Our View: City joins TV media biz; ugh

The city of Sarasota launched City Business last week, a new television program aimed at covering businesses in the city.

The show will cover retail stores, restaurants and service providers, hoping to drive more customers to those businesses.

A slick promo calls it “a new show about business in Sarasota,” and promotes itself saying that there are more than 5,000 businesses and because normal people can’t visit them all, “we can.” Really? City employees have that much extra time on their hands?

There is so much wrong with this it is a wonder no one at City Hall thought to stop and ask: Is this what city government should do? Because the answer is obvious.

First, restaurants are highly competitive. What will the hundreds of other restaurants in the city think of those that get featured for free at taxpayer expense? And who chooses who gets the free publicity? That is ripe for a corrupt moment.

This is not a service government should be providing on two counts: It is not a necessity, and the private sector already does it.

The Sarasota Observer and Pelican Press both include business coverage in our papers. The Observer Group also owns the Gulf Coast Business Review, which covers business all along the coast, including Sarasota. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune covers business. WWSB ABC channel 7 covers business.

Numerous magazines and online enterprises cover business. And all of these private-sector, taxpaying companies in Sarasota sell ads to businesses who may be featured for free on government TV.

Why is city government using precious resources to put together a television show featuring businesses? Who determined this is a priority?

The move continues the troubling trend of local government building media empires.

Sarasota County is far down this road already. It has its own television station, which is what the city uses for its television show, and which is paid for by cable users through the cost of the franchise fee. There is Commissioner’s Corner, County Talk, City Focus, Sarasota County Weekly, City Life, A Gulf Coast Journal, Capitol Update and more.

Naturally enough, the county, like the city, also has its own Web site, with 58,000 unique visitors per month. No organization or local government can be without a Web site. But on the county site, the most dominant element is “County News” and “More Headlines,” both sounding newsy and giving “news” stories for readers. Plus, there is more government TV on the net, such as “Sarasota County Weekly,” a half-hour show “focusing on all ‘good news’ in our community.”

The county also has its own business program entitled “Sarasota Business Today,” which is produced by the Sarasota County Economic Development Corp. and “features a review of local business news and focuses on county economic development initiatives and opportunities.” All this is self-promotion for the county and the EDC.

Further, the county has a local e-mail blast to more than 1,200 people called “Community Connections” that promotes more government good news and has used a former newspaper reporter turned public relations employee at the county to do YouTube reports on commission meetings.

So really, the city is just building its own empire.

City Auditor and Clerk Pamela Nadalini said in the press release about the new TV show: “We feel it’s a great opportunity to help local businesses, which is something the City Commission is very interested in doing.”

If the City Commission wanted to help city businesses, it shouldn’t have raised taxes on them last month. Obviously there is more that could have been cut instead.