Your Government at Work

Covering last week's town election involved a great behind the scenes effort by GCTV staff and volunteers. In order to keep you informed about the process and---of course---the results, many people contributed their time and enthusiasm. Staff members collected b-roll and interviews with the candidates outside the polling location in the morning, Joe Gochinski and Drew Hutchison provided live commentary about the races and their outcomes on cable channel 15 that night, Joe's dad called the station with vote totals, and our website announced even the winner of the write-in contest in Precinct 1 before 10pm. Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone who participated in the process and our coverage of it.

The newly elected town councilors won't be sworn in until next month but there was still business to be done at the last meeting of the current council, held on Wednesday, June 15th. If you didn't watch this meeting live, you missed an interesting debate about how government works. In addition, some charter/ordinance changes were approved along with some fiscal appropriations. You can see all this for yourself by watching it as part of our Video on Demand Player, in the "Local Government" category.

Local Bias Hits Milestone

Congratulations go out to Drew Hutchison, Dr. Andrew Blais, and their crew for recording the 100th episode of "Local Bias". Yesterday morning, Greenfield Town Councilor David Singer joined Dr. Blais in our studio to tape that episode which features a wide-ranging discussion of local politics. You can check it out for yourself when it begins its two week run on Cable Channel 15 at 5:30pm on Wednesday.

In other news, we'd like to remind you of three important election related items. The first is that the Town of Greenfield General Election Debate 2011 from Wednesday night is now available to watch online here: http://www.gctv.org/Debate052511.html. Watch it and see for yourself where the candidates stand on the issues. Second, if you need help getting to the polls on June 14th, be sure to consult the schedule of available rides on our Local Elections page. Finally, if you want to weigh in on where the lines will be drawn for our state's new political districts, make sure to attend the next Public Hearing of the Special Committee on Redistricting this coming Tuesday, May 31st, at Greenfield Community College's Sloan Theater beginning at 6 p.m. State Senator Stan Rosenberg and State Representative Stephen Kulik will be among the local lawmakers there to discuss this issue.

News & Notes

Greenfield's Town Election will be June 14th and our candidate information page is now live on gctv.org. Click on over to find out who the candidates are and how they plan to work hard for the town by checking out pictures, bios, and video statements from them. For those of you who have asked us about debates, between the two candidates for councilor at large and between the three candidates running for school committee, one will take place in our studio this coming Wednesday, May 25th at 7pm. It is open to the public so come on down!

In other news---another new, locally-produced, show is joining our lineup. We promised you last week that we'd tell you more about how Shakespeare's plays will be gracing our airwaves. Life-long thespian, and active producer, Tom Roulston's new program "Reading Shakespeare" premieres at 5PM on Friday, May 27th, with a dramatic reading of "As You Like It". Over the course of the series Tom will read the bard's famous plays, an act or two at a time, while the script scrolls down one side of the screen.

Last week we also shared with you the fact that we would be saying goodbye to our part-time production assistant Otis Wheeler. We are happy to report that we will be welcoming his capable replacement, Ian Bauer, next week. Ian will be working three days a week helping producers with their projects.

Finally, a sad note about one of the FreeSpeech TV productions that we've been airing; the folks at "Grit TV" have stopped producing a daily news program. You can watch host Laura Flanders' goodbye message to fans by visiting this link: http://grittv.org/?p=16029.

Weekly Round Up Potpurri

Another new, locally produced, show has been added to our lineup! “Tom & Kat” will debut on Monday, at 10:30AM, with “The Velveteen Rabbit”. This fun program featuring beloved children’s stories will also air on Tuesdays at 4PM. In addition, lovers of classic literature can look forward to Shakespeare on Cable Channel 15---but we’ll share more about that in a future blog post.

Our big event this week was, of course, hosting the Greenfield Kiwanis Club’s annual auction on Wednesday and Thursday. The event was a big success and everyone involved had a lot of fun. Big thanks go out to everyone who participated.

