 Okay, intimate group. Feel free to move on up. No. Come sit in the front row. Come enjoy our conversation. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Timothy Egan. I serve on the Alliance for Community Media Board and as well, I'm a board member, a long time board member for the Television Academy. The Television Academy is very interested in community media. We see a lot of our newer ME entries growth coming from community media stations and school stations tied to students tied to community media stations and the product improvement over the last five, seven years has been tremendous to the point where community media stations are walking away with Emmy Awards. So we feel it's an important organization to sort of understand, promote, talk about. For this panel, you know, the challenges is creating content when you don't have budget and creating content in a post- pandemic world when people don't want to come into the studio or you potentially have folks that are going to be concerned about going out on location. How do you create more content? So I'm a content creator. It's how you've got started in the business. One of the things I learned early on is when you create content for state agencies, nonprofits, they want to get the word out but they don't have any budget. So I was able to start thinking about getting it out into cities back then, late 90s or 2000s, cable access channels. They all had, you know, full peg three, three veins. So they would interested in, oh, education. You have stuff that's about, you know, high safety, driver safety, environment, government. You have things that are about how to vote from the secretary of state or, you know, that kind of content or then the traditional, you know, public sphere, nonprofits or organizations that are doing, in the community, good creating programming. So it was maybe a little easier then. It's gotten a lot harder. I think it's gotten harder because there's so many people making content for different eyeballs, different distribution. So part of this discussion is to talk a little bit about folks that are creating content now and why they're creating it. So I'm happy to have Petric Helz from the content manager from Media Factory and Kate Hefner, whoever sees scheduling and the content curator for CCTV. What I'm going to do is each of them have a little presentation that they're going to make. Then we'll have a little discussion. Then we're going to save some time at the end for questions and some obligatory videos. So there seems to have been a problem with the schedule. And then some people think they started number five, some start at two. You know, you guys have already started. Maybe you could be coming in at two o'clock. I don't know if you want to hold to your presentation until two or just go with what you got going on it. You're moderating. Weird. It seems like. We got seven minutes. We'll wait another minute or two. Thanks for clarifying that. Maybe we'll just sort of keep riding the bus here and as folks come in, maybe we'll wait because it's anything people are super interested in any area. We're just starting programming. So come on in and make yourself comfortable. We might pause for a minute due to the little scheduling snafu. So maybe we'll do this. So just those are you in the audience. Tell us what channel you're from just so that we get to know you a little bit. Okay, you. Okay, so local and far away. Well, yeah, I think we should just get going. We're all ready to go. People can join us. So let me call up Slarns here. Patrick, how long have you been the content manager over at Media Factory? I've been the content manager for a year just over a year now. But before that, I was distribution coordinator. So it's more in the trenches doing scheduling. And I was doing that full time for back to 2019. Before that, I was at my PBS for a year in master control. And then I was actually at regional RT and the regional educational television network, which merged to be the Media Factory was working part time. So that's my that's my programming and programming that whole time. Before that, I was doing like videography, you know, freelance and audio and stuff like that. Yes, I run into many people who've worked with him. He's been in that field in Vermont since the early 80s. So it's always nice to run into people. That's how that's how I got into my freelance videography using his dog. That's all right. It's an intimate group. So what we'll do is they're each going to make a little presentation. And then when we have topics that I'm going to interview them out, if you want to join in the conversation, please do. We don't have to wait. I'll leave time for Q&A at the end, but I'd rather have it be interactive. So Patrick, you have a few things you want to cover. So I video stuff in progress. Yeah, actually. So good point. Sorry. The time thing threw me off. So Kate, how long you've been with CCTV and a little bit of what did you do in the world in media behind it? Yeah, so I've been with CCTV for just about two and a half years, I believe. I've only been doing curating and programming for less than a year. Inherited it from someone who was really, really incredible at it too. So I feel very lucky in that sense. Before I was mostly doing production, recording city council meetings and whatever else they were sending me on. And before that, I graduated from Champlain College in 2021. So you're fresh into the programming world. Yeah, brand new pretty much. Patrick's got a little experience. And I'm 59. Let's just say everything. I imagine that my experience probably pretty considering the age of most people in the industry, I feel like I've stolen younger people. Yeah, 2017, I guess is when I started doing that. So if we want to jump into these slides, I guess, just some background on the station that I'm at probably will help give some context, you know, these are the things that are kind of like working for us or have worked in the past and might help everyone else here as well. But to understand that, where we are a public education and government center. So we're doing all three of those. We schedule three unique cable channels, each with those identities. We also have a radio station, which is its own identity. And those are, you know, 24 seven channels that need constant scheduling and updating. So that's leads me into what I what I perceived as sort of the bigger problems for a lot of programmers and the vein of what this talk is about, the ones that I've had to deal quite a lot with. And it's mostly there's there's a lot of hours you got to fill, right? It's always got to be fresh and interesting to keep people interested. And you might not have the most time in the world for your staff to do it. That's, you know, when I when programmers with a big part of what I was doing, I was doing it like all those channels and like 16 or so hours a week. And everything else was all the other hours for a full time job. Because mostly people who are working for your staff probably are doing something else besides just programming, right, running the website or managing a radio station or whatever it could be. And on top of that, if you're if you got a public access channel, you may have noticed that they're not getting quite as much traffic as you did maybe before 2020, or maybe not as much as you did in 2000. I know for ourselves that we've seen a bit of a decline in some use. So why is that maybe TV cable TV isn't as a learn it was as it once was, I'll get into it. Ultimately, your problems are like programming can be daunting. And we're facing maybe competition from other non cable platforms. And then you just got to keep up, things keep changing. Media is changing the way people produce it changes. How can you keep up in that? So it's kind of what I figured out. These are the big problems that I'm seeing all the time. And the next slide is sort of the goals I had for maybe this talk or just for you programming, like what can you what can you do to keep up, right? One of the big ones is maybe if your submission rate is down, you still need to fill those channels, you can find supplemental content to fill out your channels. So there's lots of ways to do this. And we'll I think that's my next slide, but I'll talk about the other points first. You want to you want to be able to fill those up. You want to be near the same quality as your channel. And you don't want to sacrifice quality. And you also don't want to have to shell out a lot of money to do it. I also know that we have usually production teams in house production teams on our staff. But they might already be busy doing everything covering meetings or other community events, or just any other thing that they're doing fee for service work. And you as a programmer can't necessarily say, Oh, I'd love 30 new programs to fill in a few holes in our programming schedule. So there's always that. Another goal is to find ways to entice the people who are in your community to give you more content. What will generate more stuff? We'll make them want to work with you want to have it distributed the way that you distribute things. There's also ideas about rethinking sort of that content pipeline is your traditional method that you've maybe hadn't instilled for 30 years, not quite working anymore. What can you do to kind of update it? And then just new ways to be making those productions. So now that's kind of the overview of what I think we'll be talking about. And we'll get into the next slide, which has some of those actual ideas. So I feel like, you know, everyone does it a little bit differently. And I think people have hit on different things. What I'd really like to do in this is tell you what, what's working? What are we, what am I doing at the media factory? What have people I work with have done that seems to be pretty solid and is yielding results for us. And I imagine that you probably have your own little things that you're doing those nuggets of ideas that fill in a few hours that fill in maybe many hours. And I felt that being on this panel, I can give you some leads in terms of what I'm