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.

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.

We're done!

Thanks to everyone who followed along on our blog today. As you can see from this picture we are cleaning up, so the office should be back to normal on Monday morning---just in time for the "Dukes of Sports" shoot.

Session 3: Drupal

We've reconvened for the last workshop of the day. Craig Sinclair of Amherst Community Television (ACTV) is demonstrating the ease and reach of the Content Management System (CMS) Drupal. For more information check out Drupal.org and The Open Media Project's website.

Time for a Lunchbreak

Yum! Food from China Gourmet, sponsored by Telvue. We can satisfy our stomachs and network some more.

MassAccess Conference Session 2

Attorney William August speaks about the latest developments with the Community Access Preservation (CAP) Act and other legal issues that affect public access & community television stations. For more information about the CAP act, please check out Florence's own Freepress.net.

Live from the MassAccess Spring Mini Conference!

Today we're hosting approximately 80 staffers from public access stations around Massachusetts. We'll be bringing you updates throughout the day and we are taping the workshops. We'll let you know when these panel discussions will air on Cable Channel 15 and we'll post a photo album early next week.

Right now, we're in the middle of Session 1: Member Recruitment & Retention.

Representatives from Northampton Community Television (NCTV), Wilbraham Public Access Television, & Billerica Access Television are leading this panel where lots of good ideas are being shared.

Stay tuned for more updates as the day progresses.

Weekly Wrap-up (with a Shout Out)

Being closed Monday for Patriot's Day was really nice and our staff took full advantage of the three day weekend to travel to all kinds of exotic places like NYC, New Jersey, and, of course, a goat farm in Shelburne Falls.

We hit the ground running on Tuesday morning, however, with Community Action's Mediation & Training Collaborative (TMTC) beginning an almost day-long shoot in our studio. Thanks to a grant, they were able to hire two of our independent producers (Jimmie Bailey & Drew Hutchison) to set up the technical aspects of the production and run cameras. Drew & Jimmie helped the shoot to proceed smoothly and, as Betsey Corner of TMTC said, "they were worth every penny".

On Wednesday, our studio was again in use most of the day---this time by three separate shoots and a tour. In the morning, we recorded a video statement, for our website, by one of the candidates in Greenfield's upcoming election (Don't forget to vote June 8, 2010!). After lunch, a group from Ludlow Public Access Television (LPTV) in Vermont stopped by to check out our facilities. They are about to move into a new space and were visiting several nearby stations to get ideas for their architect to use in the planning and renovation process. Not long after they left, Mayor Martin and Sandy Shields (Director of Greenfield's DPW) came in to tape a new "Mayor's Memo" focusing on Greenfield's Solar Farm project. When they had finished, Philippe and Alicia spent the rest of the afternoon setting up for the Town Council Meeting which was broadcast live from our studio that evening.

Thanks to a respite on Thursday, Alicia finally had time to evict most of the dustbunnies from our studio. Her thorough sweeping job means that when the crews for "Silly Wizard" and "Kid Trivia" come in to record shows this afternoon their feet will not be producing crunching sounds as they walk across the floor. Yay!

In other news, "Valley Homegrown" director Richard Roy is participating in the World T'ai-Chi and Qigong Day Celebration here in Greenfield this weekend. A group meditation for world peace and awareness of T'ai-Chi and Qigong will be held Saturday, April 24th, from 10AM to 11:30AM at Beacon Field. The event, which is sponsored by J. R. Roy Martial Arts Studio & Dial/Self, will be held rain or shine. It's free and Richard hopes that he'll see many of you there.