by John Osborn ·
Friday, September 27, 2024
Harvard’s decades-old community access TV department has a new name and logo. Click on the link to the cable committee’s website and it’s impossible to miss: “We’ve rebranded to better represent the ways we serve the community,” the site declares. “We are now The Harvard Media Cooperative.”
“We’ve changed our stars, but not our stripes,” Community Cable Access Committee Chair Robert Curran told the Press in a recent interview. The rebranding hasn’t changed what the department offers, he said, “but the work of Harvard Cable TV hasn’t gotten the organization the kind of attention we hope the name change will encourage.”
Replacing the words “cable TV” with “media” in the group’s name, for example, recognizes the increased diversity of programs and channels now available through HMC. These include recordings of public meetings and locally produced programs by the Council on Aging, the schools, or others that can be viewed not only on the three Spectrum cable channels reserved for Harvard’s community access TV (Channels 191, 192, and 194) but also on HMC’s YouTube and Vimeo channels.
The organization has mastered live streaming, the broadcasting of live events such as commencement, Town Meeting, and the Fourth of July parade on its digital channels, including Facebook, allowing viewers to tune in on their computers, tablets, and phones. More recently HMC has opened channels on Spotify and Apple where it has launched its first podcast, edited audio recordings of the biweekly meetings of the Select Board, targeting commuters who lack the time to watch the live sessions or recorded videos.
As for the word “cooperative” in HMC’s title, that’s meant to recognize HMC’s partnerships with Spectrum (formerly Charter Communications), and other town departments, especially the Council on Aging and the schools, said Curran. The word is also an invitation, he said, a gesture to other organizations and individuals who might wish to draw on the expertise and equipment of the group for projects of their own.
This openness to community and individual collaborations is not new, said station manager Brittany Blaney. HCM staff members, for example, are helping the schools create a video to explain the free lunch program to kids and their parents. Before the school year started, HCM helped create videos on recess rules, cafeteria procedures, and other topics to be shown to Hildreth Elementary School students.
HCM’s equipment has always been available for use outside the studio. The organization has loaned lights to the organizers of Bloom ’N Art, microphones to the Harvard Historical Society, and cameras and tripods to Fivesparks and other organizations.
And HMC’s studio in the basement of Bromfield School is outfitted with a “green screen” and all the equipment a local producer needs to host a show. Station operator Will Hopper teaches a one-semester video production course there and uses the space for meetings of the Bromfield media club that he advises.
More recently, HMC has added closed captioning to all of its broadcasts. And there’s even a newsletter for HMC fans wishing to stay current on the station’s offerings compiled by Hopper and published monthly.
Many of the group’s skills with digital media were acquired during the pandemic during which in-person meetings were banned, but towns were required to provide remote access.
Prior to the COVID emergency, Harvard cable TV typically recorded four or five board meetings a month. “That was a lot,” recalled Blaney. “It was all we could do, really.” But once the town decided to host committee and board meetings on Zoom, she realized every meeting could be recorded digitally, edited, and made available to the public not only on cable but over the internet via YouTube and Vimeo channels.
“It was a huge increase, from four or five recordings a month to 50 or 60,” Blaney said. It shifted how HCTV operated. Staff didn’t have to be present in a specific place such as upper Town Hall at a specific time to record the meetings, “but it was a lot of work just getting [recordings of] all those meetings and posting them online. It was a lot of work, but it was OK, because nothing else was going on.”
Blaney said problems arose as the pandemic retreated and in-person events started back up. “Definitely, there was no indication that people wanted to go back to the old way. They still wanted all the board and committee meetings. But then, regular, normal stuff started happening, programs at the library and graduation and Fourth of July parade.” There was an expectation, she said, that HCTV should cover those community events and broadcast them on all of its channels.
