The St. Paul Neighborhood Network announced Friday it would reorganize, downsize staff and outsource part of its youth outreach as a result of falling revenue from its cable partnership with Comcast.

The 35-year-old network, which maintains four cable access stations in St. Paul, receives roughly half its annual funding from cable access fees on Comcast consumer cable bills.

That funding will drop 9.5 percent this year, a larger than anticipated decrease. Through outreach to foundations and other donors, SPNN officials had prepared for a 3 percent reduction.

With companies such as Comcast losing customers, or “cord cutters,” to Internet-based programming such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime, cable access channels have found themselves in a free-fall.

In recent years, CTV in Roseville, SWC-TV in Cottage Grove and SCC in Maplewood have completely eliminated their public access operations.

Comcast hosts cable access channels as part of the same municipal franchise agreement with St. Paul that allows the company to string cable lines throughout the public right-of-way. A shift from traditional cable-television to cable-internet programming offers no benefits for small community stations.

“We get get nothing on cable-internet revenue, even though those two services are delivered over the same infrastructure,” said Martin Ludden, executive director of SPNN.

As a result of the reorganization, SPNN will reduce its workforce from the equivalent of 15 full-time employees to 11.5 FTEs. Two of the eliminated administrative positions will be covered by outside contracts.

YOUTH SERVICES SHIFT FOCUS

SPNN serves roughly 25 youth per year in “very direct, hands-on programming” at its Vandalia Tower studios, said Ludden, focused on media production and creative expression.

The youth work at SPNN will be outsourced to Media Active, a nonprofit that currently mentors 15 young people in commercial media production. That number is likely to grow, Ludden said.

“Youth currently active in SPNN programming are welcome to join Media Active and there has already been some crossover,” he said.

Media Active offers fee-for-service production work for nonprofits such as Green Card Voices and Forecast Public Art, among others.

They were previously associated with Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, which closed in 2017. SPNN has served as Media Active’s fiscal sponsor over the past year.

SPNN serves another 150 or so young people through drop-in programming at SPNN and the Arlington Hills Library’s Createch lab.

“We will continue with Createch programming at SPNN and Arlington Hills and we’ll also maintain our Youth Action Committee, which serves about 10 youth,” Ludden said.