There are many examples of successful programming projects that can be done between cities.
City Cinema
City Cinema is a joint project of five cities; Los Angeles, Richmond, Santa Monica, Torrance, and West Hollywood. Together, the cities put together a set of twenty public domain movies, production facilities and the cash necessary to produce opening, middle and closing segments with a professional movie host, Tom Hatten. A set of twenty on-air promos, one for each movie, were also created. The result was a set of twenty public domain movies with host segments and promos that each channel could air.
This was produced at a much lower cost working together than separately. As project partners, the group now sells the package of movies to other cities and shares the revenue from partnered project.
When the City of Santa Monica, California was looking into producing a bi-weekly news program, there was one major obstacle. The facility did not have its own studio from which to anchor the program. A partnership with the City of Torrance solved the problem. Torrance produces a weekly news program complete with set, news anchors and graphics. The news program was taped in the morning for Torrance, and the City of Santa Monica rented the facility, and anchors in the afternoon.
This presented several advantages. The rental costs for the studio for the afternoon was cheaper than setting up and operating a studio. In addition, Santa Monica was able to utilize the Torrance's expertise at producing a news program. Utilizing Torrance's facilities provided the capability with no capital investment by Santa Monica. This end result was a professional looking program.
For Torrance, the above was a revenue opportunity that required minimal extra administration and setup. Both shows continue to benefit as staff continues to upgrade the news programs and share ideas with each other.
Each summer, the City of Santa Monica videotapes a series of twilight concerts from the famous Santa Monica Pier. And, in Torrance, a series of concerts is held on Wednesdays during the summers. The concerts feature well-known and established acts. The cities are able to secure the rights from the artists to videotape and air the concerts.
To minimize production costs and maximize distribution of the programs, each city invites other channels to send professional production crews to assist with the tapings. In exchange, each participating city gets a finished copy of the concert to air.
This is a production bargain for each city. For the cost of one crew person for one day and a videotape, each participating city gets a one hour, high quality, edited concert video to air on the channel. For the cities of Santa Monica and Torrance, there are heavy crew requirements for this type of production and it allows them to have a large, professional crew working on the production without the cost of hiring. It also gives the crews, from different stations, the chance to network and learn about the other's facilities. An average of four-to-five cities have participated in such projects for the past four years.
Public Service Programming
The City of Santa Monica, California has done other joint programming projects with other cable facilities.
A joint Public Service Announcement Workshop was held with the City of Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. Both cities invited their non-profit organizations to participate in the workshop. Beverly Hills provided workshop space, studio time and editing. Santa Monica coordinated the workshop training, speakers, a consultant to work with the organizations on their scripts and visuals, and provided the videotape stock. Together, about 15 community organizations were served and each station had 15 new public service announcements to air on their station.
A joint project for producing half-hour public affairs talk shows is created with the Pasadena Access Corporation. Pasadena provides studio time and some crew. Santa Monica provides the producer, scriptwriter and production coordinator along with the set, editing and opening graphics. Together, over twenty non-profit organizations have been served over a period of several months. And the programs produced are of higher caliber and at less cost than what the individual stations could have done by themselves.