We are about to building a proposal to create a new media center with the local Business Association and the Cultural Committee, and am looking for any proof of economic impact other media centers may have for their towns.
Has such a study been done for your station in your town, and if so, is that something that could be shared with us?
On November 7, 2011, Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray and Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez announced the creation of a new $4 million Community Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant program to incentivize and support innovative regionalization and other cost savings initiatives that will change the way local governments do business to maintain service delivery and stretch every tax payer dollar as far as possible.
Eligible applicants include: Municipalities, regional schools, school districts considering forming a regional school district or regionalizing services, and regional planning agencies and councils of government. Regional agencies and councils of governments may also serve as the administrative or fiscal agent on behalf of municipalities. Applicants will be required to submit a project timeline and detailed budget for their proposal. Additionally, applicants must propose a method to measure and evaluate both the success of implementing the proposed project and the success of the initiative or reform going forward once implemented.
Hello All- I am wondering: How many of you are connected to Municipalities and/or regional school districts?
I believe this grant may serve public access centers in many fronts in the future including funding and good will with municipalites.... Applying for this grant may be too late, but I am sure there will be others.
If anyone is interested in having an open brainstorm discussion on regionalization of any access/media services please call me and lets set up a discussion. (With MBI coming to Western Mass this may be more feasible)
Hatfield Community TV is in the process of updating it's facilities. We have a lot of older equipment that is available to anyone who would like to haul it away. If you don't take it, it will be made available to the citizens of Hatfield, and what remains will be disposed of.
Here is a partial list of what is available:
4- Panasonic AG 456 SVHS full sized cameras with cases and power supplies-low hours, but no battteries
6- Apple IIe color composite monitors: they all work
3-Sony MV-1351 color monitors: all work well
3-Panasonic AG-1980 editing SVHS VCRs
1- Panasonic AG DS 840 SVHS editing VCR
2- Panasonic AG DS 550 SVHS editing VCR
Various Radio Shack microphones
A Sony digital stereo receiver
Maganavox 5 disc CD changer
Sony FXE-100 A/B Roll Editor, switcher, audio mixer
And a bunch of other stuff..
Deadline to claim any of it will be Saturday, November 19, 2011
email at HCTV@townofhatfield.org
or call Chip Gorra
860-460-2631 cell
413-726-2922 office.
Montague Community Cable, Inc., the 501(c)(3) non-profit that owns and staffs MCTV channel 17 in Montague, MA, is seeking two professional positions.
Outreach and Communications Coordinator: $15/hr @ 10hrs - 20hrs per week. Major duties include contacting local agencies and residents and creating organizational and production partnerships; creating underwriting and sponsorship solicitations; writing the newsletter and all public communications; writing the quarterly and annual report narratives. Applicant should have a flair for writing, a passion and understanding of the place public access has in Montague, and a gregarious nature, at ease in front of an audience. Video skills would be a definite plus but are not required.
Technical Coordinator: $20/hr @ 10hrs - 15hrs per week. Major duties include maintaining the digital broadcast rack; researching and implementing emerging technologies; providing community training in editing, cameras, field production, etc.; maintaining and inventory all equipment. Applicant must have solid video technical skills and work well with the public, with good communication skills and a positive attitude in an office-like environment.
MCTV is also seeking interns to assist in video editing, titling and field production. Contact us for more information.
Applicants should mail resumes to MCTV, 34 Second Street, Turners Falls, MA, 01376, or send by email to: Jobs [at] MontagueTV [dot] org. No phone calls, please.
Hi everyone.
Just wanted to remind people that there are 2 events coming to the area!
Amherst Media is hosting the MassAccess Fall Mini Conference on Fri, Oct 14 from 9:30am to 2pm in Amherst
and
The Alliance For Community Media North East is holding its Fall Conference and Video Festival in Springfield on Saturday, November 12 at City Place Hotel and the Basketball hall of Fame. (Wilbraham Public Access is sponsoring it locally)
This is a great opportunity for people to meet up in western mass, see what these two organizations can do to help you and see what other local western mass area access/media centers are doing.
