Webcasting costs

When the webcasting of our council meetings at Southend-on-Sea was first floated (in 2012) as an idea I was almost alone in making my objections known. Whilst not opposed in principle to the idea of broadcasting of our meetings, I thought this exercise in vanity was ill-timed when set against the backdrop of serious and deep cuts.

At the last Full Council a UKIP councillor asked about the cost of broadcasting our meetings, and here is the response that has been sent to all councillors :-

Date	Live Views	After Event Views	Average viewing time	Unique View total
25 Feb 2016	147	158	1 hour 10 mins	197
21 Apr 2016	11	28	13 mins	33
21 Apr 2016	85	135	1 hour 24 mins	149
12 May 2016	15	56	18 mins	62
19 May 2016	64	81	24 mins	111
21 July 2016	55	85	46 minutes	106
20 Oct 2016	160	101	1 hour	171
15 Dec 2016	38	17	1 hour 11 mins	38
Totals	575	661		867

*Note; Live views and after event views are not always unique, if someone watches a recording 3 times this will register as 3 after event views.

The cost of Public-I is £10,102.00 plus VAT per year.

The above cost does not include set-up, but since this has already been spent then I guess we can ignore that now. Whether the ongoing costs are worth it is, I guess, a matter of opinion. Set against other cuts it will still seem extravagant to some.