Amherst Insider: ACTV director tells Amherst "we're way more than 'Wayne's World'"

By NOAH HOFFENBERG

Published on November 20, 2009

Everyone knows what cable access is, right? It's roundtable discussions on squirrel hunting, basement-based programming and plenty of dead air, right? Wrong, says ACTV executive director Jim Lescault.

"We have to overcome this 'Wayne's World' mentality ... which in most people's mind is bad audio, green faces, real boring," said Lescault in a recent interview. "When I first came on, the bar was so low, that anything we did to improve it was magnificent, and we did a awful lot to bring that bar way up."

Lescault is on a mission to get more of the community involved in ACTV, a nonprofit that operates on Comcast channels 12 (public access), 15 (educational access), and 17 (government access). There's about 250 paying members now, and Lescault is seeking to double that number by this time next year.

"Many of the members have been here for quite a while, but we're seeing fewer and fewer shows coming from certain segments," said Lescault. "Therefore, it really is a critical time to get in younger people and different organizations to belong and become more active to get programming up."

To draw in members, ACTV is rolling out new classes, a revamped Web site and continuing to upgrade its 246 College St. building and video technology to make the cable station a hub of community activism and activity.

As part of its contract with Comcast, the local cable provider, ACTV receives about $450,000 disbursed over 10 years to support its capital expenses and gets an additional $250,000 a year for operations, said Lescault.

Lescault also changed the administrative structure of the station. He created an outreach worker position in August, a media coordinator post in December 2008, and hired a government access coordinator earlier that year. Operations at the station are handled by all of these people, and local events and programming are filmed and produced by staff, interns from area colleges and members.

In the two years that Lescault has run ACTV, there have been about $160,000 in improvements to its infrastructure and offerings, including a new digital server, which did away with VHS recordings, a rewired Town Room in Town Hall for meeting coverage, a new "road bo"x for on-scene coverage in the community, new Macintosh computers and upgraded software.

An annual membership fee of $10 - "probably the cheapest ticket in town," said Lescault - allows members access to cut-rate classes in video field work and editing. Being a part of Amherst or Pelham life is requisite enough to be a member of ACTV, said Lescault.

Classes are held once or twice a month, each consisting of five hours of training over two nights, which ends in certification. They cost $25 each.

Once members finish the two classes, they're asked by ACTV to shoot a practicum, just to demonstrate that they know what they're doing, said Lescault.

Members then can pitch show ideas, and reserve equipment for a 24 period to take out and record material. The finished product is then aired on one the nonprofit's cable channels.

"That's the trade off, that we end up with a show that the whole community gets to see," said Lescault.

More classes

ACTV intends to offer additional classes on computer and media literacy, how to conduct interviews, post production and community-based journalism.

"That's how we see civic journalism: training people in technology that they may not have access to, and creating the distribution networks for them to talk to not only their community but beyond," said Lescault.

Sean Sullivan, a senior at the University of Massachusetts who blogs, writes and films electronic video for The Collegian and other local news outfits, recently held a workshop for Amherst Regional High School students who run their student news operation out of the ACTV facility. Lescault said the students enjoyed the discussions of when to use electronic media versus print, or video versus other forms of storytelling.

The efforts to get more community involvement at ACTV appear to be working, said Lescault. From last year to this year, member-produced programming went up 28 percent.

All of these new endeavors add to the colorful mix of programs that ACTV already airs. Shows like "You Know What's Bull----?," "Democracy Now!" and "Conversations with Isaac Ben Ezra" are just a few in the line-up, with ACTV drawing from locally produced videos and others produced in cable access stations across the country.

One of hottest shows right now "Polka Time," said Lescault.

"If we are one minute late in getting 'Polka Time' on, the phone rings," said Lescault. "Everyone talks about 'Polka Time.'"

ACTV production manager James O'Connor even replays polka events from decades ago, which has garnered quite a following.

Wendy Bloomenthal, of Florence, ACTV's outreach worker, said the station will soon be open to producing promotional videos for nonprofits and businesses at reasonable prices.

"We have the technology and we have the resources to do it. Why not do it locally?" said Bloomenthal.

She said that, as an example of reaching minority groups within Amherst, the town's Cambodian outreach worker wants to bring in about 30 local Cambodians for a four-state teleconference.

For Lescault, these improvements are a necessary step in the evolution of a cable access station that's been serving viewers for the past 33 years.

"It's one of the oldest in the country. That should be something to be very proud about," said Lescault. "Being new to this community, I would say about 90 percent of the people I meet either have been a board member or have been in here in a show. Everyone's got an ACTV story."

To see the extensive line-up of ACTV shows, visit www.actvamherst.com.

Know of someone doing something notable in town? Email Noah Hoffenberg at nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com and let him know, for possible inclusion in an Amherst Insider column.