas and Lopez Islands.  I’ve made no secret of my desire to open a second studio in Eastsound. CNL2 already serves a sizable and growing audience on Orcas.

While community radio and community television means increased (but still managed) public access to the studio and streaming bandwidth, CNL2’s news product will continue to be central to the brand.  Some of the finest reporting in Western Washington comes from wellsprings of quality non-profit journalism such as The Salish Current, KUOW-FM, KNKX-FM, and KCTV-TV in Seattle.  CNL2 is now “public radio and public TV,” with a continued mission in pursuit of the highest possible quality in journalism.

The board has the ultimate power to steer CNL2 content.  And the board stated Thursday that it wants more of what CNL2 has been creating.

Notably, the new CNL2 Board of Directors on Thursday endorsed CNL2’s efforts to continue to use journalism to encourage solutions to deficiencies in local Washington State Ferry service in the San Juans.  Also notably, the Board endorsed and encouraged more of CNL2’s reporting of the human stories of late and canceled sailings occurring so frequently in the island community.

Also, notably, CNL2 will continue to depend on its ability to generate operating revenue through subscriptions.  While generous people and organizations with financial means will help build this community asset, the subscription model will provide a flywheel of revenue which will scale up as costs of bandwidth for larger audience scale up.  Without subscription revenue to offset bandwidth costs, CNL2 could be financially destroyed by its own success. Subscriptions can be thought of as a form of reimbursement for bandwidth costs. Subscriptions are here to stay.

Subscriptions will permit CNL2 to minimize what would otherwise be a never ending on-air “pledge drive,” and subscriptions will allow donations and grants to go toward adding new technology, more robust studios, and deeper training programs for residents of all ages. Finally, subscriptions will enable CNL2 to continue to keep most of our radio and text content free, thus keeping all but our TV content accessible to those who cannot afford to subscribe.

Basically, CNL2 television will be exclusively available to subscribers, with some exceptions. Live TV bandwidth is a magnitude of order more expensive than the other types of bandwidth (recorded TV , live radio bandwidth, and recorded radio [podcasts]).

Seven dollars a month is our starting point for our non-profit television product, but I do hope the subscription price can be lowered as the pool of subscribers increases. My ultimate goal is 20,000 subscribers across Western Washington at $4 per month (adjusted for inflation).

I know how non-profits work.  Decades ago, when I was an energetic, idealistic owner of a PR firm in the Midwest, I was president of an inner city charity that provided free daycare in the very poorest part of St. Louis.  Presiding over a board is different from working for a board.

Working for a Board will require me to shift gears a bit, and bridle my impulses which were honed in the entrepreneurial world.  But when you have a Board as good as CNL2’s, you must let them be in the driver’s seat.

So now, Jeremy and I humbly serve CNL2 at the Board’s pleasure.

And in the bargain, the residents of the San Juans are far more likely now to be able to count on our own community radio and TV for many decades to come.  Maybe forever.  It will never be for sale.  And, if run correctly, it will never stop helping solve problems and realize dreams.