The 2020 commencement ceremonies were a pivotal event; Blaney remembers, an early test of the group’s mastery of live streaming, a more complex undertaking than a live TV broadcast. Attendance at the event was restricted and knowing that many family members and friends of the graduates would be tuning in was stressful. Blaney had little prior experience with the technology, but livestreaming quickly became so commonplace after the event that now “it’s nothing,” she said. “That’s one of the good things that came out of COVID.”
Alex Senykoff interviews Ellen Sachs Leicher about the Harvard Climate Initiative in the Harvard Media Cooperative’s studio. (Courtesy photo)
In the years since 2020, HMC has continued to expand its programming. Thanks to a $35,000 capital request approved by this year’s Annual Town Meeting, the group now has a second base of operations—cameras, microphones, and editing equipment—in the new senior center on Lancaster County Road. Not only has the facility saved HMC thousands of dollars per year in labor expenses, but it has allowed the Council on Aging to expand the number and variety of programs that it produces, both live and for rebroadcast. These are available not only to Spectrum subscribers on cable TV but also over the internet via Vimeo, and YouTube. “The COA now accounts for 40% of the department’s programming,” Blaney told the Press.
Installing recording equipment at the senior center was an effort to make the recording of COA’s programs more affordable. Previously, Blaney said, covering a COA event required Hopper to gather equipment at HMC’s Bromfield studio, drive to the Harvard Senior Center, unpack the equipment, set it up, record the event, pack up, head back to the studio and unpack. Now, Blaney said, Hopper just drives to the senior center, powers on the equipment, records it, and then goes home. The savings are estimated to be $125 per event. In July the Select Board chose the senior center over upper Town Hall for its live interviews of the three town administrator finalists.
Beyond its regular programming, HCM wants to be seen as a community resource. “We’re just like any other town department,” said Blaney. “We’re here to serve the town and sometimes that comes in the form of our recording town meetings or community events or teaching the kids at the schools. And sometimes it’s loaning out equipment or training local people how to operate it.”
One of the newest opportunities for collaboration is podcasting. Last summer, HMC purchased the microphones and editing tools needed to create podcasts, an audio format that has gained popularity with commuters because it can be downloaded and played on phones and car radios. Just last month HMC added Spotify and Apple podcast channels to its mix of media outlets to distribute its very first product, uncommented audio recordings of Select Board meetings.
The studio also supports video blogging, known as vlogging, a popular tool of “influencers” seeking to build audiences on YouTube or TikTok. HCM committee Chair Curran believes such video production skills are becoming as important in business as the use of PowerPoint was a generation ago. What HCM offers, he said, is equipment and expertise.
“I would love it—it would be so amazing—if somebody in town wanted to do a podcast about the Select Board,” Blaney told the Press. If they were willing to do the preproduction and the planning, the studio could produce and distribute it. We can help them record it and get it up on our podcast channel.”
“We want to teach people to fish, rather than giving them the fish,” Curran said in an earlier interview. But the degree to which HMC supports a project will continue to depend on the project’s benefit to the community. When it comes to personal projects, “We’re not going to host a podcast, but we’re going to teach people how to do a podcast. We’re going to teach them the technicalities, so that they can go off and do it themselves,” he said.
If the response to this reasserted openness is overwhelming, “that’s a problem we’d like to have,” Curran said. For example, if many people came to HMC looking for help, say, with video recording and editing on iPhones, “then maybe we create a class. If so many people come in wanting to do a bunch of different things, maybe we create office hours when we’re open to the public.”
For now, said station manager Blaney, the best way to contact HMC staff with an idea or request for help is by email. Messages sent to operations@thehar vardmediacooperative.com go directly to Blaney and Hopper, one of whom will respond. “You can message us through our website as well, and that gets sent to us via email. We do have a phone number, but absolutely, email is the fastest,” she said.”
To view a short video on the rebranding of Harvard Cable TV, go to https://vimeo.com/1009206145.
For a complete listing of the Harvard Media Cooperative’s programs, channels and services go to the organization’s homepage, https://theharvardmediacooperative.com.