doing. But I'm sure that some people in here have some leads that would be great for me to know about as well. So if you have ideas, I'd actually really love to hear them during this panel before we leave today. But I broke it down as some, some big categories here. One, you need supplemental content. Public domain. Public domain is great. Usually you don't have to do anything or maybe not even attribute anybody. I have a few listed here and ones that I'm regularly using archive.org is really great. It's also a minefield. I know everyone wants to try to stay on the right side of the law and copyright law. So it's going to take some dedication to figuring out what is actually in the public domain, what is attributed correctly, what's in the right, what's actually up for grabs and what is not. But I've been able to find a good amount of content in, in that site as well as others. I listed Library of Congress, Wikimedia, they're very similar sources that are usually, if you're able to, you know, broadcast that or cablecast that without really any restrictions. I have some examples of what we've been doing to try to actually use that because if you get it, sure. But how do you make that enticing to your public like to watch the actual viewer base? And it's all about kind of packaging. Sure, I've found, you know, shorts, educational shorts about like nature or industry. Sometimes they're the ones from like the 50s with the transatlantic accented narrator telling you things. And I feel like you can kind of just drop those in after other educational programming you might have on your channel, that seems appropriate. And that works great for filler. But one thing that I got really interested in a few years ago was trying to do something nice for Halloween. I like Halloween. I found that a lot of the movies that are in public domain are horror movies. And I started trying to figure out a way that we could kind of make a campaign, have a marketing campaign that generates interest in our channel. And we came up with the haunting hours. We had like an 11 o'clock or midnight slot, or like we don't even know what to put in here. But if you can find a couple dozen horror movies that are two hours long, you can find something that will engage an audience and also be at appropriate timing for that audience. As you know, a school board isn't the best thing to play at 11pm. But you know, maybe the cabinet Dr. Caligari is. So that's the thing that we tapped into. And we kind of extended it past Halloween. I went and found other things that were just of any, any genre that I could put into that slot and that remained a constant slot on our channel that we were promoting for a couple of years. And at this point, I think I still have like 25 or so files on our roster that I can drop in when I feel like, oh, you know, we could use a nice boost in the midnight hours. So that's definitely something that's, that's, you know, kind of a fun one and doesn't take too much effort on your programming staff. You do the work up front, you figure out what it is. And then you're like, okay, I found the files, I downloaded them, and then I'm scheduling them out. There are some great resources out there to help you find them. I mean, you can just go into archive.org and start typing in titles of things you might know about. But I've found some through the public domain review, which is a website that kind of does like a digest of all the things that they are doing. It's not all film, that's actually mostly like images and books and things like that. We can always find some good ones there. Another thing that I like is public domain day. So that's the right at the beginning of the year. I think there's a good site. It's like Duke Law or something puts out a, like a newsletter about it. But there's, there's some other right stuff going on. But usually it's like 96 years, something drops into the public domain. So if you're into film, we're starting to get into sound, which is great. But, but if you're like silent films, then it's a nice way to do it. You can package it any way you want. Haunting hours is what we ended up doing for that. But I also had some other pitches and just because I have an audience, I'll tell you one of them, which was, I wanted to make a kind of a bumper before that was an awards show. But the award would be for a category so specific that it could only be the movie that we happened to have and we're about to play. So, you know, somebody would come out very serious. It'd be like a minute long thing. And they'd be like, and here's for the best German expressionist 1920s horror film about us an ambulance. And then we play it. Can't be a lot of things. So you can be fun with that. And that gives you gives you some time filled up. Another big one that I have as my next bullet is news programs. So this might not work for what channel you have, but we have an education channel and we felt that staying up on current events very much falls into what our mission was with that channel. A lot of news programs you can get for free. You can get them for very cheap. And the really nice thing about it is that you're constantly getting fresh stuff. So I think I went and actually found how many hours of news are playing on one of our channels. I think we're doing 32 hours of news a week on one of them. Some of that's replays, but like democracy now we'll get a live feed in the morning and then play it out at night. And over time, depending on you know what what resources you have, you can pick it up different ways. Right now we're using like an HLS stream going directly into our play out server, but we've used a satellite edition in the past. We also used to just download it from their website. That one is a free one. Most of these you can just coordinate with that company and they'll hook you up. We have NHK Tokyo, which we play every twice a day, every weekday and for like four hours total over the weekend. We just contacted them and they ended up sending us like a box that we have in our tech core and we just play it right there. It's really reliable and we can always watch the feed if we want to and we just plug it in. It's another nice kind of low cost and replenishing source. So you do a little bit of work up front and then you've got that hour long block every day for the whole year figured out. It's really nice. It's just going down the list. Local shows created by your partners or people in your community. So it's going to really depend on where you're located and what kind of relationships you have. But one show that we play every single day is created by the University of Vermont. We have Across the Fence. They play it out on their, you know, their network and we get it the next week. And it's usually people we know are on it. Topics that are very interesting to our community because they're in the same town. And I think we played a few others over over the years. We've had a newspaper produced a segment biweekly. We'd play that. And we also have Champlain College which has had some student work where they're doing it on their TV access and then sending it over to us so we can play it out again and get wider distribution. And then let's just keep going to the list here. We've got national organization licenses. So there's probably a ton out there that you could really find. And you might want to find one maybe closer to home if you're somewhere that's in a maybe more metropolitan area. But we've had good work with the National Gallery of Art where we're getting nice art features that are like maybe half an hour, an hour long. That's good for a nice playlist or some sort of artistic block that you have in your channel. We do go into a bigger licensing deal with the National Film Board of Canada for us because you can get to the border in like 45 minutes. That one seems to really work with our viewers. And we've gone in on that license with Vermont PBS in the past. So it's an opportunity for you to find people who are in your area that might want to go in on some of these things too. Because it doesn't always have to be just your organization footing the bill. Another nice one I have here is your own archive. So what's better than finding fresh content than repurposing or purposefully using not fresh content? So we have a giant archive. It goes back to the 90s. And there's a lot of really cool stuff in there and a lot of weird stuff in there. And that's just as interesting to me. It makes it more fun for me as a programmer to go and dig it up. In our, you know, we have actually a whole streaming channel. It's called Rewind. That is just archive content that's at least five plus years old. The logo on the side there. But we also feature that as a block that plays. It's a two-hour block that we have one night. And it's regular. It's always like Tuesday night at nine. We're playing this two-hour block of old content. And we replay it a few more times throughout the week. So right there we've got like eight hours, which is something that we filmed 20 years ago. And we get to reuse it. Those are the ones I really like because you get to be more experimental, a little more different on how you're presenting it. And it's also doing the work of promoting another channel that we have on the cable channel. And the last thing here is going to lead into our next slide, which is center file sharing. I don't know how many people here are using a file sharing across different centers in your area? Are people using that? Okay, it looks like a lot of people are. The Vermont. Yeah, you can go to the next one. So in Vermont we have the Vermont media exchange as part of the media exchange through Telview. Great. Yeah, so that I think there's that. There's this peg media is one. I think there's a New Hampshire one as well. Yeah, CCM has a statewide server. Nice. So I have a slide here and I figured a lot of people might already be part of this or using it. But this is my time to promote, to encourage you to use it even more. You can use it even more. Kay and I are both on the committee for the Vermont statewide channel, which is we have an HD channel through