Happy Thanksgiving!

You'll notice some special holiday programming on Channel 15 today. We begin our tribute to Thanksgiving with "Bones, Stones, and Names: A Native American Perspective on Discovery and Thanksgiving" at 2pm. If you haven't caught this interesting and informative program yet, make sure to tune in. At 6pm you can enjoy the sounds of the season with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's "Music and the Spoken Word: Songs of Thanksgiving". Of course we'll be bringing you the annual Greenfield High School vs. Turners Falls High School Thanksgiving Day Football Game at 7pm, preceded (at 6:30pm) by a special episode of "The Dukes of Sports" that was filmed on the field prior to the game beginning this morning. Turkey Day Football, according to our station manager, should always be followed by a classic (in our case, public domain) holiday movie because this special day kicks off a season of celebrations. To that end, we bring you, (drum roll please) "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians"! Enjoy, eat lots of turkey (or Tofurkey), and have a lot to be thankful for.

Another Busy Week

Turkey Day is coming up and we'll tell you more about our plans for it later in this post. In the meantime let us take a moment to reflect on this week's events.

On Tuesday night, the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee (GGEC) held another of their workshops in our studio. This one, on reducing home energy costs, featured speakers from MassSave, Community Action, the Town of Greenfield, and Franklin County Home Care who introduced attendees to free programs, grants, and low interest loans. In the category of "It's a Small World", the evening was moderated by GGEC member, and WMCB host of "Various Voices", Daria Fisk. The audience came away with many good resources and enjoyed the refreshments provided by GGEC volunteers. If you missed it, be sure to watch it online as part of our Video on Demand Player at GCTV.org. It can be found in the "Special Features" category.

Another program available to watch online is the Greenfield Town Council Meeting that we broadcast live from our studio on Wednesday night. Once again the councilors moved through their business with thought and humor. They quickly dealt with issues relating to Greenfield's 2011 Fiscal Year Budget Tax Classifications and then spent quite a bit of time looking at a proposal for an Agricultural Preservation Restriction on the town farm. Though the latter matter was tabled until the next meeting, in order to receive more information from the town planning department, our local government representatives were able to disagree with each other and yet make jokes at times. This video is in the "Local Government" category and Thursday night's school committee meeting will be joining it soon.

Finally, we get to our T-day sneak peek. We alternate filming the annual Greenfield High School vs. Turners Falls High School Thanksgiving Day Football Game with Montague Community Television. They film it when TFHS hosts it and we record it when it's one of GHS' home games. It's our turn this year which means that Russ Brown and Mike Cadran of "The Dukes of Sports" will be doing a pre-game show on the field that will be full of fun facts about this historic local rivalry and what to look for this year. Keep an eye out on our homepage on Monday afternoon for a few words from Mike and Russ as they get ready for this great event. If you can't be there in person, the game will be broadcast on Cable Channel 15 beginning at 6:30pm on Thanksgiving. Be sure sure to check back here on Thanksgiving morning for a special blog post regarding other traditional holiday programming.

A Quieter Week

It was nice to get a chance to breathe around here. We only had one big production this week in Wednesday night's Special Town Council Meeting. If you are interested in how the citizens of Greenfield treat each other, and/or what to do with the Town Farm, be sure to check out that meeting on our Video on Demand Player. Next week's meeting (which will be broadcast live beginning at 7pm on Wednesday 11/17) will have even more information about the farm proposal with a PowerPoint presentation by Greenfield's Director of Planning & Development Eric Twarog.

Next week will also feature a new episode of "Local Bias" premiering on Cable Channel 15 at 5:30pm on Wednesday. It was recorded this morning when Daniel Brown returned to our studio to be interviewed by guest host Dr. Andrew Blais about a range of political issues.

Weekly Wrap-up (Of Last Week)

So, it turns out that our power issues on Thursday were due to the storm. As some of you already know, several power lines came down on Davis Street and the electric company needed to turn off our power in order to fix them. We lost power completely about two minutes after our prior post went live and we had put a notice about our signal interruption on our websites. Power was restored late Thursday night but the outage made us unable to share our weekly update with you until now:

Well the Rag Shag, Masquerade Party, and election are over and we're taking some time to catch up on things around here. If you missed Greenfield's annual Halloween celebration, or our Masquerade Party, be sure to click on the links in this post to see pictures, video, and more.

Regarding the elections, we are continuing to refine our process for gathering and announcing results. We took information in faster and more smoothly than we have the previous two times but higher than expected voter turnout delayed the reporting in some towns. We will keep on improving our ability to provide you with answers as soon as possible after the polls close. We would also like to extend a big thank you to producer Joe Gochinski, of "The Western Mass Democrat", without whom we would not have had footage of Denise Andrews' victory speech.

That's it for last week. We'll see you on Friday. :)

Power & Signal Outage

At 4:45pm today the power went out in half of our building. What that means is that, as this is being typed, parts of our office have no power at all and other parts have partial power. Not only is this weird, but the outage knocked GCTV, WMCB, and our livestream off the air as well as cutting off our phones. In an even stranger twist, we have access to one of our two internet lines so we can still be reached by email. At first, we assumed this problem is due to the storm but Philippe went downstairs and discovered the Greenfield Fire Department checking things out in the basement. We'll let you know as soon as we know what's going on.

