Changes have been underway at Harvard Cable TV since summer, with new leadership and a somewhat different staff organization. Brittany Blaney-Anderson came on board as station manager last June, after Anya Zulawnik left to manage Concord’s public-access station. Hristina Tasheva became the full-time studio operator, and Nick Browse has moved from vice chair to chair of the town Community Cable Access Committee. And HCTV has received an infusion of capital from Spectrum (the former Charter Communications), which the committee plans to use to make HCTV’s content more easily accessible.
A financial boost
Under the terms of the 10-year contract renewal with Charter Communications (now Spectrum), HCTV received $90,000 for capital costs in 2015, when the renewal was signed, and was promised another $50,000 for capital improvements this year. That payment arrived as promised several months ago. HCTV also receives quarterly payments of a percentage of Charter/Spectrum’s annual cable TV revenues from Harvard. That percentage has gradually increased from 3.5% to the current 4.5%.
Harvard Cable Television staff: Brittany Blaney-Anderson, station manager (left), and Hristina Tasheva, studio operator. (Photo by Tim Clark)
According to the cable committee’s treasurer, Bill Johnson, the first $90,000 capital payment was used primarily to upgrade recording and broadcasting equipment in upper Town Hall and the HCTV studio. This year’s payment, he wrote in an email, “is targeted for future capital purchases such as studio camera upgrades, workstation upgrades for post-production editing, and upgrades to switching equipment.”
Johnson pointed out that the quarterly checks from Spectrum are likely to decline as more residents “cut the cord,” dropping cable TV. He said the capital funds will “serve as a hedge” against that decline, so that HCTV “can delay for at least the next five years any need for supplemental omnibus funding from taxpayers.”
Both Browse, cable committee chair, and Johnson described plans to upgrade HCTV’s online offerings. Browse said the committee will be upgrading both its website and its video-on-demand (VOD) offerings. The VOD programming through YouTube “had gotten clunky,” Browse said, and the committee expects to move its programming to Vimeo, an alternative to YouTube that he said offers more security and professional features. Johnson said a new HCTV website will use Vimeo to offer streaming access that will be compatible with mobile devices.
New manager takes the helm
Blaney-Anderson comes to HCTV with 12 years’ experience in public access management. She considers Lancaster her hometown, she said in a telephone interview, although her family moved often when she was a child. She has two bachelor’s degrees, one in advertising and one in mass communications from Franklin Pierce College, as well as a master’s degree in media arts from Emerson College. She moved to California and worked for a time at Paramount Pictures but then returned to her Massachusetts roots.
Unlike Zulawnik, who was a full-time town employee, Blaney-Anderson is considered a vendor by Town Hall. She is contracted to work 20 hours a week with the cable committee, mainly on administrative and managerial matters such as budgeting, although she also does some work with students in their classes in the HCTV studio. As an independent contractor, she also manages community access stations in Boylston, Berlin, and Hubbardston.
About a year ago, Blaney-Anderson won some unexpected fame when, through her volunteer work with a cat rescue society, she captured an elusive, longhaired black-and-white cat that had been living for three years in the abandoned buildings of the Westborough State Hospital, which were about to be demolished. According to an account in the Milford Daily News, it took nearly a month of trying different tempting baits before rotisserie chicken finally lured the cat, nicknamed Westie, into a trap. Westie has since been adopted, Blaney-Anderson said.
Local government coverage
Because Blaney-Anderson works only part time for HCTV, much of the day-to-day work is handled by Hristina Tasheva, who runs the HCTV studio in the Bromfield School. When Bromfield and Hildreth Elementary students have media classes or projects, Tasheva assists them with their technical work in the studio.
Tasheva also edits and uploads the recordings of the various town board meetings that HCTV covers and organizes regular shows such as the Senior Spotlight. In a phone conversation, she said HCTV regularly covers meetings of the Select Board, School Committee, and Planning Board. In addition, she tries to arrange coverage for the Finance Committee and sometimes the Zoning Board of Appeals when someone is available to do so. When HCTV is shorthanded, she sometimes covers evening meetings and events herself, although she has a long commute.
Tasheva began working at HCTV as a summer intern while she was earning her degree in cinema and photography from Ithaca College in New York. After graduation she worked part time at the station while Zulawnik was manager. She gradually took on more and more hours and is now a full-time employee.
Both Tasheva and Blaney-Anderson have said they want to make more local events available on HCTV. Because of the recent interest in the issue of hunting, Tasheva said, the station also covered the Deer Management Subcommittee. She consults the posted agendas, looking for meetings that might be controversial or draw a large audience.
Blaney-Anderson said she would like town clubs and organizations to reach out to the community through HCTV’s “bulletin board” that runs on the station’s channels between other programs. The bulletin board could feature slide presentations for town groups, she said. She also suggested that people might film programs themselves and send their recordings to the station. And both women said they try to record any event for which residents request coverage.
“We would like people to connect with HCTV,” Blaney-Anderson said. “We are interested in all things Harvard.”
