It's All About The Governor (and the Earthquake)

What a week this was!

On Tuesday afternoon Owen, Simeon, & our Station Manager attended a session at the new Veterans' Resource & Referral Center, on Main Street, in which Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and his staff listened to the concerns of local veterans. In addition to recording the entire event (which will air on Cable Channel 15 at 2PM on Wednesday, June 30th, and be available to watch online as part of our Video on Demand Player soon) they were able to catch a quick interview with the governor to create a short news story for our homepage.

It was pretty quiet around here on Wednesday, until 1:40PM. Alicia was sitting at her desk, Philippe & Owen were working at editing stations, when Alicia felt a rumble beneath her feet. This is actually not that unusual because there is some machinery in our building that periodically sends a buzzing up through Alicia's desk and chair. The shaking this time was more pronounced, however, so she asked the guys if they could feel it. They said they could and asked what it was. Alicia replied that she thought it was an earthquake, since she remembered feeling in Ashfield the one that occurred around Albany five to seven years ago. It was a little scary while the building was moving because, even though they were gentle, the tremors had increased from the time they'd started and we had no way of knowing how long it would last.

As soon as it was over, Alicia picked up the phone and called WMCB DJ/Host of "Let it Rip", and GCTV Volunteer, Reba Rasbury. Alicia told Reba what had happened, and about her theory that it was an earthquake, and asked Reba what she thought. Reba hadn't felt anything but gamely hopped online to check it out. At first, she couldn't find reports of an occurrence but she did explain why it would make sense that we felt the effects on the third floor while no one on the ground floor did. Her opinion is that, as our structure was built by Masons, the foundation of this edifice is solid and deep allowing vibrations at lower depths to be picked up. As the oscillations traveled upward, farther away from the anchored portion of the building, their effect increased.

A few minutes later, Reba called back to let us know that a 5.5 Magnitude earthquake had been reported in Canada that was close, and powerful, enough for us to have felt it. Philippe suggested that Reba call into the radio station (476-4266) so he could interview her on the air. They talked for several minutes about the science behind earthquakes and how far their effects can be experienced. At 4PM, Reba discussed the earthquake, and other environmental issues, on her show. If you'd like to hear a segment of it, check out our website or listen to her rebroadcast on 107.9FM today at 2PM.

Later today we will welcome Governor Patrick back to our studio where he will be Mayor Martin's guest on "Mayor's Memo". They will be signing the solar farm contract here in front of an audience made up of town employees, councilors, and other officials. Before that, however, Alicia will be accompanying them on a trolley tour of Greenfield to record that event for posterity. Look for footage from all of this to be posted on our website late this afternoon or early this evening.

Whew! That's about it for this week. We'll let you how things go when we check in next Friday or maybe we'll even have a special post here on Monday.

This Week at GCTV

Monday night's "Valley Homegrown" shoot was interesting. If you watched the live broadcast, and wondered why it was shorter than normal, we have the answer. One of the musicians broke a guitar string and the show had to stop so she could fix it. In addition, there were some audio issues during the program so we will be airing an old episode of the same band, Lovewhip, tonight at 9PM.

On Tuesday, the mayor came in to record his show but decided to change things up a bit. Instead of his honor answering questions from the public, and then speaking with a guest about Greenfield events or government, Mayor Martin was himself interviewed by none other than WHAI Morning Show Host Jay Fidanza. It was a no-holds barred interview where Jay was allowed to ask whatever he wanted inspiring the mayor to reply in a frank, and sometimes humorous, way. You can watch this discussion on Monday at 2PM, or anytime on our Video on Demand Player. Be sure to listen for the moment when Mayor Martin describes himself as a "moderate radical".

The Town Council Meeting broadcast live from our studio on Wednesday night. This contained the capital budget votes and was the final meeting for some councilors. On Thursday, July 1st, the winners of the recent election will be sworn in and new council officers will be elected at an organizational meeting on July 7th. We'll have more information on both of these events soon so make sure to check our homepage regularly.

Drew Hutchison would like folks to know that his guest on "Local Bias" next week will be Franklin County Register of Probate John Merrigan. Mr. Merrigan will handicap county & statewide political races and discuss the fallout from our recent town election. They had a good time in the studio on Thursday morning, when they taped this show, ably assisted by Susan Laing & Jimmie Bailey.

Today is fairly quiet, Drew will be in to edit "Local Bias" this afternoon but mostly we'll be catching our breath and getting ready for next week.

Whew! What a Whirlwind of a Week!

Continuing our theme from last week, a lot of work in our office revolved around Greenfield's Town Election on Tuesday. Monday was spent in frenzied activity putting the finishing touches on our on our website and pre-produced pieces. Owen & Simeon spent some time over at GHS, on Tuesday, talking to candidates and volunteers who were forming the gauntlet voters had to walk through before entering their polling place.

Election returns were delayed on Tuesday night because of a morning power failure at the polls and the breakdown of Precinct 2's vote tallying machine. Both of these technical issues combined to cause a large number of ballots to require hand counting and the unofficial totals weren't delivered to our studio until after 9PM.

Joe Gochinski & Drew Hutchison did a phenomenal job hosting our election returns show. They were informative and really integrated well with our pre-produced segments. GCTV's staff and volunteers would like to send up a shout out to Joe for providing snacks that also kept our energy up at the town council meeting the next night. Yummy!

The Greenfield Middle School Band's Spring Concert also took place on Wednesday night and we covered it too. Since it couldn't air live, it will air tonight at 7PM on Cable Channel 15.

Thursday night we were back out in the community broadcasting the Greenfield School Committee Meeting live from Greenfield High School. The staff who weren't working on that shoot spent the day cleaning up, helping producers edit their shows, and generally winding down.

Today has been less hectic so more cleaning up and organizing has been accomplished, along with some catching up on work that didn't get done over the last week and a half.

Make sure to check our Video on Demand player for anything you missed this week and tune in tonight for Sunday's GHS Graduation at 5PM.

Ramping Up for Election Coverage

We've been toiling away here all week getting ready for Tuesday's election. Philippe produced a story about the ballot questions that you can watch on our homepage right now, our intern Simeon has been diligently gathering b-roll, graphics are being laid out by Owen as this post is being written, Alicia designed a page for our website that will display the returns, and Scott is working on several short pieces to be shown on Cable Channel 15 between segments of our live studio results show.

We're very excited to be changing the way we bring you the vote tallies this year and hope you will find our coverage interesting and accessible as well as informative. Check out gctv.org on Monday and Tuesday to find out more about the election itself and our coverage of it.

On a lighter note, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" has finally arrived on GCTV! Now that this cult classic is definitively in the public domain we will be showing it as part of our "Movie Mayhem" series at 12AM on Sunday, June 6th, and following "The Public's Domain" (around 1AM) on Saturday, June 12th.