Local cable board begins work

Local access television in Hamilton and Wenham is on its way to becoming a reality as the community takes over the operation reins from the cable companies.

The first annual meeting of the Hamilton-Wenham Community Access and Media, Inc. met with the both town Boards of Selectmen last week. The organization, more familiarly known as CATV or the Cable Board locally, has been establishing itself as a non-profit since its incorporation last year and setting up cable studios with seed money from Verizon and Comcast, which are no longer providing local access programming services.

Board President Bob Popadic presented the report of the board for this first year of operation, which described predominantly transitional and administrative activities in support of setting up studios, planning for programming, developing financial plans and projections, and writing and implementing policy documents.

Of interest to the community, the board approved installation of a fiber optics network to support the needs of the corporation and the towns, adding robotic cameras at the two town halls and the Buker School (the set for the Wenham Town Hall will be installed when the building is ready for the installation), and started broadcasting on Comcast Channel 22 as well as Channel 10. Other network installations are planned for the Hamilton-Wenham Library, the Cutler and Winthrop Schools, and the Regional High School.

According to the annual report, the board sees the coming year as a “shift in emphasis away from organizational and hardware/network issues towards programming, training, community involvement, and outreach.”

Funding from Comcast and Verizon for equipment ends in 2008, so the hardware portions of the cable system need to be in place by then. Members of the board plan to interview the community, the producers, and the town entities, such as municipal government, schools, community associations and non-profits, to identify needs for programming.

Popadic thanked officials from both towns, particularly Town Administrators Jeff Chelgren and Candace Wheeler, for their help over the past year.

Executive Director Bill Melville presented the budget for calendar year 2007, approximately $90,000 with projections, based on estimates of annual revenue coming from Comcast and Verizon through 2015 and 2014, respectively.

The one in-place studio, located at the high school as part of the goal of educational usage, is open in the evenings from 5-9 p.m. for use by the community and will be staffed. Members of the community can develop their own programming, use the studio for presentations of forums, and borrow equipment for off-site usage, after receiving training.

Board members and staff are planning an Open House to introduce the studio, surveys to identify community interests, as more programs are needed to fill two channels, and training sessions for using the video equipment.

According to Melville, one area people want to see on television is local sports. The cost per athletic event includes stipends for two people per event and the cost of recording and archiving media for the events. Other live recording is scheduled for town and board meetings, school events, and community events, such as the Two-Town Festival and Wenham Day. Other costs in the budget include insurance, video expansion equipment to allow video-on-demand, and buying or renting packaged programming. Melville said he would like to see a cadre of trained people available to cover identified events, including high school students and adults from the communities.

Both Boards of Selectmen unanimously accepted the budget and also approved the transfer of assets — money from Verizon and Comcast, which the towns have been holding until the cable non-profit and its board were active — from the town accounts to the cable non-profit. In the future, the selectmen will have voting representatives at the cable board meetings to avoid the necessity of future joint selectmen and cable board meetings.

At the meeting last week, a new Board of Directors was established. Back in 2006, the joint Boards of Selectmen of Wenham and Hamilton appointed members, which at the time, were for one-, two- or three-year terms. Both holders of the one-year terms, Clerk Bill Nichols of Wenham and Vice President Kimberley Jaeger of Hamilton, were reappointed to three-year terms.

The remaining board members include President Robert Popadic and Michael Lucy of Wenham; Leigh Keyser and Robert McKean of Hamilton; and joint appointee Treasurer Phil Conrad. Executive Director William Melville will run the current community studio located at the Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. The Boards of Selectmen voted unanimously to re-appoint the representatives from their respective towns.