I hope you are able to make one or both of these.
Caroline
WPA
Montague Community TV is reviewing our staff job positions and descriptions and we'd love it if we could see what you're all doing. If you could either copy and paste to here, or send me a private message through the website (click on my name), or by email reply, that would be stupendous.
I am pasting a draft letter to Verizon here below. This letter is a very simplified version of the talking points I supplied last week. As an example, NCTV will be sending this out to membership, to local organizations with which we have worked, and to local legislators.
I'm again providing links to those legislators below.
Here is the draft letter. PLEASE NOTE, there sections of the letter you need to edit on your own.
Thanks,
Al
_______________________________________
(insert Senator or Rep. name here)
State House
Room (insert Room number here)
Boston, MA 02133
(Date)
Dear Senator (or Rep. name)
I am writing to address Massachusetts Senate Bill 1687. The Bill is currently scheduled for a hearing at the Statehouse on Wednesday, May 18th.
I oppose this bill. It could cripple the ability of our community to effectively support and sustain our local cable television studio.
(insert Personal story here-or delete this section)
There currently exists in Massachusetts a legal structure – the Massachusetts Cable Act (M.G.L.166A)- that has allowed, and continues to allow, successful and effective negotiations between communities and cable providers. This law works as it currently exists and it accomplishes its purpose. It provides support that allows for the existence of these vital community resources.
The proposed Senate Bill 1687 only serves to undermine that support. Imposing a 90-day time frame on cable license negotiations, makes this Bill unrealistic and weakens the ability of communities to identify and properly ascertain their telecommunication needs. Verizon has had no difficulty in acquiring cable licenses in the communities they have identified as desirable in Massachusetts, having successfully negotiated over 110 licenses in this state. This bill does not encourage competition; it handicaps the local negotiating position and weakens the community rights the Cable Act is intended to protect.
I urge you strongly to oppose Massachusetts Senate Bill 1687.
Hi Folks, the town of Montague is starting re-franchising negotiations with Comcast. Is anyone out there starting or in the middle of negotiations? If so could you share what you've learned with us?
You can contact us off list at info@montaguetv.org.
Thanks in advance.
Robin Mide
MCTV
WPA did a "Visioning" for the station where we polled other stations in communities our own size and held public meetings where we invited people from the community who belonged to several different organizations, businesses and schools and polled our station members. We used a contractor to work with us.
The town would like us to do this again but use a college to redo this survey. Has anyone done this at their station and who did you use?
For those of us who have a need or interest in captioning our programming, this article from Broadcast News is about coming regulations re new Federal captioning requirements; probably won't affect Public Access , EXCEPT as regards internet video (for those of us who stream our programming, these MAY apply).
See links at the bottom of the article to captioning resources (software, hardware ?)
Yes, we are busy, and I'd only expand that to note that knowing the group, we are busy doing what we're supposed to be doing, which is serving our respective communities first. What that means for me in East Longmeadow is very different for Ali n Northampton. But I could not have brought to this community the expansion of this facility without all the support from the rest of you. There's a lot of stuff I want to do here that we're not doing, and a lot of stuff, especially integrating with the school students, that I think is worth talking about. I like knowing we have the means here to have these conversations, The fact that I'm not doing it
is like the fact that Caroline and I have been trying to swap a DVD for about 6 weeks, and haven't done it yet.
It is used little, but it is a place for people to come to... It is also summertime which makes people scarce.
Can I post a survey monkey survey link here for our membership? It may get a few more people to come and we can post the results here and it may help to draw users.
Opportunity for Community Media Volunteers to be Extras
Local filmmaker Masseo Davis has put out a call for 300 extras for his upcoming film. This is a great chance for anyone located in Western Mass who has an interest in fimmaking to take part and help out local filmmaking.
This is a SAG production and so can be used towards card hours.
Athol-Orange Community Television (AOTV)
seeks a part-time TV Production Coordinator
AOTV is in search of an energetic, reliable and hardworking individual to join our team. The ideal candidate must be detail oriented and enjoy working with the public.