We have another big event coming up in two weeks in which we hope you’ll also participate. On Wednesday, May 25th, the candidates running in Greenfield’s Town Election on June 14th will all meet in our studio to participate in a forum and debate produced by Barbara Tillmanns. The two candidates vying for Town Councilor At Large (Cameron Ward & Mark Wisnewski), and the three people contesting for the two available school committee seats (Maryelen Calderwood, Daryl Essensa, & Keith McCormic), will answer questions from a distinguished panel of current & former local officials. The candidates who are running unopposed have been given the opportunity to address the public during this event as well. The program is scheduled to begin at 6:30PM and you are welcome to join us in the studio or to watch from the comfort of your own home. We'll also post it online within 48 hours and you'll be able to get to it from our election webpage. That page will go live on Tuesday, May 17th and will be a great resource for all your election needs. We'll post more details about that site next week.

In other political news, Roxann Wedegartner of the Greenfield Planning board sat down with Dr. Andrew Blais on Thursday to tape an episode of "Local Bias". Following up on last week's episode, with reasonable growth proponent Al Norman, this show takes a look at the proposed development on French King Highway from the other perspective. It will begin airing on Wednesday at 5:30PM.

Finally, we'd like to share a message with you from part-time Production Assistant Otis Wheeler: "Hey, folks! I hate to say it but I'm leaving again; it wasn't an easy decision but after thinking about it long and hard, I realized that I was spreading myself too thin, so I'm choosing to concentrate my energies on my primary occupation—Operations Manager at Bernardston-Northfield Community Television—and to make time for projects that I have in the works, such as producing and directing a film set in Greenfield, and editing a documentary on the pacifism of Mohandas Gandhi. I'll miss the friendly atmosphere of GCTV, and all the friendly faces, but I'll be sure to stop by regularly!" We'll miss Otis a lot but we wish him well. His last day as a GCTV Staffer will be Thursday, May 19th.

Make Your Voice Heard!

Please remember to vote in today's preliminary election for Greenfield Town Councilor At Large. If you need more information on the process or the candidates, be sure to check out our election page before you head to the polls.

Don't forget, we'll post the results on our website after 8:30pm!

Potpurri

Whew! Another busy week here is coming to a close and we have several interesting and informative things to tell you about, along with some visual aids.

First up, a couple of schedule changes. A new show has been added to our lineup: "Creating Cooperative Kids", which is produced in Enfield, CT but was requested by a Greenfield resident, aims to be a useful tool for parents. It will begin airing this weekend with time slots on Saturday at 9AM and Wednesday at 2PM. Those of you who regularly watch our Saturday morning lineup may wonder how "Creating Cooperative Kids" can air at 9AM because "NASA SciFiles" has been airing at that time. Because NASA is no longer producing "SciFiles", "NASA Connect", or "Destination Tomorrow", we've decided to follow their lead and focus on televising their new venture, "NASA 360". Taking the old shows out of the picture on Saturday morning enables "NASA 360" to move to 8:30AM and "Student News" to go to 10AM. We think you'll enjoy this streamlined version of Saturday morning programming so be sure to check it out on Cable Channel 15 this weekend.

Next, please don't forget to vote on Tuesday. If you don't know who the candidates are, or feel like you need more information about them, be sure to check out our election page. Also, make sure to check our website on Tuesday night, after 8:30pm, for election results. If you missed the debate that was held in our studio, on the 12th, you can watch it as part of our Video on Demand Player (in the "Elections 2011" category). In the meantime, here are a few pics from that event.

The three candidates (Left to Right):
Karen Renaud, Cameron Ward, Mark Wisnewski


Moderator Joe Judd


Finally, as part of our ongoing facility improvements, Philippe is getting a new office. In this photo you can see him hard at work in there:


Just kidding! As part of the work we're doing we needed to purchase a fireproof cabinet to store paint in. Doesn't it look spiffy?


That's it for this roundup. Have a great long weekend everyone!

No More Foolishness!

