"BNT owners Michael and Ramona Woods sued the city, seeking more than $50 million in connection with a loan the city had approved for the sitcom but then pulled." [Emphasis added.]That is contrary to the facts, and the News & Record, with a reputation for repeating the assertions of sources without checking them against the available record, gets another crucial point wrong.
The Greensboro City Council, in June of 2013, approved a $300,000 low interest loan to BNT with the condition that the loan be collaterized by a lien on the BNT's owners' house. That condition stipulated that the city of Greensboro was to be in no worse position than second in the line of creditors for liens on the house. It was subsequently discovered that there were two liens, a mortgage and a home equity line of credit, on the owners' house already. That would have put the city third in line, a condition not in conformity with the agreement passed by council.
In July of 2013, council considered (p. 46) revising the terms of the loan so that the city would accept third position. Council rejected that change, with a majority voting to deny it. That left standing the original agreement. Indeed, in responding to a letter from BNT's attorney claiming the city reneged on its loan offer, the city attorney, on October 31, 2013, reiterated that the loan was still available. He wrote:
"If anything, the City and your clients could proceed under the original terms as was mentioned during the meeting. The original terms are still available."The News & Record is wrong, the city did not "pull" the loan. It declined to modify the original terms of the loan offer, but left it standing.
UPDATE: Owen Covington at The Triad Business Journal makes the same mistake. These reporters need to review the video record of the July, 2013 Greensboro City Council meeting. The council voted to deny modifications to the original loan agreement, they did not rescind the original loan offer.
They keep saying they are a TV network, when in fact they lease a sub-channel on WCWG-TV. I used to work at WCWG-TV; but this is all after I left there. WCWG-TV has the best Over-The -Air HDTV signal in the market; but in a time when over 80% of the population watches TV over cable or satellite, that isn't a great advantage.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say I was excited to see the BTN go on the Channel 20 Subchannel, I thought that this was an excellent opportunity for television stations to offer truely unique programming. Years after they launched, they are still only on 1 TV station. They should have been on several TV stations by now unless there was something wrong.
Makes you wonder why no other TV stations are using BTN's programming. Wonder what there deal is with WCWG? Are they paid up or are they getting paid?
Whatever the deal, they are now too hot for broasdcasters to even talk with them for fear of getting sued. Looks like they are planning for their retirement on the beach.