Incorporated in 1993, AOTV is a non-profit, non-commercial public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access television facility for the towns of Athol and Orange, Massachusetts. AOTV’s day-to-day operations are managed by the Executive Director and two part-time staff people while a nine member Board of Directors govern the Corporation.
AOTV’s modern facility is located in Athol, Massachusetts. Athol and Orange are part of the beautiful nine town region called North Quabbin. The population of the towns are approximately 18,000 of which over 5,200 households subscribe to cable service provided by Time Warner.
Compensation / Benefits
Salary commensurate with experience
Vacation and sick leave
Personal days
Paid holidays
Interested candidates please submit:
Cover letter stating how your knowledge and experience corresponds to the posted position
Resume
List of three professional references with contact information
Mass Access Conference April 30th at GCTV Greenfield
Everyone,
In case you are not a member of Mass Access I am forwarding this to the Western Mass Directors list.
This conference will be occurring April 30th at GCTV in Greenfield, MA.
It would be fantastic if Western Mass could rally in attendance for this event.
Mass Access is reaching out to Western Mass here and it is expected that attendance will be more sluggish from the eastern part of the state due to distance.
If we'd like to see more events, more support, and represent Western Mass' needs and importance in this organization, this is an opportunity to do so.
This past week the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable held investigatory hearings regarding Verizon at the City Council Chambers in Northampton. NCTV was on hand to record two full days of the hearings. The first two parts (Day 1) are now available online at NCTV Online at www.northamptontv.org In addition, we plan on uploading the coverage to the My Mass TV server - part of Mass Access, shortly.
Analog to MPEG2 recording for your studio and external drop feeds
I have figured out a pretty exciting means to take the output of your analog or SD-SDI studio AND any remote location drops that you have. The process is reasonably priced and easy to use. it involves an analog to MPEG2 recording device that contains a 1 TB hard drive and an external matrix switcher. The workflow will allow the user to record their analog source to MPEG2, which is the format used in ALL of the current crop of digital playback servers (Leightronics, TelVue, MaestroVision and Tightrope) and will allow the user to control their recording process from any internet-capable computer or smart-phone. This is NOT a one box solution, but one that I have developed using components already on the market.
This system is the answer for many PEG stations who currently have to two or three-step their productions before they can get them into their playback servers. The beauty of the system is that it produces DVD quality recordings that can be routed directly to your playback server via drag-and-drop from any computer, PC or MAC, on your network. The system is also NLE friendly, so, if your NLE can import and render MPEG2 files, you can move the recorded program directly to your NLE for editing, or route it to your playback server for immediate playback.
The system has advanced scheduling software that will allow immediate one-button recording if you desire, or will schedule recordings from whatever source that you choose up to one year in advance. The recorder software also allows editing stop and start times to trim early start times, and late program endings. Because the system can be remotely controlled via an internet browser, the operator can choose their start times on the fly and can also extend a programmed recording if a live program runs long, or end it early manually if so desired.
In addition to simply recording in-studio productions, the system can also easily record any location-drop production that is routed through your playback chain, so you can record public meetings, school productions, satellite feeds or any other programs that are routed through your facility. Because the user interface is an internet- accessible web page, it can be remotely controlled and scheduled by any computer or smart-phone from any location that has internet access.
If anyone is interested in learning more about this process, please let me know, and I will be happy to explain it in detail to you.
The Massachusetts Broadband Institute has joined with 123 communities in western mass to apply for broadband money in round 2 of the federal stimulous grants . <http://www.massbroad...ts/032510eblast.html> (Cut & paste link)
We have finalized the arrangements for the trip on March 12, to the Camera Company Broadcast Expo.
The bus will leave at 7:30AM from the overflow lot of the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside. We will make one comfort stop along the way, and we expect to arrive by 9:30AM
The Bus will leave the Holiday Inn in Dedham at 4PM, and should arrive back at the mall by 6:15PM
If you can get me a head count by Wednesday, that will be an enormous help: we will also have other non-PEG producers going, and I expect between 20 and 25 people total.
