Who wants to be a local access star?
Grafton Cable TV is holding a facilities tour and open house on Aug. 25 and they’re starting up their fall video classes as well. Here’s the release:
Grafton Community Television and Charter Communications will host an open house and tour of the town’s cable public access TV facilities on Monday evening, August 25th from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Grafton Community Television studios at 296 Providence Road in South Grafton. The open house serves as an introduction to the Fall 2008 Video Production Class which begins on Monday, September 8th.
According to Danielle DeLucia, Grafton Community Television Public Access Coordinator, “We look forward to having the community come and visit our studios. The August 25th open house is a fun way to learn about access television here in Grafton and how it works. We’ll take you on a tour of the studio facilities and show you demonstrations of our equipment, including Chroma Key. You’ll get to meet and greet current GCTV producers and learn how to become the producer of your own show on Channel 11.”
The Fall 2008 GCTV video production class starts Monday, September 8th from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the studio and runs for eight weeks. The class lets participants get comfortable with using a video camera, editing their own programs and learning the basics of behind the scenes directing. The class is made available at no charge to Grafton residents who are 18 years of age or older, regardless of whether or not they are cable television subscribers. Completion of the class certifies you as a GCTV producer, enabling you to produce your own television shows on Grafton Community Television. The deadline for signups for this class is September 5th. Please call Danielle DeLucia, Public Access Coordinator for Grafton at 508 839-2983 or email at GCTV11@charter.net
Grafton Community Television provides programming on three distinct public access channels in the Town of Grafton over the Charter Communications cable system. Monthly schedules for Grafton Community Television Channels 11, 12 and 13 can be found at www.graftontv.org Channel 11 provides general interest programming, Channel 12 broadcasts town government programming, and Channel 13 features school programming and high school sports events. The Grafton Community Television studios and offices are located at 296 Providence Road in South Grafton.
Here’s my question: since Charter has been providing some funding for the station, if we allow Verizon to extend FiOS to cable and provide competition — what happens to local access? Will Verizon have to fund it as well? (Who wants new cameras?) Will Verizon customers still be able to watch Selectmen’s meetings from the comfort of their homes?
Greater Grafton 
The questions you ask about the future of Grafton Cable Access and funding for it have occupied a lot of Cable TV Oversight Committee and Cable Advisory Committee time and energy. Those are some of the key areas we are negotiating with Verizon, and they will also be important issues as we negotiate with Charter regarding their license renewal.
The intent is to maintain essentially what we have now wioth respect to Access, with both companies contributing to the costs. At this point there are significant questions about how Verizon will handle the Access channels. How they will connect to them, if what they do will get all the content or only some of it, how good the technical quality of the signals will be, when they will do it, and what channel numbers they will be on.
When Verizon is up and running customers will have many differences between the two companies regarding services and options to consider. Among them will be how well Verizon handles the Access channels, and things like carrying the Selectmen’s meetings or not will be factors customers can take into consideration when deciding which company to go with.
Thank you, Bob. I know it’s something a lot of people were wondering about (my husband for one) and I knew if I threw it out there, someone would know!