SanJuans.Today is saying goodbye… and thank you

ByJeff Noedel

A message from co-founder Jeff Noedel
Monday, May 5, 2025
UPDATED: Thursday, May 15, 2025

It has been an extraordinary ride! We came close to reaching critical mass with a new internet community television property in the San Juans. The zenith of our encouragement occurred a year ago — May and June 2024, shortly after we decided to replace CNL2’s for-profit corporate entity. We replaced CNL2 with the CNL2 Media nonprofit corporation because it was clear we weren’t going to have enough advertisers.

By early summer last year, we had produced scores of live video programs and were preparing for what would be successful livestreams of numerous County Council candidate debates and the 2024 Friday Harbor High School graduation — which fed live video and audio to viewers across five continents. We had earned large audiences in three places: the San Juans, Seattle, and California.

There were some very generous donations. And the Community Foundation worked hard on our behalf. We met those donations with determination, working seven days a week. Twice we went 28 days straight without a day off.

We pioneered a few novel tech applications, just like the original CNL did in Missouri from 2008 to 2014. SanJuans.Today co-founder Jeremy Tyler blossomed into his role, and he now has a bright future in video tech and AI.

But fundraising momentum slowed through the summer of 2024. We had to close our beloved studio in October. During the year-end “giving season” donations didn’t match a $10,000 challenge. The writing was on the wall.

But we kept on fighting the good fight for four more months. Stopping this was a deeply difficult decision, and we kept looking for a path forward. We didn’t fully give up until we learned this Spring of a decision by an important local entity to which we had made a proposal that was our best bet at keeping SanJuans.Today going. “Not gonna happen. No appetite for it” was the text we received. Two years of hope ended with a seven-word text.

We are grateful to so many people:

  • generous donors and the San Juan Island Community Foundation
  • a board of directors that were true believers
  • 77 paid subscribers
  • several advertisers and corporate underwriters
  • numerous talented people on San Juan Island who were willing to collaborate with us on bold new video programs

And what we’ve learned from all this is how incredibly special and unique the San Juans are. It’s all about the water — water defines the islands. It creates a magical existence on the islands, whether to live or to visit. But the water also brings challenges that 99 percent of the United States does not have to deal with and few understand.

Those unique challenges create a unique population. And in the end, what we’ll miss as much as the water, the eagles, the ravens, the gulls, the foxes, the seals, the whales, the sea air, and the sunsets — we will miss you.

Jeremy and I are focusing on a new future. We intend to build a service to help other local news outlets with their own video interviews. And I will do some interviews from time to time and publish them on YouTube.

We love you San Juans.
Thank you.