Plymouth Community Channel 3
2003 Annual Report
Plymouth Community Channel 3 (PCC3) is the public, educational and government (PEG) access channel for Adelphia Communications’ cable TV subscribers in Plymouth and 9 other area towns. PCC3’s Cablecasting Center is located in Pease Public Library. PCC3 began cablecasting to the community in November 1992. Under the direction of the Plymouth Board of Selectmen, PCC3 depends totally on community volunteers to create and transmit the community's programming. By stipulation of the franchise agreement with Adelphia, PCC3 is non-commercial. In FY’03, the Town raised and appropriated $1,730 for the purchase of a replacement video camcorder and accompanying VCR for the channel.
Bulletin Board
The past 12 months has seen extraordinary change and improvement in the content and appearance of this slide-show facet of PCC3. Volunteers began the year (beginning with December 2002) using our ten-year-old Amiga 500 computer to produce text only slides for the Bulletin Board. In February, the Amiga 500 was retired from regular service. Volunteers then began using a MagicBox Alphagen character generator that had been given to PCC3 in December 2001 by Adelphia Communications. The character generator came with a CD filled with photos and textures that could be inserted onto slides with text information typed around or over the graphics. Despite this improvement, the Alphagen CG's 1990s style technology proved difficult for volunteers to get excited about and learn. Without buying an expensive accessory for the Alphagen, there was no way to insert graphics that would come from local sources. In early summer, Jim and Joanne Koermer approached me about replacing the character generator with a PC running Windows XP and Microsoft PowerPoint and outputting NTSC video. Jim would loan a PC from his place of work, Plymouth State University's meteorology department, and Joanne would volunteer to work on the bulletin board. In early August, the Alphagen was taken out of service and replaced by a PSU PC, PowerPoint, and access to the Internet via cable modem. The Koermer duo has been dynamite. The new bulletin board contains locally scanned graphics, photography of local places, animated graphics from the Internet, and extensive use of announcements submitted from the community.
Video Programming
Over the same period, prerecorded video cablecasts have more than kept pace with previous years. Here are several highlights. Students in PSU's meteorology program produced weekday weather forecasts during spring and fall semesters. Public Access Users submitted programming produced by 4 area churches of their Sunday worship services. A Public Access User submitted Pemi-Baker Home Health and Hospice's locally produced Your Health Matters, a monthly series. In addition to prerecorded programming, a Public Access User from the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce produced two consecutive evenings of live programming. These shows in December 2002 were the Chamber's 9th Annual TV/Radio auction, their major annual fundraiser. Volunteers produced videos of budget hearings, annual meetings, special hearigs, and informational meetings for the Plymouth Board of Selectmen, Plymouth School Board, and Pemi-Baker Regional School Board.
Future Development
2003 marked the 11th year of the channel's operations. In the spring, the PCC3 Planning Committee submitted an interim report to the Board of Selectmen. In the report, the key recommendation was for the Board to implement the provision in the recently signed franchise agreement with Adelphia to raise a franchise fee. The purpose for implementing the fee was compensation for a part-time employee to manage PCC3 and develop it into a regional media service. After several meetings with the Committee and a public hearing, the Board approved a 2% franchise fee to fund the channel. Adelphia began collecting the franchise fee from cable subscribers in November. In 2004 for the first time, the town will have their community media outlet managed and led by a paid staff member.
Volunteers who deserve many thanks are Joanne Koermer, James Koermer, Josef Drexel, John B. Bowen, Jr., Bruce Jorgenson, George Morrill, Peter Adams, students in Professor Eric Hoffman’s meteorology class, members of the PCC3 Planning Committee, and citizens who spoke up for PCC3 at Selectmen's meetings & the public hearing. The trustees, staff, and volunteers of Pease Public Library deserve special praise for all time and resources they contributed to Channel 3. Plymouth Selectmen's Office staff headed by Elizabeth Corrow were extraordinarily helpful. Efforts of Adelphia Communications’ technical crew were very much appreciated.
