Senator Scott Brown at GCTV

Last week Greenfield Mayor William Martin invited Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown to our studio in order to interview the congressman on "Mayor's Memo". Despite the snowstorm, the two men were able to have a wide-ranging discussion about politics in general and issues that impact Greenfield residents specifically. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure to check it out in the "Mayor's Memo" category of our Video on Demand Player at gctv.org.

In other local government news, there has been a slight change in tomorrow night's Greenfield Town Council Meeting schedule. Instead of beginning at 7pm, the council's regular meeting will follow a joint meeting with the Greenfield School Committee. The two bodies are convening together, at 7pm in our studio, to begin the process of submitting statements of interest for renovations of Federal Street School, Newton School, and the Academy of Early Learning. Afterward the council will take up several budget related items, an appropriation of money for the celebration of Greenfield's 200th Anniversary as the county seat, and a Right to Farm ordinance. Remember, in addition to being televised live on Cable Channel 15, these events are open to the public and contain public hearings so feel free to come on down to 393 Main Street and participate in our democracy.

New Year, New Production Contracts

It's that time of year again folks! During the month of January, series producers who stop by to work on their shows will be asked to fill out a new production contract. This will give us your updated contact information and make our record keeping better. If you won't be in the office this month, please email alicia@gctv.org to make alternate arrangements.

The new year also brings new content to GCTV. Be sure to check our Video on Demand Player for the latest episodes of "The Western Mass Democrat" (featuring an in-depth, two-part, interview with John Olver), "Franklin County Matters" ("Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts" with members of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association), "Healthbeat" (information about Primary Care Medicine and Hand Therapy), "Local Bias" (with guest Loren Feinstein), and more.

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.

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)