We receive numerous requests for discounts or favors of various kinds each week. The two questions below, and their responses, are excerpted from actual e-mails between DOM and its members, with specific names and shows removed to ensure some anonymity for the members.

Question1:

Can I get a discount?

I've been a partner/supporter of yours for years. Why would you charge me the same as any joe off the street?

Answer1:

We have dozens of people coming through here every week asking for discounts or “favors” of some sort. Most of them are friends or supporters of ours in one way or another. If we did a favor for each one, we’d be out of business. So our only choice is, 1. play favorites and pick a few people to break the rules for, 2. Have a business model that is unsustainable and will lead to bankruptcy or 3. stick to our policies and treat everyone equally.

I just did a DVD project for Lisa Lusero, a former employee and personal friend, and made her donate us $150 to do it. Lisa understood, perhaps because she comes from a non-profit background, not a business one. Most of these requests would cost us very little, perhaps $50 (30 minutes of my time, 90 minutes of Ann’s, and maybe $10 worth of resources). Where is that $50 coming from? And if we do it for one person, do we do it for everyone? 10 of those “favors” a week, and we’re at $2,000/month.

Part of what this organizations stands for is equality of access to these tools, and if we WERE going to make an exception for someone, it would be someone who really needs it, not for a friend. The kind of “good-ol-boys” network many of our friends and partners are accostomed to, where businesses scratch each other’s back is, on some level, exactly what we’re working so hard to combat. We need to be fair and open, and if we do something for anyone for free, we need to be able to justify it. If a partner or volunteer has a history of helping us in a way we could explain it to others that makes sense, we can institutionalize programs that reward them, and occasionally justify some sort of exchange. But, the majority of these requests are unfair and unjustifyable to our many members who ask for the same thing.

Preferential pricing is an unjust way of doing business and separates the privileged from the poor, something we're doing all we can to avoid, while still maintaining a sustainable business model.

Question #2:

My Show is so incredible, it will bring you so much attention and viewership, you should bypass some of the fees or give me a dope discount if you really want my show.

Answer #2:

I appreciate all of this, but this organization has significant costs we need to cover, and we are not in the position of being able to provide resources and services without reasonable financial compensation. Our rent, just for the studios alone is $30,000 per year, a cost not supported in any way by the city. We have two full-time staff focused on keeping the studios up and running (soon to drop to one), an expense of $6,000/month that the city will not help cover moving forward. I could go on and on... Insurance, maintenance, supplies, utilities. It adds up to well over $100,000 per year, just to operate those studios.

I realize your use does not significantly increase those costs, but the business model is: investing in this studio and charging others for its use. We price its use as low as possible, and the discount you request would be unfair to other users. More importantly, it would constitute bending our contract with the city and comcast.

I do understand your position, and I do want you to do your show here, but what you are asking me to do is exactly what comcast and the city have hired lawyers to assure we do not do. The support and subsidies we received to construct the studios and to purchase and maintain the equipment in them is stipulated to ONLY support producers and productions with zero financial resources with which to finance their own work. We are not supposed to use those subsidies in a way that constitutes unfair competition with any of the for-profit studio and production houses in town.

Please understand that my intransigence is not a reflection on how much I want your show. You could have the President of the US coming in for an interview with Oprah, and I still wouldn’t put this station at risk by breaking my contract with the city if the show is a commercial project.

Keep in mind that we are a non-commercial station, so even if your show was a HUGE hit, we have no way to capitalize on that. We don’t run commercials, we don’t solicit our own sponsorship for your show, we can’t sell airtime before or after it. The ONLY way we make money is by memberships and commercial rental of our equipment and services.

I should note that the above rates are not inflated, and we are not giving discounts from these rates for anyone else. Our production rates are already about 25-75% below any comparable production house in Denver, and even the president of our board, who is a paying member, is charged full rental rates for the commercial projects he has undertaken in our studio, mainly because our agreement with the city very clearly restricts us using their subsidies in a way that represents unfair competition.