Comcast that plays to everyone who gets Comcast in the state of Vermont. And that channel is programmed entirely through stuff licensed from VMX. This is kind of a way to put a spotlight on like you could run a channel just using supplemental content that's licensed from other media centers in your area. There's I put some stats on here. You know, I put on the side kind of what it looks like as you see the different that's just the newest files that were up when I took that screenshot. I just flip through it every day and check for new things and see if it's something that works well for my my center. But the the one for VC TV that statewide channel, I checked in looked at the stats in 2022. There are 1,464 files that were first run play it on that channel. And that equals about 50 days of content before it starts even repeat replaying. I also found what my center, which we're one of the largest centers in the state. And we are near the top for how much stuff we're licensing and downloading from there. I think that in my tenure is being the first in charge of that I was a bit more conservative about what I was pulling down, but we still had, I think it's like 2000 things I licensed in whatever this window is showing. And I put up another almost was a 850 for other people to take. And a lot of those programs are, you know, an hour and a half program or something. So it's quite a lot of data going up and down. This is my slide to pitch that if you are using it, you can use it a lot more. And you can you can also do the benefit of getting your content more widely distributed, which is going to lead into another part, which is the next slide, which is encouraging more production from your public. I do have a bullet point of more than just your TV cable. You can use your distribution through the VMX network or like a statewide channel like we have as another thing to encourage people to submit to your station. So that's the first part is all supplemental stuff. This is like what your programmer can do with hopefully not too much time without burdening your other staff or your production crew. This one, this going forward for me is you've got that public. How do you get them actually back into your space? How do you get them giving you things? Because that's what you really want. You'd love to have it be local. Supplementals we have to do with their local aspect isn't there. But or just I mean, it's 24 seven channels, multiple channels, it's hard to fill that up anyway. But we have a few things here that I want to mention. Some of it's in the actual programming that you're doing yourself. If people are seeing that their content is being promoted, it's being shared, it's being curated in a way that makes them feel appreciated and then also makes them feel that the things are really getting out there, they're going to respond to that. If they just see it going out into the the ether, you know, like they're going to like why do I even bother no one can see it like. So some of the ways you can really do that is through your curated playlists, your promotion that you have on on television, your marketing, your news letters, and then featuring it in different collections. I'm going to get into the next slide has some pictures, but I'll talk about those when we get there. The next one is contests, calls for content. This has mixed results, but I think I've finally hit a winning formula for this one. You can try to find new ways to encourage people to to give you things or people who maybe aren't usual people. And we've had a couple instances of trying to actually have like a specific call. I find a lot of people don't know what to do. They're like, I want to make something. I don't know what. I don't have any ideas. I just want to use a camera. I want to learn. I need something to do to learn, right? We have a project we do every year called crowdsourced Vermont, where we take an existing feature film. We split up all the scenes and then ask for teams around the whole state to recreate them and their own unique spin. And then we edit it all together and present it. So this year we're doing Toy Story is the film. And we have like 35 teams or something each taking a little piece. This is a way that you can say, Hey, here's a thing we want you to do exactly this. And like, great, we want to use a camera anyway, we want to be creative, want to make costumes, whatever. And you're able to get that right back to you. That's a good call for content. The contest that I said I was excited about before, we just did one called pause and play, which is the media factory pet video contest. This one, very exciting, because it fills a lot of our goals, which is we get more content from our producers, we made something that's very low barrier to entry. People are already taking videos of their pets all the time. Why aren't they also sharing them with us? There's no like real length requirement. We think we asked for ones that were pretty short, but you could have and we did receive things that were like 10 seconds long. Great. We also added separate submission process with usually people have to be members, they have to go through orientation and all sorts of things like that. This one like, hey, anybody just send us the thing, fill it a form that says we can play it, we'll be happy to kind of generate interest in it. And the other real benefit from that besides engaging people and making more content for our channels is I got to watch a bunch of videos of funny cats, which was maybe the real reason I did it. So that's calling for content. You can put out those things and sometimes it can be as simple as pets. Another nice advantage of that is it gives you an opportunity to try to strengthen real relationships in your community. In this case, we said, hey, let's try to get a new partner out of this. And we contacted the Humane Society of Chittenden County, which is county we're in right now. And it's kind of just down the street from our center. And we said, hey, you have a network that's interested in this subject. We're doing a project that we think will interest them. You like pets, we like pets here. Let's try to maybe cross some of those those relationships, right? So we are able to use them to promote the contest. We're also putting their information and everything that we're putting out. So we're helping each other. We kind of formed a new partnership. Ultimately, we had them judge the contest. And it kind of this very programming, directed idea turned into a new partnership and we're hoping to redo this contest next year and continue that. Should just go to the next slide. Yeah, I got the I got the poster to the right that we put out for a pause and play. We had an internship and we had them design this as part of their thing. To the left of that is just some screenshots of what we've done on our website. And these would also be kind of duplicated in newsletter items of how we're showing off what our what our members are doing, whether it's as in the middle column sort of very specific content themes or on the left. It was just a review of the year 2022. And we found like stats on our member superlatives like who submitted the most content who made the most reservations that are placed, those sorts of things. So we can make people feel like they're they're they're appreciated and we want them there and hopefully encourage more as they'll be able to see that we want them there and we want them to we want their stuff to be seen. The other things to entice people I had listed on the last slide, but we're mostly all more than TV at this point, right? I don't know how many people are only watching us through cable. I know for myself, I don't I don't have cable. I'm actually not even in the service area where I could watch our channel anymore. I don't even live there. But when I try to find slang that we have out or any place really, I'm probably going to the internet. I'm going to OTT platform. We've launched, you know, our Roku and Fire TV and Android app and all those sorts of things as another way for people to engage with the content. It's meeting people where they are. So I found that people, you know, this is anecdotal, but people come into the space and as time's gone on, I feel here less and less people say, Hey, what time is it playing on the channel? Or I'd love to have this scheduled Friday at eight or whatever and say, what time can I send this link out? When will that be posted? So you can leverage that to incentivize people to schedule. I understand that a lot of people, their funding is very much tied to cable subscribers. So that's has to be a priority, some respect. But it's doing both, right? You put it on TV, but you can also get it onto your website, onto your OTT platform, onto Facebook. You can live stream and go to the next slide. Got some pictures of just some screenshots of things we're doing. We have a live partner video, you know, stream, working with a Vermont Humanities Council. And we're able to put embed that link right on their website. So people are want to work with us because we can distribute it more, more thoroughly than just love the video up in a few days or whatever. And that's a screenshot of the OTT app just on a phone of those collections that are now available. Yeah, I think I had one more note, which I don't actually have much to say about. But this is a design I haven't quite figured out yet, but I'm very interested in, which is to turn our partners into more creators. A lot of times they have some event and they canvassed film it. And I'd love to get the tools into their hands, so that they film it and give it to us. That frees up our field producers to do more things. I haven't, we haven't quite figured that one out yet. But we're working on it. And we'll have a little example at the end. Some video examples. Thank you, Patrick. Yeah. It's not an easy job. You said three channels on the radio station. Mm hmm. That's a lot of hours. Oh, it's constantly pedaling the bike. It's it's a puzzle, right? Yes, I saw you use the word daunting. You actually express that you're you're we're here all here. I'm