Whoosh!

We're getting ready to walk out the door and go film the Rag Shag Parade but we want to make sure that we bring you all up to date, quickly, on our latest news.

As mentioned above, we'll be broadcasting Greenfield's Rag Shag Parade LIVE! tonight beginning around 5:15pm on Cable Channel 15 and then we'll run back to the office to post pictures of the Rag Shag Costume Contest Winners on our website. Be sure to tune in and click on over for both of those things.

Our election coverage is ramping up and we've added a lot of new video content to our elections page. In addition, keep your eyes pealed for announcements about our election night coverage. Also, if you look to your right you'll see pictures from Tuesday night's State Rep Debate that were taken by Hallmark School of Photography student Gary Denmark. Finally, we'd like to thank NewTV (Newton Community Access Television) for allowing us to link to their State Auditor Candidates Debate.

We're really excited about our Masquerade Party tomorrow night. Check our page on Facebook for some details about the prizes.

Okay, I think that's the short version of all the stuff that's going on here.

Weekly Wrap-up

As promised, we'll begin this post with the things we didn't have time to tell you about last week. On October 13th "The Western Mass Democrat" host Joe Gochinski recorded an hour long interview with Massachusetts Congressional Representative John Olver. The first half of this session will air on Cable Channel 15 in December followed by part two in January. On the 15th, Genevieve Fraser sat down with Dr. Andrew Blais to film the second in a three-part series of "Local Bias" episodes featuring the candidates running in the 2nd Franklin District State Representative race. Her program, as well as the first installment with Steve Adam, is running on GCTV and is available to watch online at GCTV.org as part of our Video on Demand Player (in the "Local Bias" category). Denise Andrews came in to our studio today to round out this group of shows and we hope to have hers online on Monday.

After the "Local Bias" crew was finished for today our studio was filled with youngsters and their parents for a taping of a new "Kid Trivia" episode by our youngest producer. Incidentally, the GCTV staff would like to send her our warmest birthday wishes! You go girl!

When we weren't assisting producers in our TV studio, the staff spent a lot of time this week prepping for next week's debate, FRCOG & Greenfield School Committee meetings, Greenfield's Rag Shag Parade, and of course our Masquerade Party. Producer Brent Eaton donated his time and talent to our cause by, once again, airbrushing the backdrop we'll be using at the Rag Shag when we take pictures for our website. If you're participating in the parade be sure to stop by our tents in front of Town Hall and get your picture taken. Then, make sure to check our homepage right after the parade for pictures of this year's winners.

GCTV in the News: The work of one of our producers was recognized recently by a major New Hampshire newspaper. Check out this article in the Keene Sentinel on the documentary "Sy's Fund".

Finally, we'd like to announce that GCTV has a job opening. To find out more check out the new "Opportunities" page on our website.

Busy, busy, busy!

We've been so busy around here that we barely have time to write this post! Many shows have been filmed and edited so be sure to look for new content on Cable Channel 15 and at gctv.org. Check there too for information about our Masquerade Party fundraiser on October 30th!

If you missed the Greenfield Planning Board Meeting on October 7th, don't fret! All four hours and nine minutes of it are available to watch online as part of our Video on Demand Player (in the "Local Government" category). In addition, the State Rep. Candidates Forum from Tuesday night is there (in the "Elections 2010" category).

We will fill you in on much more of the exciting stuff that's been happening around here in next week's wrap-up. In the meantime, enjoy what looks to be a fabulous Fall weekend.

Loads of Good Public Information

This was quite a week for informing the public about important local issues.

At 1PM on Tuesday afternoon Alicia was on location at the Greenfield Town Planning Offices to record the awarding of checks to representatives of Greenfield, Athol, Montague, and Palmer. The towns earned this money by participating in the Green Communities Act Grant Program. Later that same day Mayor Martin brought Greenfield's Director of Economic Development and Marketing, Robert Pyers, into our studio to record a new "Mayor's Memo" in an effort to answer residents' questions about the upcoming parking changes.

More guests were brought into the studio on Wednesday and Thursday when Joe Gochinski, host and producer of "The Western Mass Democrat", interviewed Hampden County Register of Deeds Donald Ashe and Dr. Andrew Blais, guest host of "Local Bias", sat down for a conversation with Republican candidate for state representative in the 2nd Franklin District Steve Adam.

Friday took us back out into the field to cover the Community Coalition for Teens (CCT) Youth Behavior Survey Results Press Conference and a special Greenfield School Committee Meeting.

You can be informed about all the subjects discussed in these programs by checking our Video on Demand Player (Green Grant Presentation, "Mayor's Memo", and the CCT Press Conference) or watching Cable Channel 15 next week ("Local Bias", "The Western Mass Democrat", and the Greenfield School Committee Meeting)

Have You Noticed Our Spiffy New Logo?

