A Little Downtime

It’s been a quiet week in Lake, whoops, wrong blog, sorry folks. Well, it is true that not much happened here this week so we thought we’d take this opportunity to show off our Video On Demand Player. If you haven’t taken advantage of this technology to watch whatever you want, when you want, on our website you don’t know what you’re missing.

In addition to flexibility, the player we use has some really nice features that enhance the viewing experience. If you want to skip ahead in a video, or take a break and continue watching later, you should take advantage of the chapter function. (You can also move ahead by dragging the play bar underneath the video but most shows have chapters every 15 minutes which can be more precise.) Click on the 2nd tab underneath the search bar to see the chapters for any program. Then simply click on the chapter you want to watch. Videos under five minutes don't have chapters but three hour ones have many. You can scroll down through the chapters even though you can only see six of them at a time. The same is true for the "Videos" and "Categories" menus---you can scroll down through them, as well, so don't limit yourself to the nine or so categories you can see at first. Finally, have you noticed the small arrow, in a circle, located to the right of the titles in the “Videos” tab? Try clicking on one and you’ll discover that it’s a link to a related website. That makes it easy to find out more about whatever you were watching.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Keep checking back here for more interesting tidbits!

"Franklin County Matters" Returns to Production

A month after Massachusetts' General Election, Attorney David Roulston's life calmed down enough for him to begin planning new episodes of "Franklin County Matters". The first new program was shot this week and features an interview about slavery in the area with two members of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association---Tim Neuman and local author of "Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts" Robert Romer. You can watch this interesting conversation at 9pm on Monday on Cable Channel 15.

In other news this week, our Station Manager, New Media Producer, several board members, and two producers attended the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce's 28th Annual Holiday Breakfast. They ate yummy food, enjoyed stimulating conversation, and filmed The Recorder's Citizen of the Year Presentation. If you'd like to see Joan Vander Vliet receive this honor, tune in to GCTV at 5pm Friday.

Friday is also a good day to catch up on all the Christmas programming you may have missed this month. That night is all about holiday music and movies. Beginning at 5:30pm with a rebroadcast of the Greenfield High School Music Department's Holiday Concert, and ending with an encore screening of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", there's something on for everyone. Enjoy!

Finally, we're very busy around the office getting ready for the holidays. We're tying up loose ends, prepping for vacations, and exchanging season's greetings with the folks who stop in. We hope all of you have a fabulous holiday season!

A Quieter Week

Our big production of the week was recording the Greenfield High School Music Department's Annual Holiday Concert. Around 4:15pm on Wednesday, Otis and Alicia headed over to the school to set up this three camera shoot. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of setting up and running cables, they discovered that one video feed was unavailable so the event became a two camera shoot. Our volunteers Sam & Melissa were up to the challenge and we think the final product still looks great. If you couldn't attend the concert, or you want to hear it again, tune in to Cable Channel 15 tonight at 7PM, tomorrow afternoon at 1pm, or (for you night owls) 11PM on Sunday.

In other GCTV news, "Local Bias" returned to their regular production schedule this week---taping an interview with David Brock on Thursday morning. As Creator and Executive Producer of the show Drew Hutchison minimized his involvement, in order to concentrate on his duties as the film & television teacher at GHS, the rest of the cast and crew has been stepping up to fill in the gaps. This has meant recording the show at some odd times but guesthost Dr. Andrew Blais has found no shortage of guests willing to participate.

Pictures From an Evening Past

Awhile ago we hosted an event to help the business community get to know us better. We invited members of the Greenfield Business Association (GBA) to tour our studio and offices, listen to the soothing sounds of The Frugal Jazz Project, and generally eat, drink, and be merry. A good time was had by all and at the end of the night we welcomed a new sponsor, Surner Heating Company, who won six months of underwriting in our business card raffle.