happy to be transparent and that it's sometimes very fun. But sometimes it is just a job you have to get done. And if you can make it faster and better, sometimes that's just by having more content that lightens the load, right? My education there was in the programming world when you're making something for a channel that's acquiring you pay hiring you to make it. They say the same thing. The meat was in the meeting at the end of the meeting. It's got to be on time because there's no such thing as a black hole in the network. You don't go, Hey, I want to watch. Oh, the screen's black. It's got to be on to so you're it's it is daunting. You're constantly creating, creating and creating and distributing it. Um, so, Kate, let me transition these over to you to start out. I'm going to talk a little bit of while we still do have these cable channels, the methodology of how we are scheduling them and curating them. So as a little bit of background info, and I'm sure I'm kind of preaching to the choir on this one, but less than 50% of American households have cable right now. And that's from Lightman Research Group. People are using streaming services websites like YouTube, social media, Hulu, things like that. If you look at the numbers though, people aren't really turning to Hulu Live or YouTube Live, for example, they're turning to things that are more algorithm based. The traditional video playlist format offers users little control as they would see it. And so they're they're a little bit out of style right now. The algorithm based services, they do give more of an illusion of control, you could say. Users click on what they want to watch instead of sitting through a video playlist. But in a sense, it is just an illusion ultimately. These algorithms are fine tuned to pinpoint a viewer's taste, opinions, views, their data points. And ultimately, the goal is show people more of what they want to see and less of what they don't want to see. In our world, we don't really have that same financial incentive. And either way, it wouldn't really be very good for our communities. We are there first for our communities and the divisiveness that's created by these algorithms wouldn't really do very good for us. In the end, though, we are still competing with these algorithms as long as we do have the cable channels. So what do we do about that? And you can move to the next one. So like I said, it is important to keep in mind that we are operating for our communities. What we want is for community members to come to an informed and nuanced understanding of the issues that they faced, more of a comprehensive overall understanding. Computer algorithms don't really work that way. Computer algorithms are operating for the service deploying them. So they create and thrive on filter bubbles because that makes the service that's deploying them more money. And it's, again, that illusion of choice. When you're using something like YouTube or Hulu or Netflix, it may feel like the algorithm is operating for you while you're under the spell. But it really is just a means of serving whoever is deploying it to keep you watching and make them more money. So something that we as programmers offer is a conscious element to the flow of content that is sort of lost in those streaming services in YouTube. When we're creating schedules and content blocks for our channels, we're creating context for what happens in our community. So we're trying to create amongst our community members a comprehensive understanding of the issues that they're facing that leads to, again, countering that divisiveness, greater empathy between parties and deeper understanding of the problems that are happening and hopefully an actual actionable solution for them. So I think one of the ways to think about scheduling channels in the age of algorithms is sort of adopting an algorithmic practice of you do want to show viewers content related to what they've recently watched because, again, we're building context. You want it to be related but maybe offering a counter viewpoint to what they've recently seen because we do want to work against the algorithmic practice of showing viewers content that will sort of hit the button in their brain, you know, either showing them something that they already agree with and that kind of feeds them and so they keep watching because they keep on having their view validated or showing them something that makes them so angry that they keep watching kind of getting into an internet rabbit hall, as I'm sure we all have. We really want to avoid that sort of hitting the button in their brain thing. Number one, because we don't really have the incentive to, but number two, because if we are operating in service of our communities, we need to understand that that is not something that does it any good. Okay, and I'm going to make a big transition into a related, but maybe not the most married topic. I'm going to be talking about capturing content during COVID. It's a big transition. So basically, I'll go over what town meeting TV did. In 2020, when COVID hit, we had to go for a recording many municipal meetings with like a basic camera, microphones, mixer setup. And we'd been doing that ever since the 80s when we first started. After that, we went to recording meetings completely remotely for six months. And then this new hybrid setup was created to accommodate both the Zoom factor in meetings as well as the live factor. So the new hybrid setup is very different from the traditional setup. It includes a computer, oftentimes multiple PTZ cameras, live switching between Zoom scenes and in person, and a live graphic software. And out of curiosity, have your stations, any of your stations adopted any methods like this for recording content? Yeah? Cool. Good. Glad to hear it. Just hoping so. So some adopt. I found that some adopt this new wave production kind of easily. For me, I was just coming out of college when I started working at CCTV and the hybrid system was already in place. So I was kind of after college learning on that system. And for me, it kind of felt like a natural step up. Of this sort of not singular, but a way of recording where it's easy to focus in on one aspect and want to make that, you know, really good and going to this more overarching way of production where, you know, you are more in control of the final product as you're recording. So for me, it was like a little bit of a natural this is where it would go. I think that for a lot of people who have been producing for a really long time, the more traditional way. It can be tedious. They are new systems. So they're sometimes buggy. They don't always work the best. But they're getting solved. It's just something that's being pioneered. So I think some people adopt it more easily than others. But the benefit for us as programmers and curators is live graphics and switching means that we're not waiting nearly as long for content to come to us so we can schedule it, put it on our websites and put it wherever it needs to go. So we are getting information out faster. And if you go to the next slide. So I think that hybrid and remote production is a bit of an unperfected art. Again, it can be a little bit tedious for people, people who are used to the traditional method have more fun with it or more in tune with that. So there's not as much excitement about it, I think, sometimes. But there is great potential for it. You do have the potential for connecting anyone, anywhere at any time. I think Zoom advertises themselves as that too. But in our context, that can be really helpful. These systems, as I was saying, also allow producers to have more control over the final product. So the post-production is pretty minimal. There's also a potential for experimental live graphics. And what we do, with mostly municipal meetings, that might not really fit in super well. But I think that for more like artsy creative things. I'd love to see people experimenting with that because I think there is a lot of potential there. And again, it also allows us to let the content come to us. So some content is produced entirely hands-free. So as far as whether or not the traditional ways of recording are robust enough for people going forward, it is like a good foundation to have. I think that having been trained in that and then making a switch when I did was pretty beneficial. I have a pretty comprehensive understanding and people should still be learning that traditional method, I believe. But instead of that being just the way that's done, it can now be a foundation. There's more to expand on, which is really exciting. And again, just to bring it all together. For programmers, these productions really help us serve our communities more efficiently. We don't have to wait for post-production to be done maybe a little bit, but it's not nearly as long. Yeah, and Patrick, you were saying something in your presentation about sort of having people create the content, these organizations create the content and then bring it to us. And I think that that is also what we should be looking towards. At CCTV, I know that we've had a few grants to help the Ethan Allen Homestead, which is a museum around here. We had a grant to give them their own hybrid system, so they can record their own content now and send it to us if they so choose. I think we also did this for the Richard Kemp Center, which is another nonprofit organization in Burlington right down the road from us. And I believe with our municipalities, they actually own the equipment. So if they needed to record something and we weren't available to help produce it, they would be able to do it themselves. We wouldn't need to be there. We might help make it a little bit prettier, but we aren't as essential as producers there. And so that is what I have for my presentation. Thank you. I think it was important to sort of hear where they're coming from before we had a conversation because it's daunting task and it's really hard to think about how do you collect this content and be able to hear from each of them different ways that they do it, different mechanisms