I am forwarding Information in case you may not have seen it.
The Open Media Foundation invites Public Access partners to join us in
applying for a Second-Round BTOP Sustainable Broadband Adoption
proposal. With the deadline for the second and final round of BTOP
grants approaching on March 15th, OMF was disappointed to learn just
last week that, despite getting past the Due-Diligence phase of the
first round, our proposal was not selected for funding. While the
late rejection has left us with a short window of opportunity to
re-apply, the process has been very informative and educational in
revising the proposal for a second try.
The vision of the project involves updating Public Access TV stations
into integrated on-line institutions that serve as a gateway for
disadvantaged communities to begin creating multimedia content for the
web and encouraging sustainable broadband adoption among communities
with historically low broadband use. Participating stations will
receive support in implementing the Open Media Project tools which,
among other things, automate the process of posting all video content
on-line. The Open Media Foundation will provide the development,
integration, and if necessary, equipment required to implement the
features of the Open Media Project (as outlined at http://openmediaproject.org/features)
Participating Stations will be asked to support early adopters in
their local "disconnected communities" (neighborhoods with low
broadband penetration rates) to produce content that conveys the
relevance of broadband in their lives. Free Speech TV will produce a
national TV series for both DishNetwork and DirecTV featuring samples
from the participating stations. As with our first round application,
we also plan to partner with the ACM to support a full-time staff
evaluation expert, documenting best-practices in sustainable broadband
adoption among member stations and developing a knowledge-base with
search-able content on a wide range of related issues.
Because the window is so tight, interested parties have only one-week
to complete the new application form at openmediaproject.org Keep in
mind that completion of the application, and participation in the
proposal does not guarantee funding, nor does it legally bind your
station to any agreement. The application is required to be
considered for participation in the grant, but it is not until the
grant is awarded and a subsequent contract is signed by your ED and
Board that your organization would be legally bound to any agreements.
Hi Everyone,
My part-time guy and I would love to take advantage of the shuttle that Camera Company is offering. As far as where we are leaving from, it doesn't really matter to me. I supposed wherever the shuttle wants to pick us up is fine. Also, I would assume, because it takes at least 2 hours to get there, that we should be leaving around 7 am.
Is anyone signing up for any of the workshops? They are pretty inexpensive.
The meeting scheduled in March has been moved to March 12 at the Camera Company Trade Show in Dedham, MA. It seems that the majority of email respondents indicated this was their preference - many were going anyway.
There will be vendors, food, and a presentation by Ludlow on their brand new $750,000 facility! It should be very interesting - especially for anyone looking at a build out.
The Camera Company has booked a room for us from 9am-11am (poolside) to do with as we wish. We can have a breakfast meeting of this Western Mass group if that's the desire. Bill August, a PEG attorney who many CAB boards have used to negotiate their contracts, has offered to meet with us and discuss whatever concerns we may have - the CAP act or anything else.
In addition, the Camera Company is willing to book a free charter back and forth to the show from a WMass location.
In the interest of answering these offers, can everyone please let me know the following.
Would you be interested in such a shuttle? If so, how many staff? What are your preferences for time to leave, come back and location? Please respond here or the email sent out alongside this so we can get some movement.
Thanks Al great info.... I went to the Mass Broadband Institute Meeting at Northampton HS last Wed and it was good. The new MBI Director is much more positive and willing to discuss things. They are going for Federal Money in the next round.
There was a meeting of the Western Mass Community Fiber Network Organizing Committee on Sat, Feb 6 at the JFK Middle School - Northampton - where it was proposed 44 Western Mass communities move forward with a Fiber to the Home system. David Greenberg (davidgreenberg3@gmail.com) is one of the founding memebers of the Western Mass Community Fiber Network Organizing Committees. Tim nulty of VT who has started some of these FTTH networks was there. You may want to see if your community wants to be involved.
