San Mateo County, CA is charging the television media circus $51,000 for space near Peterson courthouse, tent not included:
The 16 assigned spaces, which are about 13 feet by 17 feet, will be used for television reporters to store equipment, work and conduct interviews. Each station must provide their own tent.
In addition, television stations must pay $7,500 a month for space to park their satellite trucks. Twenty spaces set aside for journalists in a nearby lot cost $200 a month each. Reporters are not being charged, however, for space in a media center being set up about a block away.
Altogether, the “tent city” for television media would raise $816,000 for the county, about a third of which has already been spent on preparations for the trial, Alms said.
The $51,000 fee amounts to about $230 per square foot. At the height of the dot-com boom, prime office space in San Francisco leased for about $80 per square foot.
Too bad they don’t make the price so prohibitive that none of the TV networks end up covering the trial.