that they do it. One thing I think that I get excited by in New Hampshire where I live is the amount of young people that are in and around and involved in community media stations, whether in New Hampshire we have what they call CTE, Continuing and Career and Tech Education Centers. And so most of those centers actually have a channel within them. So they have young people to create programming. Maybe the theme of my day, to harken back to my other panel, right? We had VTSU, we had UVM, we had Champlain. There's a lot of students creating content. How have you been able to sort of say to them, hey aspiring creator, we actually have a distribution platform over here for you. How do you build that relationship? How is that, how active are young people in, you know, creating content and helping you program out your channels? Well, actually we have like a really robust internship program at CCTV. And I think that it's advertised through the schools a bit, I believe. And when they come in, they, I believe at least, I think they're making our best content. It's really, you can really feel their interest in the subjects that they're approaching. I don't really know how we would get more people to come to us because I do believe that if more young people knew about public access and everything that we're doing and just how easy it is to have your content distributed, you know, if I was more in tune with this stuff when I was in school, I would be like, going to media factory, going to town meeting TV all the time and submitting my content. I just didn't really have that knowledge. So the best I could say is word of mouth, I think. You know, I think especially with young people, that works pretty well. And giving our interns a good experience so that they can tell their friends about it and hopefully bring more people in. Right, that's word of mouth, going back to campus from someone that actually lived it. Patrick, any thoughts? Yeah, I think people knowing about what we actually have to offer is really big. And where they're, I guess, coming up short in terms of what they have available to them. Oh, and overarching problem, probably for every center is people have a lot of technology themselves now, their phones or even distribution, like using YouTube. They can make it account pretty easily and they go, oh, why do I ever need a public access center? And it's, you know, we're gonna figure out how to tell them, like, well, our cameras are much better than yours. And we have workshops where we can get a good product and all this sort of stuff like that. We actually have a following in an audience that instead of your five viewers on your YouTube channel, we can help boost that. We can help each other, right? I think the younger audience, especially, they're like, why would I need that? Whereas maybe an older one is more used to it and understand our value. So lately, you know, we've been trying a lot, trying to really cultivate or foster more of a relationship with these youth groups. We've had either local high school or we have University of Vermont and Champlain College are very close by. We've had a good relationship with Champlain College for a while. Our director actually helps with their Keystone projects that happen at the end of their year of video making. But one thing that we figured out is that some of these clubs or programs that are run at these colleges don't necessarily let their students just take all the equipment they want. It's usually just to be very specific to what they're doing or it's locked behind what grade you're in. It's like, oh, well, if you want a camera, you can't take that out until you're a junior or whatever. And it's really locking people out. And when I heard that, I was incredibly surprised. I didn't know that. I'm like, do people know that they could leave their freshman class and walk over to our place and take out a camera and just do it today and get their projects done? So I think it's, you get some people in the door, whether you bring a class in, we've had a couple classes from UVM, from Champlain College, from local high schools. In our doors, we give them a tour and that plants that seed and they now know and then the word of mouth happens from there where it's either them or some sort of friend. Yeah, the only other thing I could mention is like, we, our education and outreach department sort of tries to get into a lot of student camps and that's even younger. Students like middle school. And sometimes we see students who are in that who then create a video out of their project. We sometimes see their parents later. Because they see that there's something we can do here. They have access to gear, they get access to the creative process. Another place where I think is a right discussion about where content comes from is the last six years, we've had a very robust political conversation in this country. And there are people that are political activists on any issue and every issue. And Community TV is a public forum and while I think we have to protect democracy, you also sort of have to protect, sometimes folks might hear shows that you don't like. My rule of thumb is you don't like to change the channel. How has political activism created more content and how do you balance that? What is that content with some type of integrity or ethics to hear that kind of content? Okay, okay. Well actually, that's kind of a funny question because right now I believe the block that's playing on Town Meeting TV is basically all of our content about something that a lot of our community producers and stuff have been thinking about lately has been specifically freedom of speech and our relationship to that and its relationship with hate speech. So the programming block that I have going right now on our main channel is actually all of the freedom of speech related content that's been produced only in like the past few months because it really is a hot topic around. There are some people who are more on the side of you can't limit it like at all or the limitations have to be like very, very minuscule. Like you kind of really have to let people say what they want and not censor too much. And there's a few people who are more on the side of expanding the definition of hate speech to encompass more. So we do have content on both sides of that. It's not only about scheduling that content together but sort of like what I was saying with the algorithms and whether we're hitting a button in someone's brain or not, right? Instead of having the first half of the block be people who are pro this issue. Second half of the block is people who are against this issue. You need to find sort of the common threads. So for example, I think in one of the earlier programs, one of the guests said something about they believe that hate speech should not, I don't remember exactly what the argument was but they were more on the side of hate speech. The definition of that should be expanded to include more. Immediately after that I played something made by a community producer who absolutely does not believe that. All is like very much on the other side of that. I think that does more good than say, scheduling two people who want to expand the definition of hate speech together. You don't wanna be validating someone's viewpoint too much. You kind of wanna have them playing mental tennis in a way, hearing one side, hearing the other side, hearing one side, hearing the other side. And then at the end, the viewer is allowed to make decisions and has been informed or educated or at least aware of what those organizations are about and those issues. Do you get pushback, public complaints issues when people go, the content's too political or it's, you know, I didn't like that or people respectful of what everybody's entitled to their opinion. I may not have to agree with it but they have the right to say it. Yeah, I think so earlier in March we had a program that was really controversial in that way and we did get a lot of pushback about it. And something that I suggested, I don't really receive the pushback, it's more the channel coordinators who get that feedback. But something that I suggested is, you know, people should come in and in a way make counter-programming if they disagree with what they're seeing. You know, I think that it's on our website, you know, if you disagree with what you're seeing, come on in and make a show. We wanna hear what you have to say. So. And get great more programs. Exactly, exactly, more programming. It works out for everybody. So that's where my brain went. So we'll take a question to the floor and then Patrick will talk to you about that as well. Some years ago, my access center was odious stuff. This is a community that's gonna raise a lot of apples, cause a lot of arguments, caught a negative feedback for our access center. So they declined it because there was no local sponsor, no local resident would sign a paper saying, yeah, I'd like this to see this. But I agree with your position that you could air it and encourage people to. I would say too, you know, in general, if people are gonna disagree with something, they have to understand what they're disagreeing with before they see it. So even if the content doesn't align with their views, they now have a deeper understanding of what the other side is saying, so they can formulate their own argument better, you know. I think that a lot of people will see, and it is because of algorithms, I believe, a lot of people will see content that doesn't align with their views and sort of take it as a, they're just so used to having the button hit in their brain that it hits the other button in their brain that's like, this makes me angry, I gotta do something about it. Whereas, you know, a more, I think, a better way of looking at it is, you know, if you're really against something and you see something that you disagree with, how can I take this to help me, you know? Would you insist on a local sponsor? I think, because it is free programming. That's, that is like, that's an intense one. Patrick wants to jump in, he's biting his tongue there. Yeah, all