First, thank you to everyone who has complimented our logo so far. We're really excited to be rolling out this new design as we haven't had one in about 10 years. Right now the graphic, designed by Fresh Jones, can be seen in our blogger profile, our forum posts on Penrick.com & PowerTowneDistro, and on our page on Facebook. GCTV Board Member Terry Ruggles shepherded our new icon through the process by finding a local company for us to work with and helping us get from ten logo ideas down to one.

We began rolling out the new logo this week and you'll start to see it in more places soon. Keep an eye out for it at the beginning and end of GCTV run productions, on new business cards, and maybe even on your friends' t-shirts.

The Last 2010 Primary Election Post

Hopefully you were as excited about Tuesday as we were. It was a lot of fun (and a lot of work) covering the state primaries and very satisfying to be able to post the results on our homepage around 9:30PM. We're resting up in preparation for all of the interesting events that we'll be covering during the next few months---Rag Shag Parade, Massachusetts General Election, Turkey Day Football, and others. Keep checking back here to learn more about what's coming next.

Franklin County Fair Parade and Election Preparation

As you can probably imagine, most of our focus this week was on yesterday's parade. We have not forgotten, however, that there are Primary Elections coming up on Tuesday.

Alicia spent part of this week communicating with town clerks in the 2nd Franklin District in order to receive preliminary results soon after the polls close. GCTV encourages everyone to exercise their right to vote on September 14th and take advantage of all the resources on gctv.org to help with that process. Tuesday night we will post the Greenfield results on our website, around 9PM, and hope to announce the winner of the 2nd Franklin District State Representative Democratic Primary race not long after.

Speaking of getting things up on our website, due to technical difficulties, the Franklin County Fair Parade will not be available to view online until Monday. In the meantime, you can enjoy the slideshow below of photos we took during the event. The shoot was awesome, btw! Staff, crew, and viewers all enjoyed our coverage and many people told us that this was our best effort yet. Big thank you's go out to our Sponsors (Sandri Oil Company, The Hammond Family, Greenfield Savings Bank, The Bank of Western Massachusetts, Foster's Supermarket, Greenfield Farmers Cooperative Exchange, Greenfield Garden Cinemas, The Longe Family, New Fortune Chinese Restaurant & Sushi Bar, and Tire Warehouse), hosts (Russ Brown of "Dukes of Sports" and Tom Dillon of Dillon Chevrolet), and volunteers (Jimmie Bailey, Shawn Cromack, Faith, Susan Laing, and Sam Pyfrom). Also, the entire crew would like to thank everyone who threw us candy. :)

Weekly Wrap-up

We were busy with election stuff at the beginning of the week, covering the state rep. race education debate at The Greenfield Grille on Monday night and recording the get to know the Democratic Primary Candidates event in our studio on Tuesday night. Both events are available to watch online and you can look at a slideshow of pics, taken prior to Tuesday's, on the right hand side of this blog. (Thanks again to Joe Gochinski for providing GCTV's staff and production volunteers with yummy snacks for the second event!)

Unfortunately, we can't cover every important event that occurs in town but, thankfully, our volunteer producers tend to some of the gaps. Susan Laing recorded last night's planning board meeting and we hope to bring you the footage from it soon.

In other news, this week our board gave final approval to our new logo and you'll be seeing it soon. Finally, Drew Hutchison has produced two new "Local Bias" episodes in which he interviews the men running for Northwestern District Attorney. Drew and the staff worked hard to turn the second episode around in record time so it was recorded late yesterday morning and by 5PM it was available to watch online at gctv.org.

A Remembrance of Tom MacLean

A memorial celebration and potluck will be held this Sunday, August 29th, at 4PM at Woolman Hill in Deerfield.

Election Season is in Full Swing!

As you probably know, two debates took place in our studio on Tuesday night. The Franklin County Democratic League hosted both forums, one for the 2nd Franklin District State Representative seat and one for the Northwest District Attorney position. While the debate was going on inside, several candidates had supporters out on the street holding signs and waving to passersby. Both formal events were well attended and you can watch them for yourself at gctv.org.

We're very pleased that our recording of recent debates, including those discussed above, piqued the interest of two other media outlets. Masslive.com and Northamptonmedia.com both asked for links to our event footage, which we happily provided.

In other election news, many of you know that we updated our State Primaries page several times this week to include more video candidate statements and greater Franklin County races. If you haven't checked it out yet, now is a good time to do so. In addition, Maureen Winseck, Greenfield's Town Clerk, would like us to remind you that the last day to register to vote, change your political party, or address, for the State Primary Elections to be held on Tuesday, September 14th, is Wednesday, August 25th. The Town Clerk’s Office will be open from 8:30AM to 8PM that day. Regular office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30AM to 5PM. If you have any questions regarding voter registration, please contact the Greenfield Town Clerk's Office at 772-1555 x112.

One final note that has nothing to do with politics: The Franklin County Fair Parade will be here before you know it. If you would like to help us record the event on September 9th please email alicia@gctv.org and let us know.