After we recovered from last week's hijinks, we got right back into the swing of things.

"The Dukes of Sports" kicked things off on Monday morning with Mike Cadran assuring their fans that he wasn't going anywhere and "Valley Homegrown" finished up the day recording a show with a band called "The Demographic". "The Dukes of Sports" will air on Cable Channel 15 at Noon on Saturday and you can watch "Valley Homegrown" tonight at 9PM.

Tuesday was government day here at GCTV! Another candidate who is running in Greenfield's Town Election on June 14th came in to record their video statement and, in the afternoon, we played host to some of the folks participating in National Prescription Drug Take Back Day. Northwestern District Attorney Dave Sullivan was joined by Franklin County Sheriff Chris Donelan, DEA Agent Joe Karas, and Community Coalition for Teens Coordinator Kat Allen for a discussion about the details of this project. You can learn more about it by checking out the story on our homepage.

Our studio was once again in use almost all day on Wednesday. "Dance of the Hoop" shot their second episode in the morning, Mayor Martin brought in some special guests from GCC in the afternoon, and that evening one of our volunteers filmed a scene for his movie in our control room.

Things quieted down a bit on Thursday and Friday but there was still a lot of editing going on. In addition, another candidate came in to film a video statement and Joe Gochinski was joined by Springfield City Councilor Mike Fenton for an interview that will air in May.

Even as our staff kept track of all the productions going on this week, we were planning for the Preliminary Election Debate this coming Tuesday night (April 12th, 7pm, in our studio) that will feature all three of the candidates vying to replace Dan Guinn as Greenfield Town Councilor At Large. This event is open to the public so please show up and be informed.

A Big Production Week

This week we had nine shoots on our schedule and a lot of footage to edit. Between Monday and Tuesday we had three candidates in to record their video statements for our website and Mayor Martin invited Town Council President Tim Farrell into our studio for a chat on Tuesday afternoon. Thursday was our day for location shoots; our New Media Producer taped interviews with planners of the upcoming National Prescription Drug Takeback Day (you'll be hearing more about that on our homepage next week) at a breakfast with Northwestern District Attorney Dave Sullivan, volunteer Tom L. headed over to Town Hall in order to cover the emergency town council meeting regarding the preliminary election (check out the story that's on our homepage right now), and Philippe broadcast the Greenfield School Committee meeting live. Friday was not a slow day either as our Station Manager began his workday first thing in the morning filming the latest Franklin County Chamber of Commerce Breakfast and Joe Gochinski brought two State Representatives (William "Smitty" Pignatelli of the 4th Berkshire District & Brian Ashe of the 2nd Hampden District) in for conversations in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the staff has been editing the seven sessions of last weekend's Creative Economy Summit, that even a Shelburne Falls-wide power outage couldn't stop us from getting on camera, and the Greenfield Planning Board Meeting from March 17th.

In other news, be sure to keep an eye out here, on our channel, and our website for some festive foolishness next Friday.

Works in Progress

Like most television stations we have to multi-task so here are updates on some of our current projects:

Getting ready for Greenfield's Town Election---One of the three candidates for councilor at large, who will be on the preliminary election ballot on April 19th if the state legislature doesn't allow the town to put them all on the one in June, has already sent in their information and recorded their video candidate statement and the other two will be in on Monday. This way, we'll be ready to go as soon as we hear about the state's decision.

The bulk of the construction in the back room is finished---The door needs a window, an electrician will be coming in soon, and the staff will be applying paint but it definitely feels like a great space. Check out the pics below or stop in and see for yourself!



Our station manager has been upgrading the control room again---We've added a distribution amplifier, new DVD burners, and gotten the speakers over the switcher working. All of these improvements will provide a better experience for producers and a higher quality end product. Oh, and we've also replaced the old lavalier microphones in the studio. Any of you who use the clip on mics will definitely want to check these sleek new ones out when you come in for your next production.