you. Yeah? Yeah, you know, I talked a lot about supplemental programming, where to find and everything like that, and this is something that's coming right to your door and asking to do it. I think this is where I'd say, oh, well my job is to curate, right? To curate the channel, and I don't think that meets maybe the standards of what I want our channel to be. I understand that it could cultivate more discussion and things like that, and it might be, because I don't agree with that and maybe that's in the back of my head of why I'm declining it. But I would, any time somebody approaches me with any content, the first thing I say to them is, I'd love for you to have a sponsor locally. And I would say that first, anything, even if it's something that I 100% agree with. And then sometimes I go, it's really quality content. All sponsored as a member of staff, which is technically how we're entering those programs. When we are getting supplemental content, we are entering it as who's sponsoring this? Staff is sponsoring it. And I don't have to sponsor anything as staff, that I don't have to if I don't want to. But it is one of those questions you have to work with. And in our policies, our public access channel, it says you can air hate speech. That's the thing that it says you can do. But I don't necessarily have to invite it if I don't want to. That's kind of just me speaking in personally, and somebody else might feel different. Question there. So three stations, seven years and 3,000 miles ago in a way. We had a local producer who went through our studio certification program, checked all the boxes. He gets in front of his green screen for a studio show and starts ranting about 9-11 and who was really responsible for that sort of stuff. And the three things we did is we had a pretty active public access producer community at that time at that station. It was based at a university. So we very strict free speech laws like be able to allow whatever it forms that's not obscene or pornographic or commercial, basically. So we had this advisory committee, when there was inevitably a complaint about this from a local rabbi, it went to that committee to review the complaint whether it met the standards of incitement guidelines. And eventually they have held that it was allowed beyond there because it was just vague enough, basically. But the other things we did is I could still, as the guy programming the channel, declare that it should be in safe harbor. So at least that pushes it off till after 11 p.m. Great idea. And I scheduled EDO, PSAs, anti-semitism and awareness PSAs to play after it every game, time and show. So at least we could do those three things. Yeah, you're ultimately the curator, right? You're the scheduler. And if it's in your policy to allow the programming, then I don't see a reason to deny it or push it away. But safe harbor makes a lot of sense. Question? Just can you talk a little bit about content blocks because you're both, sounds like you both use that. Is there any data that people stay with you to keep content the same? Like how long are the blocks? And if I'm on a government channel and I'm doing a long block that is maybe specific to one town, I don't usually do that because excluding other towns. So do you, what is putting programming together versus kind of diversifying the programming back to back? Sure. Yeah, that's a tricky one because there's so many factors in it, right? Content block, when I say that, it can mean different things. We have ones that are more sort of just like, oh, it's Wednesday and Wednesday, we typically play this kind of lecture or whatever. And that's a content block. And then what follows it will be similar to that topic. And then some are more specific. It's like, hey, we've just suddenly got a lot of producers doing content about beer and we put them all in a playlist for an hour. Or on our public access channel, the feature are very short content that we get from people that don't have a real, starts an hour block or anything. We had like buy the slice and it's just like tiny pieces all going together. And that's like a 30, 60 or 90 minute block. That's content block. But in terms of do we know if people are staying more engaged because we're doing that, it's kind of tricky. We don't really get much information from our cable provider. They don't tell us that type of data. If we ask them for it, they will say, these are how many subscribers are in the area. And that's what we have to go off of. So we're doing things, you know, it's anecdotally people who give us feedback. And a lot of it is just, well, I know it works for commercial stations that audience flow of how do you engage people? And although ours is a bit different type of station, I imagine the same principles apply. That's what you assume as a programmer, that the things that have been working for television for its entire run do work, like having one program that leads into an exit that is of similar content. So we're doing two lectures back and forth. It could be, yeah. Our like prime time is like a four hour period. I'd say rarely is the whole thing considered one thematic block. Because I think is your kind of view of what programming is gets warped as you program more. I'm hyper aware of everything that we're playing and I think things are super repetitive. But I never sit down and watch TV for six hours. I watch TV for an hour. It's like two things and then I leave. But if I do see something that's like, oh, well that's interesting too. I might stick around for a little bit longer. But if I stick along for longer, it's another half hour, not another four hours or anything like that. I think it'd be crazy to think that people are gonna turn on your channel and as long as you're selling interesting and related next, they'll not leave. They're gonna leave anyway, right? Like a specific program? Like how often do we play this? So we, I think, we promise everybody who we make videos for that they'll get nine plays on the channel. And I'll usually stretch that out over the course of a month, I wanna say. Does that answer your question, sorry? Yeah, so I'm usually playing shows for like two weeks. Yeah, maybe they play seven times. And is your nine slots over the month as opposed to chunked within the first week or two? But it's fresh when you see it again, right? It was that great old phrase of the NBC, right? If it reruns, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you. Like does that give you a little bit of freshness because you build space in? Oh, yeah, and I think that, so if you are, if you have a program that maybe touches on something that is wider than just your community, something that touches on a conversation that we're having nationally, that's something that I would stretch out longer than the course of a month maybe. If I'm like, you know, if it's something about this free speech thing that we're encountering a lot at TownMeetingTV, if I get another free speech program, I will air it within a week of getting it because we always do that. But I may not, you know, whereas something local, like a show about a local event that's coming up, that will get as many airs as it can before the event happens. That's like a lot more timely. But if it's something like a little more overarching where I can sort of predict, I think we'll have a little bit more free speech content in a month and then I can create like a really good block out of it, I will hold onto it a little bit longer. You're holding a city council meeting here. Oh yeah, those are, those are, we don't air them any more after the most recent one. So if like there was a city council meeting on November 1st and then there was one yesterday, like that November 1st one would be updated. Yeah, they should have been driving themselves out. Yeah. Yeah. But how many times have you tried to play it? So actually the way that we do blocks for municipal meetings is every night at 8 p.m. gets a different municipality. So we serve Chinden County. So that includes Burlington, Winooski, Essex, Chinden County. And so with that, they get three plays every day because that's a repeating block that we'll play at 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. as well. So that's about three plays in one night. And usually if they last for about two weeks, like maybe like six, possibly nine plays if it's not a super frequent meeting, depends on how frequently they're recorded. Good, depends on what thing you're doing, but there's that whole equity part of how you schedule because you have to hit the goals of making it interesting and having good content, but you have to be equitable when it depends on the towns that you're surveying, as well as all your producers. Depends on, for us, it's a different channel. But like for the government ones, we're guaranteeing every meeting plays six times in the two weeks before usually the next meeting happens. And we're hitting different periods of the day. So it's like, oh, we cover Shelburne and Heinsberg, but Heinsberg isn't always playing at night and Shelburne's always in the morning. It's a giant puzzle to get it. So they're all hitting a certain amount at a certain time of day and none are over the other one. And then also we have live meetings incorporated. So we're not hitting, you know, trying to keep it as equitable as possible. And that one's a very nice clear cut freshness thing, right? After a month, that's not gonna maybe be relevant anymore, but for something like a public access channel, we have in our policy, the bare minimum of what we guarantee. And people usually if they have a continuing show will sign on like, I'm gonna do my show every week. That means we give you four playouts. Each play out is on a different quarter of the day. So, you know, midnight to six, six, 12, et cetera. But if you're over two weeks, then we give you three playouts and, you know, we're third of the day. And then if you're once a month, we'll give you two playouts a week and then, you know, but they always have the request to change up, you know, what's playing right now and we'll use that basic