8984-R2_NewGloucester_2023-2024_AnnualReport_Web

ANNUAL REPORT Cable Television Committee

The Committee continued its basic mission to record, stream and broadcast public Meeting House meetings, making such recordings available as video-on-demand on the Internet at https://cloud.castus.tv/vod/ngtv, in addition to “cablecasting” on channels 3 and 1302. Committee members, as individuals, recorded public access programming: NG Historical Society presentations and Semiquincentennial events. The upgraded Meeting House video and audio systems operated reliably, although with minor operational annoyances. They are ready to feed high definition video to the cable operator (Spectrum) whenever the related legal and franchise-agreement issues are resolved. In the meantime, the TV signal is converted to letter-boxed standard definition. Although the Committee met only once, to finalize the FY2025 budget, its members, Select Board liaison and video operator were given a demonstration, by GCTV station manager Kyle Hadyniak, of Gray’s support of hybrid meetings. While NGTV is equipped for hybrid meetings, the capability remained to be demonstrated. Staffing of video operators for Meeting House meeting coverage continued to be provided by a part-time employee with hours based on need, supported by a volunteer who maintains the video server recording and playback, as well as being responsible for all technical matters. Weekend (Fri.-Sun.) “public access” programming consisted of recorded meetings and forums broadcast soon after their occurrence, as well as presentations made to the Historical Society, starting at 7:00 am/pm. In support of the Capital Improvement Plan and Budgeting processes, those meetings were rebroadcast on weekends at 2:00 pm soon after they occurred. DVDs of the Meeting House meetings until December 15, 2022 are retained at the Town Office. Meetings starting October 1, 2022 and Zoom meetings from the Covid-19 period are preserved on hard drives. Meetings from 2018-on are available for upload to Castus Cloud for viewing, if not already there, upon request to the Town Office or by email to cabletv@newgloucester.com. The Committee encourages those desiring greater communication within our town to help us expand our utilization of the cable channel and streaming/video-on demand web site. Respectfully submitted,

Richard Erwin, Chair Cable TV Committee

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