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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAOC Minutes 01-15-20081 Karen Billings From:E Wayles Browne [ewb2@cornell.edu] Sent:Friday, February 22, 2008 9:18 PM To:Karen Billings; mjneff@cayuga-heights.ny.us; Cayuga Heights Clerk; Cayuga Heights Mayor; Julie Holcomb; council@cityofithaca.org; Doheny, Thomas; Stefanelli, Lauren Cc:Jennifer Dotson; Wies van Leuken; Wies van Leuken; Will Burbank; Trish O'Rourke; Wayles Browne Subject:Cable TV Access Oversight Committee, approved minutes of Jan. 15 '08 meeting; please circulate as appropriate Cable Access Oversight Committee minutes (draft, comments welcome) The Committee (AOC) met at Ithaca Town Hall on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008, at 5 pm. Present: AOC members Will Burbank, Wayles Browne, Jennifer Dotson, Wies van Leuken; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. 0. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. 1. Election of Officers. Will Burbank was re-elected as chair for one year; we agreed that thereafter the chair should be a person from the City of Ithaca. Jennifer Dotson was elected as vice-chair. Wayles Browne was re-elected as secretary. 2. Schedule of meetings in 2008: the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Tentative time: 4:30 pm. 3. The minutes of the Dec. 11, 2007 meeting were approved without change. 4. Reports by members. W. van Leuken: The City Clerk was going to research city--cable co. relations in other cities that have public/educational/government access (PEG) studios; not final yet. J. Dotson: Asst. City Attorney Patricia Dunn and I met with Ithaca Time Warner Cable (TWC) manager Thomas Doheny and received some financial figures from him concerning the PEG studio. We also discussed the size of the access fees that are paid by TV program producers who use the studio yet are not from one of the municipalities (City of Ithaca, Town of Ithaca, Village of Cayuga Heights) that support it; the benefits that public access offers the community; the use of the studio manager's time, and the possibilities for keeping the PEG studio open longer hours. T. Doheny suggested we meet with studio manager Stefanelli directly and observe how she uses her time. Also discussed between Dunn and Doheny: the ca. $133,000 remaining from the pre-2003 franchise. City staff has several proposals for using part of these funds: 1) a point-to-point video system for Fire Department training, scrambled for confidentiality; perhaps could be extended even beyond the city's i-net cable range, for use in emergencies. 2) a studio at GIAC for TV-program production, or a library of portable equipment housed at GIAC, so that GIAC could produce some shows of its own. 3) upgrading City Hall's connection to the i-net, so as to use the new fiber optic lines rather than the old coax cable. 4) a DVR (digital video recorder) system for City Hall, to record meetings in digital form for archiving. Mayor Peterson, Dotson, Dunn, probably the Comptroller, and city IT person Duane Twardokus will meet once again Jan. 18 with Ithaca TWC manager Doheny and Syracuse TWC division manager Mary Cotter. 5. Burbank asks about grants of equipment to schools for TV production. Stefanelli: We asked for requests from schools last year. At present no school seems to have an urgent need. At many schools not much video work is being done at present, due to retirements and less-experienced teachers coming in. We helped Cornell Cooperative 2 Extension with equipment in 2007 (rather than waiting for 2008). I will now ask schools to give us requests for the year 2009; we'll need replies by the March 2008 meeting. Van Leuken suggests inviting school teachers to attend the March meeting; Stefanelli agrees. Burbank: can we encourage teachers in other ways too? Stefanelli recalls that Ithaca College has supplied interns to help schools with video, particularly to Boynton Middle School. There is a new video teacher at IC who may not be familiar with previous practice; she will suggest this use of interns to him. Jeff Spence, who taught English and video production at Ithaca High School, used to give popular summer trainings for students and teachers; but he is now retired. IC holds an "ed-tech" (educational technology) fair in mid-March and invites suppliers of equipment and prospective employers; maybe we could be represented at the fair and hold a meeting of Ithaca-area teachers to encourage their interest in video production. 6. Studio Manager's report: Stefanelli will send the text (attached below). In brief: the call-in phone line and various other equipment including a linear editor have been repaired; the new computers running Premiere editing software are now able to make DVDs as they should. The producer whose "adult" programming required late-night studio hours is now taking a hiatus from programming, so that the studio can now be open the same hours every day from Monday through Thursday, 5:30 to 9:30. 7. Dotson asks about the possibility of using some of the "old" money for webcasting. Stefanelli: Webcasting (storing programs so they are available on demand) requires a lot of server space; this is not considered a capital investment. Dotson distributed the figures provided by TWC on revenues. 8. Next meeting: Feb. 12, 4:30 (to be confirmed). 9. Adjourned about 6:30 pm. Access Coordinator Report to AOC January 2008 • Equipment All production areas are in operation. Some very good progress has been made on equipment problems noted last month: Our call-in line has been replaced and is now back on line. A Time Base Corrector has been repaired and reinstalled, bringing our second linear editor back on line. A computer engineer from Syracuse repaired a drive assignment problem that now enables DVD recording on all 3 Premiere computers. The 2 DVD recorders arrived and have been installed. It is now possible for studio producers to record in the studio to DVD as well as DV, SVHS and VHS. The other DVD recorder has been installed in a dub system that allows dubbing from DVD, SVHS or VHS, and PEG channels to DVD, and DVD or PEG channels to SVHS/VHS. • Facility: A PEGASYS orientation is scheduled for January 23, a studio class for January 30th, and a portable class is scheduled to start February 7. Hours to the public this season are 5:30-9:30pm Monday – Thursday. The 2008 PEGASYS Awards have been announced. Entry deadline is Jan. 25. . A producer, Michael Angley, reported being attacked in our parking lot on January 7th at about 9pm, after loading a camcorder into the back of his vehicle. The police are investigating, and I have been warning all producers to take extra precautions at night. • Notable Public Access Productions John Coleman videotaped the event celebrating the life of former mayor Ben Nichols. Don Bazley produced musician Mary Lorson’s performance at the State Theater. Jurden Alexander’s “Homemade Jams” features headliners for the upcoming “Light in Winter” festival. Enrique Caicedo produced a 3 hour program featuring an all-star local fundraiser. New producer Natasha Tall, did a program of readings of her original stories. Tony Ingraham produced a double edition of “Nature Nearby” featuring the history and 3 cultural legacy of the brand new Tutelo Park in the Town of Ithaca. Alison Rawlins produced a 30-minute documentary on recycling efforts in Ithaca. Dan Burgevin produced “Rubba Wrongway” delivering a political weather report. Barbara Smith and Ben Curtis produced 2 episodes of “Finger Lakes Forum” featuring a “lost boy,” a former child soldier from the Sudan describing his experience. Institutional Access • School Board: ICSD school board has purchased and installed a 4th camera, and bi-weekly meetings have been cablecast regularly. • City: I met with Duane Twardokus [info. Tech] and Julie Holcomb [clerk] on 1/14 to help brainstorm how the City could use PEG and INET resources more fully. Channel webcasting, personnel training and emergency communications were priorities.