schedule if they are not big into communication, you know. So I think we have time for one more question. I'd like to ask a question about programs from schools like concerts and plays and things like that. We have two school districts and one of them has been looked into videotape and of course a lot of us to play. School plays and concerts, not because they were afraid of audience draw away from their line of event, but for, because they don't have a license to do it because they signed some agreement saying they're not allowed to do that. Have you had any success for people at schools that maybe for a nominal fee they get permission to record it and play it back up on a public access channel next number of times? We, yeah, we definitely cover the school events and things of that nature that have some sort of copyright part. Music is a big one if they can clear their rights. I'll say I'm probably not the best person at my company to answer that question because I'm not making those deals or anything like that, but we typically are encouraging them to pick things that they can clear and know that they can before they maybe even come to us with covering it as we would, we'd love to get it. We cover youth orchestra concerts and they elect four big concerts a year and those are some of our most watched programs. People love them, but sometimes they do songs that they cannot clear and we have to cut them out of our ultimate program and it shorns it. That's not ideal. I think I could put you in contact with somebody who could answer that better than if you want. So technically that's the end of the panel. If you guys want to keep talking with folks if you're interested to keep talking because it sounds like there's more questions. Tim, does it really, I thought this answers me through. It was three and then I was told that schedule was wrong. So I had it scheduled 145 to three. That was in the, okay. I'm not telling us anything. Right. I know, yeah, I get it. All right. That's why I won't sit in two. So we have some more time, I realized, I realized because I have someone showing up here for me at three o'clock, so that's why, let me do two things. Feel free to continue to have this conversation. I may run out and run back. I think you guys can handle it, your programmers. I want to make sure that one thing I want to add is what I was intrigued by in looking at both of the content made by both of these programmers is also their ability to sort of connect with other groups. Patrick made a really cool cat video because you can't get enough cat videos. But the idea is that he partnered with the Humane Society and so you could look at the Animal Rescue League, the Humane Society, organizations, and say to them, hey, have a contest, we're gonna judge the best cat video. Now you have an organization of hundreds or thousands of folks who can get an email blast and they're gonna produce content and send it your way. Kate had a production done in conjunction with Environmental Forestry Group. You're able to go out to an environmental group and say, oh, your members are, I'll use a reference point for me. They're potentially trying to build a new landfill, 200 feet next to a state park in a lake in New Hampshire. It's like, oh, you're all up in arms about that. Go out and make a community-oriented video about recycling, redemption, waste management, and that association, again, can email blast their members and say, we're partnering with the channel, make a video, and send it to them. Here's some of their guidelines. So they're both smart in engaging other nonprofits to generate content for them, because the task is daunting. It's time-consuming, it's multiple legs that you have of channels that you have to create. So, was there another question? If you could ask your question, I'm gonna go run and see if my person, it's supposed to meet me here. I have to tell them I'm still working. Veterans who did the show who were well-known in the community that were replaying their stories on Veterans Day and posted that on Facebook and people were like, cool, you know, that's great. Oh, I love that person, you know, and every single, there's really creative things you can do, I guess, especially around holidays. Every Saturday morning, we air vintage cartoons from nine to 10 a.m. off of the public domain site if you would ask me. Yeah, nice. And we actually have gotten feedback about that. People love those cartoons, I mean, they're silly and crazy, but, you know, but yeah, I just think creatively about especially around some of the holidays or some of the observances, you know, I program those specific programs and have that match those observances. Juneteenth, if you have a program for that, you know, some of the other lesser-known holidays, maybe your observances that don't get as much their place. Do you have something for your community to make sure you put it on and promote it? Definitely. Rob is going to wrap my panel, because I think my person is here. I apologize for this. Entirely my fault. So you get to pay the piper. No. Do you ever recut any of your longer programs for social media? For social media? Yeah, we'll take some, like, excerpts to promote it. Can we have a choir, please, guys? Karen. We have a marketing person who would help, sometimes they help in delivering the materials to do that, you know, because I'm the one moving the files around. But we'll have, like, Instagram with his limits on how long your club can be or whatever. I can assist in pulling something, but they're ultimately, this other person is ultimately putting it together. I don't have too much to do with the social media distribution at that side of just general, like, live streams are happening. I help usually on campaigns and my marketing by, I'm the one that knows what content we have, right? So I'm usually helping craft things, and then I hand it off and our marketing person runs with it past that. And those foreign newscasts that you, I'm assuming you're in English? Yes, the ones that we're pulling are in English, yes. But those typically have a very broad, you know, international news, so they could be appealed to anybody. We take Deutsche Welle, and they do like six different programs that we pull every single week, and they have a different focus. So one's about, always about like exercise. And like, that's universal, right? And other ones are very much, like, what's going on in Europe? Sure, we don't live in Europe, but that affects everyone. That's a pretty big place, right? So, yeah. We have particularly every end. So I sent out unsolicited pitches to other stations, like, hey, do you want to license this show? And I'm curious, as other programmers, like, would that type of thing be well received? Like, it works. We got a lot of licenses on it. And I love seeing that. But, just anecdotally, like, if you got an email like that, would you be like, nice? Or would you be like, you got my own fish to fry? I might think on that one, if you have any income. Yeah, so usually, so I'll start in a different, from the other side of it, and then I'll answer your question, which is, when we have producers who want to get their show out there, we always tell them, if you wanted to get it, if you want to get it played in another community, where they don't get our channel, the best way to do it is to get somebody you know who lives there to petition your center to play it. And the reason behind that is that I am much more receptive to people in my own community, trying to give me content, especially if, you know, like, yours is a center or something, it's not like an international media outlet or whatever. I'm gonna be more receptive to somebody in my community is like, hey, this is something great, and I want to play on our channel, I want to see it as well as me and my friends in a community, I think it's really beneficial to us. So, if somebody does that, then I always investigate it. I'll always check it out and try to track it down. If I'm... Oh, that's a good question. I guess their friend is the producer that can often be via thing. This is a video like your center is making, like it's an enhanced production. So, I think typically for that, you know, I should head a whole slide about like VMX, and that's the way I am typically expecting to see those programs. And because it's built in, it's also like super easy to grab it. If you were telling other centers, like, hey, this thing is here, and we already have an infrastructure to get it, we will be receptive to that too. Yes, I think so. Because the emails were like, hey, here's the show, then we'll be on VMX tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Write down what it is we think it'd be appropriate evergreen content. Yeah, if you're on the Van Slack channel, we have like, people are doing that all the time. I look at those. I look at those, I check them out and see if it's appropriate or send it to somebody who might be interested in it. Those things I like, because it's an apparatus that I'm already familiar with, that I can very easily go and go, oh, I heard about that, I heard it was good, I'll check it out, I'll review it, see if it's appropriate for my channel. The thing that I'm less receptive to is sort of very out of the blue things that are not local at all. I mean, Vermont is close by, yeah, you hear from California and it's like, I got this wrestling show and you're like, so? Like, like, and you don't know if it's gonna be any good. And you don't know if like, well, I don't know if that's like the thing that they love here. It doesn't have too much to do with my community, but if you know somebody here who's all about it and thinks it's beneficial to us, then I'm more receptive. And I actually, a lot of the things that I hear about are typically through the radio side. We get a lot of things where it's some band who has nothing to do with us sending us some sampler. And we're like, oh, should we spend the time? If we have time, like should we spend it to like review all these tracks? Or we're gonna use the things that we already have access to that a very straightforward