I attended a meeting led by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments today regarding BTOP grants. For those of you unfamiliar with them details are here:
These grants are part of the Stimulus Plan and contain many facets. One of those facets is Sustainable Broadband Adoption. This is essentially making people literate in the use of broadband technology. Sound familiar? This is what PEG stations have been doing for some time now - provide community media resources and information. This is the new day for technology, and it's my belief we should be looking to be involved.
NCTV hopes to present itself as a source for training in these types fo technology and acquire operational funding from the grant for doing so. Are there other centers that are interested? If so, please respond soon, as the deadline for Round 2 of this funding is only five weeks away.
I have set up a gmail account for our group. I have sent all the current people (I have e-mail for) an e-mail. If you want me to change any of your contact information, please let me know.
If you see someone is missing off the list, please forward their information to me or have them contact me.
For those of you not at our last Western Mass Meeting, the new site is set up thanks to Mike Muller of Montague WebWorks. thank you Mike!
Now that we have a site for the Western Mass ED/Staff/Board Access Centers, maybe we should come up with an official name for our group? Any ideas anyone?)
55 Ariadne Rd.
(Jct. U.S. Rte. 1 and 128 (I-95), Exit 15A)
Dedham, Massachusetts 02026
Friday, March 12, 2010 (9-7)
Saturday, March 13, 2010 (10-5)
if there is enough interest, Camera Company will run a free motor-coach from Western MA to the show on Friday, March 12. Lots of vendors, lots of seminars, lots of food, and it's all free!
Come hear speakers from Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Tightrope, TelVue, Leightronics, Apple-Final- Cut as well as a number of prominent videographers
A featured seminar will have the project manager and the architect of the new Ludlow LCTV studio, discussing the construction process and choices made in the project; 1PM-2PM Friday, March 12
If you are interested in attending: bring as many people as you would like: if you want to take advantage of the motor-coach, please give me a head-count no later that March 8, 2010
BTW, I've put a stat-thing on the left-hand side of the website. There are currently 11 members of the website (1 of which may be the generic "admin").
The new director will be there to discuss broadband buildout in Western Mass -
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 (Snow date February 17)
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Northampton High School Auditorium
380 Elm Street, Northampton MA 01060
While there is no charge for attendance, please pre-register before February 1 by sending the contact information of each attendee (name/title/email/phone) and the town/city they will be representing to sharon@westernmaconnect.org.
From: Massachusetts Broadband Institute <broadband@masstech.org>
Date: January 26, 2010 1:52:09 PM EST
Subject: Massachusetts Broadband Institute BTOP Update
Bridging the Digital Divide
FEDERAL STIMULUS FUNDING UPDATE
January 26, 2010
The Massachusetts Broadband Institute has been informed by the U.S. Department of Commerce that the applications of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) and WesternMA Connect are no longer in the running for federal stimulus awards in Round 1 under the BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program). While we are very disappointed by this development, we will work to ensure the Round 2 applications are ultimately approved. Our commitment to broadband connectivity is unwavering, and bringing this vital resource to the unserved and underserved regions of western Massachusetts remains one of our highest economic development priorities.
We recognize that it has been a challenge for the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to implement these new broadband stimulus programs under the Recovery Act quickly. The MBI put forward a strong application detailing opportunities for significant job creation, business growth and educational advancement. We are convinced the MBI made a credible and compelling case when scored against the NTIA’s own criteria. Our commitment to broadband expansion in western Massachusetts remains strong. We are currently pulling fiber-optic cable along 55 miles of I-91, and this work will continue to serve as a critical component of our network in western Massachusetts. With state funds already available under Governor Patrick’s Broadband Act, we are working aggressively to determine how best to move forward in the absence of immediate federal stimulus funding for broadband. While we are unhappy about today’s news, we will make access to affordable, quality broadband a reality for the residents of western Massachusetts.
The next meeting of the Western Massachusetts Executive Directors meeting will take place at the Montague station, 34 second street in Turners Falls.
Date: Friday, March 26
Time: 11 AM
Call 413-863-9200 for info
All PEG Access staff are welcome.
- Wed, Jun 16, 2010, 4:39 P
