7928-R5_NewGloucester_2020-2021_AnnualReport_Web

ANNUAL REPORT Cable TV Committee

The Committee continued its basic mission to record and broadcast public meetings and events. Except for the final month of the fiscal year, due to Covid-19 restrictions on large gatherings, meetings and candidate forums were held and recorded by Town staff using Zoom teleconferencing technology. The recordings were converted, uploaded for video-on-demand and played back on the Town’s TV channel. When in-person meetings at the Meetinghouse were resumed, they were broadcast live on channels 3 and 1302, live-streamed, recorded and made available on the Internet as video-on-demand. Staffing of video operators for Meetinghouse meeting coverage was provided by a part-time employee with hours based on need, backed by a volunteer who also maintains the video server recording and playback, as well as being responsible for all technical matters. To accommodate the re-purposing of the Community Building, the Committee’s video editing and storage room was vacated, with the equipment going to the Meetinghouse, primarily in the TV control room. Regarding the upcoming Cable Franchise Agreement renegotiation, no further action involved the Committee members. Weekend (Fri.-Sun.) “public access” programming consisted of recorded virtual (Zoom) meetings, forums and events broadcast soon after their occurrence, 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. All recorded Meetinghouse and Zoom meetings were sent to the Town’s video-on demand service, then trimmed and published at http://newgloucester.viebit.co m for access via Internet. Meetinghouse meetings were also streamed via https://townhallstreams.com/towns/newgloucesterme. DVDs of the Meetinghouse meetings are retained at the Town Office. Zoom meetings are retained as MP4 files for access by computers. The library retains DVDs of annual and special Town Meetings. In addition, all meetings and other content are retained on “hard drives” retired from the video server. The Committee encourages those desiring greater communication within our town to help us expand our utilization of the cable channel and video-on-demand web site. Respectfully submitted, Richard Erwin, Chair

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