Productions---Mayor Martin stopped by to be interviewed by Dr. Andrew Blais on the latest episode of "Local Bias" and both our station manager and our new media producer will be filming sessions at the "Creative Economy Summit" today.

Highlights From This Week

Obviously, the biggest production we facilitated this week was the Greenfield High School Music Parents' Association's annual telethon on Wednesday evening. Our station manager was here before 10am to ensure that load-in could start on time and setup could begin. Parents and some students were here throughout the day creating the set, running cable, and doing soundchecks. Between 4pm and 5pm the bulk of the crew and performers arrived along with host for the evening Greenfield Town Councilor, and WHAI General Manager, Dan Guin. Once the telethon began at 6pm it was music and fundraising until 9PM. The GHS Jazz Band opened the show followed by solo performers and then the GHS Select Choir. You can see more footage from the telethon, and find out how you can add to the $7000 that was raised, when you check out the short video on our homepage.

Greenfield Middle School's Music Department also gave a performance this week that we recorded. Our staff would like to send out big thanks to volunteers Tom and Jal who took cameras over to GMS' auditorium on Thursday night to film their Spring concert. Our staff will be editing the two feeds together and we'll air it on Friday, March 11th, at 6pm.

Finally, we'd like to take a moment to update you on Greenfield's 2011 election process. Candidates were certified this week and we will begin contacting them on Monday in order to add their information to the local election page on our website. Because three people were certified to run for the At-Large seat on the town council, and given the state of the economy, there will be a special council meeting in our studio at 6pm on Monday to petition the state legislature to allow Greenfield to bypass a preliminary election and put everyone on the June ballot. We'll be putting together a short video soon letting you know who the candidates are, and their information will go live on our website one month prior to any election, so make sure to keep an eye on gctv.org.

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend.

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. :)

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.

Announcements, Announcements, Announcements!

After much hard work this week, GCTV staff members set up livestreaming for WMCB-lp 107.9FM. You can now listen to this community radio station twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on your computer. Head over to wmcb.net/Listen.html to start enjoying Western Massachusetts Community Broadcasting. Be sure to check out the rest of the site while you're there because it has descriptions of each show, answers to frequently asked questions, and the station's schedule. In case you are wondering, the hours between Midnight and Noon (when you can't hear WMCB on your radio) will be filled online by a repeat of the programming that ran from Noon to Midnight.

Keeping our election page up to date also required a lot of time and effort this week. If you go to http://www.gctv.org/StatePrimaries.html you will see that new links to important election websites, the ballot questions, and video of candidate debates and interviews have been added. We've also listed the debates we'll be airing in the future and we will continue adding content to the page as we get it.

Writing about debates reminds me that we still need volunteers to help us shoot many of the events we'll be covering this month. If you would like to run a camera, manage the soundboard, or direct during a debate, town council, or school committee shoot send an email to alicia@gctv.org or call 413-774-4288. Don't forget, we will train you! To see our upcoming volunteer opportunities click here.

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.

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.

Have you voted today?

Make sure you vote today and then tune in tonight at 8PM to catch our LIVE election results show hosted by Joe Gochinski. It will be rebroadcast tomorrow at 11AM if you miss it.

The School Committee Meeting scheduled for this Thursday, June 11th, has been cancelled.

Election Coverage Mon & Tues

If you missed any of our 2009 Greenfield election coverage so far, don't fret! From 12AM to 12PM on Monday, June 8th we will be re-running almost all of the debates & interviews that were taped this political season in addition to some of our regular Monday programming. Then tune in on Tuesday, June 9th, at 8PM for our annual election results show hosted by Joe Gochinski (producer & host of Western Massachusetts Democrat). Haven't had enough of local politics? The election results show will be re-broadcast on Wednesday, June 10th, at 11AM. In addition, Susan Laing's new show "Think Out Loud---Biomass" will re-air on Tuesday at 5PM, "Biomass or Buy-a-mess" will re-air on Wednesday at 12AM, and the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee's "Biomass 101" will be re-airing soon. Enjoy!