licensing process. Every time you add a new avenue that you're getting your content, it's gonna create a little bit of work and some are much more structured than others. Having somebody just email you a link isn't always as good as like, hey, I've got a Dropbox set up and they're always delivered Monday at 10. That's where I'm more interested in that partnership than here's a random blink or anything like that. And that's also something that's replenishing, right? That's a big benefit to being a programmer. If you can find an avenue that keeps generating new content, that's great. If it's like, I got one file and I'm gonna send you another file in three years because I have another thing. I'm gonna be like, oh, it's the amount of time for me to get this one thing. I could be telling 10 things on VMX. But for people already in your network, if you know or are interested, sending out those notes, I think is helpful. Kate, did you have an answer? Yeah, I mean, I would say actually, once you described the email, if I got that in my inbox, I would be pretty interested and I would like, I don't download things off of VMX myself but someone I work with does, so I would forward it to him, be like, could you please grab this for me? But I would also agree with what you said, sort of, if it's something in the workflow, that ensures that my eyes are on it, whereas kind of like an email like that, I would look at it and be interested but it would be, because it's not in the workflow, it may not catch my attention as much in a way, not catch my attention but it would be, it would more easily fall out of my brain, you know? Yeah, so just reiterate. I'd also say the way that you craft that email helps a lot, because I get some that are like, this is spam and I don't respond and some are still spam but they put my name in it and they said like, hey, I was checking out what you're doing in Burlington, Vermont. This seems like it might help, like it'd be interesting to you. I'd be like, if I'm like, hey, I'll write back, try to get a sponsor and then I never hear back from them and I'm like, yeah, I know what this email was but I'm at least gonna give that, if it's like, hey, person who works here, like it's just very spammy. I'd be like, this isn't even worth my time, I got too many other things to do. Through line of all, this is professional courtesy, it seems. That helps a lot. The ease of getting at the, yeah, professional, yeah, you got it. So I don't, I jumped in for Tim and I don't know what you guys have been discussing but one of the things I found in Beverly was that some of the yoga people and you would look very much younger than me. So when I got there, my content manager was like, nobody watches the channel, why do I even care? And I'm like, why are you running this content? How do you guys feel about, I mean I was, I said basically, you know, if I would, at my age, if you told me that I got to schedule a TV channel, I would have been like, wow. So do you guys ever find that there are people that are in your age that are like, the channel's not worth it or that you really focus on distribution through other methods or do you guys love scheduling a TV channel? I love scheduling a TV, oh my gosh, sorry, I'm chewing on my words really bad. I love scheduling a TV channel, a few of them. I really enjoy it. You know, it might not be directly answering your question, but something I think about when you think about the old days of like maybe more West Coast based public access where you have like the call in shows, lots of audience interaction. I actually think that young people, if they knew that there is like the potential for that through our stations and stuff, I think that people would be so, so into it. I myself am trying to think of a good way of getting people into it because it is like a little bit of a hard sell. Cable's a little bit of a hard sell these days, but those things can still be done through YouTube and other means. It's really just kind of a matter of marketing ourselves as being able to do that, but I do think that, you know, actually during last year, we had like local elections going on and there was one race where there was like, maybe like three or four college students calling in during like this 30 minute forum, which was, I hadn't seen anything like that while I'd been working there and that was a really cool thing to see. There definitely is like the passion and interest. It's kind of about the avenue. I think most of those people were watching through YouTube, not through our channels, but I do think, you know, I don't know if it could be a way to get young people back into cable, but I do think that the format that was built could be really interesting to young people if it was marketed to us then. You know, I hear people who come through like, oh, it's going to be on TV and they're like, when is it going to be online? That seems to be more of a draw, but if I'm thinking more as like a programmer, you know, having the tentacles wrap around the community, something that's nice, but really it's ultimately part of it's, you know, like this is a work and job and you got to just do it, but there's an art to it. There's actually an art to doing it and you pick it up over time. I come from more of a curation background because I was like, I was working in museums and historic sites and stuff and that was what I kind of was studying and that's how I ended up getting into this is it was a job posting about like programming stuff and I was like, oh, well that's kind of, it's a transferable skill and then I ended up getting all into the TV world and I see the art in it and I sometimes will watch other channels and go, what are they doing? It's like, they don't care. So you have to, you have to care. You have to, because you believe in the mission of whatever your center has as their mission, but then also just the craft. It's a craft and when I have the time, I'll really dedicate and try to make it a nice appealing block and even if the people aren't watching it as much as other channels, I know that I did a good job and it looks good and it's professional and I'm trying, as much as I can to shake off some of the stigma of public access TV and like we're delivering a nice solid product in how it's presented. Another question that I've struggled with is that as we move into the world of shorter form content, that's five minutes long, just is there a place for that on the channel? Where does it place, is it just filler in between the longer content? Yeah, well I think if it's, again, if you're making a block where everything is sort of connected by a thread, right? I think something shorter can absolutely even be a good bridge in between two longer programs depending on what it is really. So I know that not a lot of stations do this. The way how I schedule is, I sort of schedule by pretty numbers. I don't really do things back to back. I'll schedule something at 5 p.m. Then if it ends at 5.12, I'll schedule something for 5.20 instead. So I think using that, it does kind of sometimes if you want something to really be pretty and have one chunk of content end at 5.30 and then you get to stretch it out a little bit with that. But yeah, I definitely think that those have a place on our channels, in our archives, stuff like that. They can act as good. We don't do commercials, but sort of you can treat them as commercials in a way. Or we all have bulletin boards too, add them to your bulletin boards. They're good. I actually had a note about this and I didn't bring it up, in terms of the younger people coming through our studio, a trend I've noticed is they're giving a short content in a way that if I look in the archive, I'm like, we never got things over five minutes. We're getting more and more stuff. And I don't know what that says about people, but it seems like there's a trend. There is a transition to a shorter attention span. Yeah, I think the way that people are thinking about media and making things that they're pushing out there, I've seen a lot more short form content. And it does have a place on the channel because filler is something that is difficult to do. And then I mentioned earlier that we have a block that is featuring short form content. There's either slice that we can plug in any time if we need to, but I don't know if you've experienced this, but I feel like the average length of program we get for like a feature length kind of thing is like an hour and six minutes, which is like the worst thing to ever do. Yep, yep. And I feel like half of the programs we have are like an hour and six minutes. And we're like, great, this is 32 minutes. Nothing's ever 28 minutes or 58 minutes or exactly two hours. It's always, and then people will submit an episode. It's like episode one was an hour and 50 minutes. Episode two's eight minutes. They're like, okay, great, great, thanks. So having short content is great because I've noticed just in my server, we have tons that are like an hour and six minutes or 12 minutes or whatever. Then we have giant gaps and we've got a lot that's like around three minutes and then we have a lot that's around seven and then we don't have anything until we get to like 20. And there's a place, we want the short content. Yeah, and I mean, that's what people are making short content. That's what they're often interested. I mean, I had the city of Beverly, it was like, we wanna, you're helping producing stuff about focusing on particular city departments, but it's gonna be distributed on our social media. Oh yeah. So I said, whoa, I can. It's so good for the internet, right? Well, and I was like, I sat there and I edited in portrait mode for the first time in my life. I never knew that I would do that. And like, here I am. I never thought I'd be editing in portrait. And then we had to find something to put it on the channel to make it wider and stuff like that. Jim. Are you having a prize drawing? Do you have about five minutes in the ballroom? Okay. Well, thank you guys for the help and give a little love for the work that these guys did in preparing the workshop. Thanks, guys.