For the first time since its formation in December 1978, the Gunnison County Metropolitan Recreation District will no longer provide over-the-air television service. Following a public hearing on April 30, the board voted unanimously to “decommission” all of its TV infrastructure over the next two years.
The network of towers and other infrastructure is in two “chains.” The main chain includes a tower atop Tenderfoot (W) Mountain just south of Gunnison, and three other facilities north along Hwy. 135 to Crested Butte. MetRec estimates that 95% of households that watch television via the service live along this corridor. The “remote chain” stretches from Monarch Pass in the east to Sapinero to the west. It serves people in Sargents, Pitkin, Parlin and Powderhorn. In a survey conducted earlier this year, out of 9,504 households with district boundaries, 523 responded that they use over-the-air TV service.
The remote chain will be decommissioned and service terminated on June 1 this year, followed by the main chain on June 1, 2026.
“We chose to phase out the remote chain first, starting in the summer of 2025, due to structural damage at the Monarch translator site,” MetRec Executive Director Derrick Nehrenberg wrote in a letter to the editor this week. “We postponed the main chain’s shutdown until summer 2026 to give the majority of viewers — who live between Gunnison and Crested Butte — more time to plan and transition.”
Earl Marshall is the MetRec board member who took the lead in researching problems facing the TV system and in crafting a solution.
“This has been really hard,” he said in the meeting before the vote. “This isn't why I got on this board. This has been handed from one tech person to the next with, ‘Here's a house of cards. I hope it doesn't fall down on your watch.’ Unfortunately it's falling down on my watch.”
The decision follows months of debate about the sustainability of the TV service versus the value of free over-the-air TV for many of the district’s constituents. To provide that service was the reason MetRec was formed in the first place, proponents have argued. Long before the advent of cable television and internet-based streaming services, broadcast TV was the valley’s main connection to the rest of the world.
The core dilemma facing MetRec has come from “different directions,” Nehrenberg told the Times.
“[Those factors] led the district to be forced into a position where TV is going away no matter what we do,” Nehrenberg said. “It would take changes above and beyond MetRec to change the course of TV here.”
At the top of that list, according to Nehrenberg, is aging infrastructure. Of 12 MetRec TV facilities, nine are classified as at the “end of life” or damaged and in need of replacement. The estimated cost over the next decade to bring all of those up to date is $10 million. The district currently spends approximately $400,000 a year to offer the service.
The decision whether to commit to that level of investment is complicated by a number of other issues — including difficulties in securing long-term leases to the private land where towers are located. In addition, Comcast, which provides the signal used by MetRec for broadcast, has changed from a satellite-based to a ground delivery system, requiring a costly refit of MetRec facilities.
Other headwinds are internal, having to do with legal constraints on how MetRec can allocate funds. For example, due to the wording of the district’s service plan, based on ballot language approved by voters, TV service can only be funded from the MetRec general fund. That means to increase spending significantly would mean going back to voters for a tax increase. The district is funded by a 1 mill property tax plus an additional 2 mills in the northern subdistrict. That increase was approved by voters in 2022 to support “capital, nonprofit operational support and community grants.”
The public hearing drew a number of comments from people opposed to the move. Many argued that the loss of free TV service falls disproportionately on elderly or disabled residents who don’t benefit from other recreational opportunities supported by the district, and on low-income residents in the more remote parts of the district.
Colleen Hannon, who lives just north of Gunnison, has been an outspoken critic of the plan to decommission the service.
“When someone is homebound, or they are disabled and they're in there and they spend eight hours in their home all day long, this is it for them, this is the way they get public TV,” she told the Times. “People will say, ‘Well, it's a geography issue.’ It's not only geography, it's financial accessibility.”
(Alan Wartes can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or publisher@gunnisontimes.com.)
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