Above: WCTV supports the community’s cultural resources. Video promoting Sculpturefest 2014 is shown in production here. Right: Easy access. Macy uploads program content to the station’s website, www.WCTV8.com, providing easy access to non-cable customers.
While it might make good sense from a business perspective, consolidation results in the homogenization of ideas. To compound the problem, entertainment has supplanted local coverage and newsworthy events. Entertainment is popular and it sells, so commercial news outlets use it. It’s now so ubiquitous that it’s hardly noticed except, perhaps, by those who’ve been around long enough to remember. In short, television has supplanted in-depth thinking with entertainment.
Public access television was created as something of an antidote to this trend—to create a sense of community and locality, to provide people with access to the medium, and to allow them to create their own programming in an effort to disseminate their ideas. All history is local; all politics is local. The sense of community is the same—it happens here.
Keeping It Local WCTV films a wide variety of school and community events, and local government meetings that affect you and your town. In addition to local Select Board and School Board meetings, they cover performances and competitions including many presented by the Pentangle Arts Council, the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, the Woodstock History Center, Zack’s Place, Bookstock, the Ottauquechee Health Foundation, the Norman Williams Public Library, and community school and sporting events. WCTV8 welcomes and receives programming from local organizations with public service announcements, and from individuals who want to express their views on particular issues. WCTV8 programming goes directly to the living rooms of housebound seniors, many who might otherwise be unable to share in and enjoy the rich variety of events only offered on WCTV8. Although fees from Comcast subscribers fund most of their annual operating budget, additional funding is needed to add to, update, and maintain aging cameras, microphones, lights, editing stations, and broadcasting equipment.
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F I N D WO O D S TO C K M AGA Z I N E AT W W W. M O U N TA I N V I E W P U B L I S H I N G . C O M