Submitted by,
Wallace Stuart
Volunteer Access Manager
Plymouth Community Channel 3 Planning Committee
Interim Report
May 13, 2003
The mission of the Committee has been to research and write a strategic plan for the future of Plymouth Community Channel 3. The hoped-for-result of this process continues to be the recreation of the Plymouth Community Cable TV Channel into a regional media entity with a regional institutional home, such as Plymouth Regional High School's Technical Center, Plymouth Regional Senior Center, Pemi Youth Center, Plymouth State College, or the like. The entity's governance would likely be a non-profit corporation.
While the Committee has met most every month over the past year, no strategic plan is in hand. Research by Barry Walker continues on community support for the concept, with no set date for completion of a plan. This process may take several more months of information gathering and writing to reach a conclusion, but the process could take much longer. Indeed, it may never reach a conclusion.
During the time that the strategic planning process continues, we believe some tactical changes are in order for Plymouth Community Channel 3 operations. For over eleven years PCC3's Access Manager, Wally Stuart, has conducted the day-to-day work of the channel almost single handedly. He has requested changes in his responsibilities as volunteer Access Manager for PCC3 and wants the freedom to WORK FEWER HOURS per week for PCC3, both at Pease Public Library and at home. There appear to be two main changes at PCC3 that would give the Acces Manager the personal time he is seeking. The first is to rework -- reduce -- the PEG (Public, Educational, and Governmental) access mission of PCC3, while the second would keep PCC3's mission undiminished through paid staffing. Ideally, PCC3 would hire a staff member in the near term, the Access Manager would rduce his responsibilities and hours, and PCC3 would progress with a mission and services at least as strong as currently offered. Franchise Fee funding of the staff position will not happen in the next month or so, but could be possible within a year's time. While waiting for funding for a paid position to materialize, PCC3 could reduce its mission now to free the Access Manager of some responsibility, which would permit him to take off much of the time which he has requested.
What sort of mission reduction now would be least damaging to the future of the channel? What mission reduction would most readily reduce the time the Access Manager spends working on PCC3 tasks?
At the present time, the Access Manager does about 98% of the work of maintaining of the Community Bulletin Board. PROPOSED REDUCTION: Have the Access Manager stop adding, updating, and removing Community Bulletin Board announcements submitted by community members and institutions. New volunteers would be welcome to receive training and keep the Community Bulletin Board up to date. If volunteers do not come, learn, and work, then as a consequence announcements will not get on the air, period. The easy part of this change has already taken place. Since January, the Access Manager has all but quit adding announcements received from members of the public, schools/college, and governments. More of a concern are announcements of video programming. As it now stands, submitters of the video programs don't think that they should have to come in and learn a computer just to get announcements run on TV. The Access Manager (and perhaps others) will immediately conduct a series of training sessions for people who want their Community Bulletin Board announcements to run. Even though this training will be a time consuming process initially for everyone (and later for other volunteers), by mid-summer most of the training should have ended... we can hope. This change of responsibility should be announced publicly so that the community can more fully appreciate the access center's foundation on grass roots participation and can assume some burden of obligation and ownership for its future successes and failures. We request help from the Selectmen's office in communicating this change to parties most affected.
We propose the Board of Selectmen implement the section of the franchise agreement with Adelphia Communications, which provides for the collection of a monthly franchise fee from the 1,500 or so cable TV subscribers in the Town. At the end of the year, Adelphia would turn over accumulated fees to the Board of Selectmen, who, in turn, would hire a part-time employee to manage and conduct the cable access program operations. If a requested 1.5% franchise fee were to be implemented by Adelphia, income to the Town from this source could approach $15,000, which would fund the employee's part-time pay. Once the employee is hired, besides providing the channel leadership and management, this person would help the cadre of volunteers who maintain the Community Bulletin Board by filling in at the computer when there are gaps in the volunteer coverage.
We are available to discuss this report. Please let us know whether we can be of further assistance to the Board.
Kenneth Bergstrom
John B. Bowen, Jr.
Peter Cofran
Eric Hoffman
Tim Korade
Claire E. Moorhead
George Morrill
Martha Morrill
Wallace Stuart
Barry W. Walker