Newspaper owner plans Midcoast TV station
PHOTO / DANIEL DUNKLE FOR THE COURIER-GAZETTE
Alan Hinsey, a former staffer under Gov. Angus King, will launch VStv with Midcoast newspaper owner Reade Brower this fall.
Reade Brower, an owner of several Midcoast newspapers, and Alan Hinsey, a former staffer under Gov. Angus King, are launching a TV station and production studio this fall with a focus on local programming for the underserved Midcoast market.
VStv will be available on channel 88 for Time Warner Cable subscribers, and for free online through mobile apps and its website, VStv.me, serving audiences in the greater Knox and Waldo counties region.
The TV station’s lineup will focus on providing local news and programming, which will be produced in affiliation with three newspapers owned by Brower’s Courier Publications: The Courier-Gazette in Rockland, The Camden Herald in Camden and The Republican Journal in Belfast.
Hinsey, who worked under King for five years in the Bureau of Labor Standards, told Mainebiz that while VStv will be a separate company, it will use the newspapers’ news-gathering efforts as a resource.
And while VStv’s main studio will be located on Meadow Street in Rockland, it will also have newsroom satellite studios at the offices of the Belfast and Rockland newspapers as part of the affiliation.
“The partnership of VStv with the region’s premier newspapers and online news outlet offers us a distinct advantage,” he said in a prepared statement, “by providing VStv access to an outstanding staff of experienced and knowledgeable reporters, editors and feature writers.”
VStv is expected to employ six to seven full-time staff members and some part-time and per-diem staff when it begins this fall, Hinsey told Mainebiz. He said he and Brower are in the process of meeting with people now and expect to hire over the summer.
Hinsey said there is not a solid start date for the station yet, but they plan to go online sometime during this fall’s election season. After working under King, Hinsey also served as the director of the Knox-Waldo Regional Economic Development Council and host of Mainebiz Sunday, a business-focused TV show that ran on local NBC affiliates from 2009-2011.
Brower said in a prepared statement that VStv will serve a market that currently lacks “a broadcast quality, locally based commercial television station. Because we are located between Portland and Bangor, we find ourselves at the center of a TV media market gap.”
Hinsey said he and Brower think there is enough demand from viewers and advertisers to make VStv a viable business. Beyond the online presence, he said having a channel on Time Warner Cable will give the station access to the cable provider’s 50,000 household customers.
But it’s not just the TV station’s potential reach that will make it work, Hinsey said. It’s also the decreasing costs of video production equipment and other technology that will also make VStv viable, adding that much equipment cost nearly 50% more three to four years ago.
“The cost of doing this is going down,” he said.
Brower revived Courier Publication’s three newspapers in April 2012 after the company’s former owner, Village NetMedia, immediately ceased publication of their previous incarnations and laid off 56 people the month before.
The revival brought back the original names of the Belfast, Camden, and Belfast newspapers, which had previously been merged into two newspapers under VillageNet Media’s VillageSoup banner.
"You have a 46-year-old tradition — I never understood why they went away from that model and went with the whole new branding," Brower, who also owns The Free Press weekly newspaper in Rockland, told Mainebiz at the time.
The VillageSoup name has been kept for the newspaper’s online operations and will be used as a portal for VStv’s online presence through Villagesoup.com.
In a 2013 interview with Mainebiz, Brower said the three revived newspapers “have made excellent progress in our primary mission: to create a sustainable business so that the lights never get shut off again.” He said print circulation had increased by nearly 20% to 12,000.
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