by Dave Suitor

I’ve been involved with Access TV for about 5 years now, but as the saying goes “I don’t get out much”. The 2009 ACM Conference was the first ACM event that I have attended and it was great!!

The 2-day Conference was held at the Champlain College in Burlington Vermont. A trade show and dining area were set up in the gym of the college’s student center. The college’s cafeteria located there at the student center provided breakfast and lunch. The work sessions were held in the school’s multi-media lecture rooms. This was a very nice location overlooking Lake Champlain.

While I use a cell phone and email, I admit I’m behind the curve when it comes to social media. The conference offered a series of talks to help people like me to learn about Twitter, Facebook and blogs and how they can become part of a station’s mix of communications tools. Most stations seem to be using Facebook sites and many producers like Twitter to keep their audience informed, While Twitter and Facebook may not be for me personally, I understand a lot more about them now which is important as our patrons and viewers do use the new media.

One of the subjects of interest to many attendees was relations with cable companies and some of the coming regulation changes. The cable companies are in a very competitive media market and would like nothing better than to shed their community access TV responsibilities. How or if the cable companies are going to fund access centers is a question mark, but one thing that is certain is that the relationship is going to change as we go forward. One speaker felt that in the future an access center should plan on only about 25% of their funding coming from the cable companies.

The NHCCM was well represented at the Spring ACM-NE Conference.

A great session was off ered on the changing model of an access TV center. The traditional model of a producer having to come to the center to create a video and have it broadcast has changed. The advent of inexpensive video cameras, simple to learn and use editing systems, and distribution channels like YouTube, mean that many patrons don’t need what a traditional studio off ers. Granted, a video produced at an access center may be of better quality compared to one made in a studio. Because of the simplicity of the available systems, we need to think about the services that we offer. We need to be a “media center” as opposed to an “access TV center”. Our new patrons have video skills and the access, we need to figure out how to best support them. We need to stay relevant.

Besides all the great learning sessions, the conference provided a trade show featuring some of the latest video production gear and services. The company representatives supporting the trade show offered tons of technical advice and solutions.

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