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The potential of technology
Local access cable comes to the Bethel campus
by Melanie Zuercher
As any entrepreneur can tell you, starting something new is seldom easy. At least at first, the main reward comes from imagining the possibilities.
Tim Buller ’96 is heading up one of Bethel College’s newest ventures, into the world of television broadcasting, with the move of Newton’s local access cable channel, Channel 7, from the Educational Technology Center on the Newton High School campus to Bethel’s Radio-TV (RTV) Lab, in the basement of the Mennonite Library and Archives, last June.
“This local access has been provided to the city of Newton by the cable company – now Cox – that negotiated the first franchise about 30 years ago,” Buller says. “Back then, as an incentive to a municipality to purchase the franchise, the cable company would offer to build a studio and provide the equipment for local access to cable broadcasting.”
Channel 7’s first studio was located in the basement of Newton Public Library. Later it moved to the Educational Technology Center of Newton Public Schools (USD 373) where it has been basically a community bulletin board – a computer running slides of announcements of community events.
About three years ago, USD 373 superintendent John Morton initiated discussions that included Bethel about the possibility of expanding Channel 7 by making it a cooperative venture. Not much happened for a couple of years, but then someone from the city learned from a Cox representative that a cooperative in Garden City had taken over the local access channel there, with shared funding.
More regular meetings began in early 2006, Buller says, and the group that evolved included Bethel, USD 373, Newton Healthcare Corporation (Newton Medical Center) and the city of Newton, which early in 2007 signed an “interlocal agreement” outlining the Newton Community Channel Cooperative with the system finally coming online in the RTV lab in mid-June.
Essentially, the agreement amounts to the other three entities splitting the equipment costs three ways and then agreeing to pay a third of the annual operating costs each, Buller says. Bethel provides specification, ordering, installation, operation, support and maintenance of all equipment; staffing (half of Buller’s job is with Bethel’s Information and Media Services and half of that consists of his position as “Newton Channel coordinator”); and a secure, accessible location for the channel’s head-end, recording and production equipment.
Some of the new equipment Buller has purchased over the past several months includes an automated system consisting of two computers that can run the community announcements slide show and are accessible via the Web anywhere there is internet access; a video server with more than a terabyte of storage space; the head-end equipment that generates, produces and controls the signal that goes to Cox; a large studio camera; audio equipment; and a Macintosh computer for editing and video production software.
“We have the ability to show any kind of taped content,” Buller says. So far, that has meant doing some tape-delayed broadcasts of football games, in addition to broadcasting several soccer games and the Fall Festival football game vs. Southwestern College live. The potential to broadcast convocations and other events on the Bethel campus is there as well.
“We have the equipment to record or broadcast live from anywhere on campus that has a data network connection – anywhere you can plug a computer into an Ethernet jack,” Buller adds. “That’s how we do games from the stadium. We could do that from the gym, Krehbiel Auditorium, Mem Hall, the chapel, anywhere there’s an event.”
In addition, the hope is that other members of the cooperative will eventually begin producing their own content to be aired on Channel 7. Possibilities include educational programs on recycling, fire prevention or crime prevention, city government meetings or health-related material.
And that’s where the challenges start, Buller says. Everyone thinks this is a great idea, he notes, “but everyone is already overworked and overcommitted and it’s hard to muster the energy and motivation to tackle something new.”
Nevertheless, he sees some immediate benefits to having Channel 7 housed at Bethel.
“For one thing, we now have the capability to easily broadcast our content,” he says. “Second is the fact that we’re in a cooperative with these other organizations. It’s another way to interact with the community and to deconstruct some of the barriers and misperceptions that always seem to exist between college and community. It’s a good connection to some of the other big players.”
Finally, he says, “we have access to technology and equipment we didn’t before and wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise.”
So far six students have worked with Buller to use and learn from the facilities of Channel 7, four during a June course and two currently, in a directed study called Multi-Media Production.
Tyler Goertzen, senior from Hesston and a communication arts major with a minor in business, is in the production class. As part of that, he has been learning to use the Final Cut Pro 6 editing software and has filmed several of the games that have been shown on Channel 7. He and senior Braden Dragomir, Salt Spring Island, B.C., are also working on a promotional piece for Admissions.
“It’s a good resume pad,” Goertzen says. “How I look at it is, if I go to an advertising or marketing firm that wants to keep most of its work in-house, I already know how to film, broadcast and edit.”
The college needs to figure out ways to get more students involved, Buller says, not only for what they can learn but because of sheer logistics.
For now, it’s going to take creativity and a lot of patience. New things can happen as people become aware of the resource available through Channel 7 and the equipment housed at Bethel.
For example, Buller points to the tape-delayed broadcast on a Tuesday night of the Bethel vs. Sterling football game. “The next morning, there was a voice mail from someone who wanted to know ‘what do we have to do to get Newton High School games on Channel 7,’” Buller says. As a result, several of the games have been broadcast.
Buller dreams of having high school classes learn how to use the equipment to produce their own TV shows in the RTV Lab’s studio, which according to the agreement is available to the cooperative members 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Since we came online in June, we’re still figuring out workflow, how to manage things and make them run smoothly,” Buller says. “None of us here know much about this technology – we’re not broadcast people – but we’re figuring it out.”