What a week it's been!

"Valley Homegrown" started off the week with a very interesting musical group called "Lalit" that played Indian Jazz Fusion. If you missed it, when it aired live on Monday night, be sure to catch the rebroadcast tonight at 9PM on Cable Channel 15.

Our staff was very excited on Tuesday to welcome our new intern, Simeon. He was put to work right away creating a community coverage piece about what the Franklin Regional Transit Authority (FRTA), and the town, are doing to help people with physical disabilities, no transportation, or who aren't going to be in town on election day, cast their ballots on June 8th. You can watch this short news story on our homepage.

Then, of course, Wednesday night happened. As folks left our studio, after the Greenfield Town Council Ways & Means Committee Meeting, the sky lit up with flash after flash of lighting. There was no thunder or rain at that point so we had no idea what was coming next.

Arriving on Thursday morning to discover that a State of Emergency had been declared, our Station Manager & New Media Producer/Director put their heads together to figure what we could do to help. Mayor Martin's office put us in touch with the Greenfield Fire Department and they provided us with street closings and other public safety information that we immediately posted on our website. Later, the mayor and Fire Chief Winn took time out of their demanding schedules to sit down in our studio and give the public a thorough rundown of the situation in a new "Mayor's Memo" episode that aired last night. One of our WMCB DJs, Corey Bellows---Host of "The Wire", spent the morning walking around town taking pictures of the storm's aftermath. He was nice enough to share them with us and you can see his slide show on the upper right corner of this blog. As Corey said, "these pictures explain why we're in a State of Emergency".

Today, we've mostly been playing catch up and continuing to update our State of Emergency page. Obviously, we won't be able to update it over the holiday weekend but you can see the most up to date information on the town's website.

Enjoy your (non-stormy) Memorial Day Weekend everyone!

Expanding Greenfield's Knowledge Base Through Informative Programming

Two interviews were conducted in our studio this week. Late on Monday afternoon, Dave Roulston, Mary Drew of Clinical Support Options, Greg Grueling of Green River House, and Susan Howell also of Green River House sat down together for “Franklin County Matters”. The purpose of this roundtable was to highlight the 8th Annual Wellness Fair, celebrating the empowerment of people with mental disabilities, at the Energy Park in downtown Greenfield. On Thursday, Glen Ayers, host of “The Enviro Show” on WMCB, was Drew Hutchison’s guest on “Local Bias” and the two of them discussed the ramifications of pollution. Their talk was wide ranging but included Biomass and the ballot questions that voters will be deciding during Greenfield’s election on June 8th.

Writing about “Local Bias” reminds me that we have a new producer in our midst thanks to the crew of that show. As I type this post, former guest (and local author---“First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria”) Eve Brown-Waite is sitting at one of our computers editing her own show for broadcast on Cable Channel 15. She was excited to discover all the opportunities we offer when she appeared on Drew’s show and he encouraged her to use us herself when she came to him with another project.

All three of the programs described above should be shown soon. Please check our schedule for days and times.

If you’re looking for something to watch right now---and you’re interested in dinosaurs, geology, or local history---check out independent producer Reba Rasbury’s piece on Vimeo. She says that it’s a, “work in progress”, but it showcases both her humor and the amazing Jurassic treasures that our valley holds.

Finally, a note about our board meeting for this month: our board is going on a field trip to Athol-Orange Community Television on Tuesday evening, to tour their facility, instead of having a regular meeting here in our studio.

A Week of Empowerment

This week began with women helping women. Opeyemi Parham, MD, host of WMCB’s “Channeling the Muse” organized a co-operative learning session for her fellow female DJs. First thing on Monday morning the group discussed their needs and then proceeded to teach each other what they knew. Some of them were familiar with producing live shows, others only pre-records, some upload their shows to air on their own, others don’t. During this time they were each able to share the parts that they knew and help each other to become fully versed in WMCB procedures. If you missed this session, don’t worry, they will be having another one on June 14th and Opeyemi will be sending out an email to current DJs soon.

Knowledge continued to be passed on the following day when volunteers from the Greenfield YMCA arrived at our studio for a camera training session with our station manager. In one hour they learned how to use our new HD field cameras, Manfrotto Tripods, and studio cameras. The YMCA is ramping up coverage of their many activities and now has regular timeslots for the shows they produce. Tune in to Cable Channel 15 on Mondays at 11AM and Wednesdays at 7PM, beginning May 24th, to see these great shows.

Lastly, we welcomed a new producer to our ranks this week. Hope Schneider, of the Friends of the Greenfield Public Library, was taught to edit her footage of this year’s Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest using Adobe Premiere on one of our PCs.

We’re very happy to fulfill our mission, to help expand Greenfield’s knowledge base, and this week was a wonderful example of what we (and you) can do.

One Busy Week!

This week was a blur of candidates recording video statements for the new election resource page on our website (Don't know what I'm blogging about? Go to www.GCTV.org/Elections.) and the Greenfield Kiwanis Auction. Oh, yeah, we also covered the Greenfield High School Music Department's Spring Scholarship Concert. If you missed it, don't worry, it's on Cable Channel 15 right now and will be repeated many times. Please check our schedule for rebroadcast dates.

Addition to Friday's Posts

If you are wondering about MassAccess, what it is and what it does, check out their website: http://www.massaccess.org.

Also, our photo album from Friday is now accessible on the right-hand side of this blog.