National broadcast of Riverbend Festival TV special to benefit local tornado victims

Soon after the annual Riverbend Festival was swept from the streets of downtown Chattanooga and the bands continued on their tours into other towns, the work was only beginning for a group of video editors and TV producers at Luken Communications.

The company, which owns several television networks including Retro TV, My Family TV, Tuff TV and PBJ, had 16 cameramen on site to shoot nearly 1,000 hours of footage at this year's festival, all of which will be wittled down to a two hour television special to be broadcast later this summer on all of the company's networks across the United States.

The project is a benefit for local tornado relief and a portion of the revenue gained from advertising during each broadcast will be deposited into the Volkswagen tornado relief fund being managed at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga.

The fund was started by Volkswagen, the Mckenzie Foundation and local businessmen, foundations and other private donors the morning after the tornadoes struck the area.

"We collected over $1 million for tornado relief in the first 12 hours," said Johnny Smith, director of the McKenzie Foundation, who was one of first donors.

Smith said the money is being used to help the local agencies that are serving the needs of the victims be able to continue their relief efforts.

"Funds are being used to address the needs that can not be met through normal funding. People in rural communities trust their churches and go there for help, not their government. So the funds are helping victims more directly," Smith said.

The recent work of Metropolitan Ministries, who call themselves "Chattanooga's financial emergency room," has received money from the new fund.

"They help people with things like replacing contact lens, wheel chairs, filling prescriptions. Just because someone's house is gone, doesn't mean the bills go away," Smith said.

The fund has also been used to purchase generators and portalets for work sites and homes in need.

Smith said he hopes the new Riverbend project started by Luken will help sustain the fund after the initial money is depleted.

"$1 million sounds like a lot of money but we have to fix $100 million worth of damage. When our money in the fund is gone, it is gone," he said.

This week checks totaling $85,000 will be issued from the Community Foundation to agencies in need, according to the foundation executive director Pete Cooper. Cooper said the fund has already been depleted by about half since April, with about $600,000 remaining for the next phase of "case management" and dealing with the area's worst cases and individual long term recovery.

"We are putting together a long term recovery committee made up of service providers. The really hard cases will have to be looked at one by one. There is just not enough money for us to simply hand everyone a big check," Cooper said.

Costs of TV production donated

Henry Luken, principal and operating partner of Luken Communications, donated all the television program's production costs, nearly $40,000 in crew, staff and gear.

The program will air as a music special with an announcement at the beginning stating that it is being aired in support of tornado relief.

The advertising revenue that the company receives will be donated to the fund at the Community Foundation. This year there will be no additional creation or sales of DVD's during the broadcast for viewers to send in support. But with more time, that could change.

The idea, conceived just months before the festival's opening night, came too late in the event's contract negotiations with the headliners to include them in the project this year, but the two companies are looking for innovative ways to continue the idea in years to come.

"This is the first step. The second step is next year when there is more time to plan and work in advance when we're in negotiations with everyone on the front end," Chip Baker, executive director of Friends of the Festival, said.

"We might do additional specials, but this first run will be two hours featuring performances and interviews," Clifton Goodgame, Luken's chief information officer, said.

Goodgame, who said the company has committed to fund a similar project at Riverbend again next year, supervised the nightly crew of 16 cameramen, including four on each of the side stages. He said the bands were contacted one by one, and several contacted him to be sure they would be included in the cause.

"We provide the event and the backdrop and they turn it into good television," Baker said.

The television program is said to be complete by August. Local broadcast dates are not scheduled at the time.