Continuing the Community Connections Throw Back Edition to celebrate KOCT's 30 years of service to our north county community!

We have another election in November of this year so it’s appropriate & fun to look back to past elections. Here, in 2002, are the candidates for Mayor of Oceanside on the Voice of Oceanside. Left is incumbent Jim Wood, Host Tim Aldrich, an unknown candidate and Rocky Chavez—then a City Councilmember and now a state Assemblyman, 76^th District.

Talk about a lot of candidates for City Council! Too many to name but standing is the former host of the Senior Scene, Dick Johnson,  and it looks like the Flag Man, Alex Kapitanski, provided the set decoration.

Late 90’s?

One of our most popular shows in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was Lawyers on the Line by the North County Bar Association. Viewers could call in with general legal questions and the show featured some of the many talented Lawyers and Judges in North County tackling a variety of legal issues & topics.

HealthCare Matters (Top) was a health program KOCT produced that was hosted by radio personality, Meg Banta who now teaches Radio at Palomar College. KOCT’s Inside Oceanside, below, was a video magazine about Oceanside that was initially hosted by their Public Information Officer, Don Williamson and Camp Pendleton’s Amy Forsythe. Amy later served numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and continues to enjoy a varied communications career in the US Navy. 

The Good News and the Bad News About Public Access TV

On the completely great side, the California Legislature passed AJR 39, a joint resolution from California's State Government asking the federal government to please fix the clause in the 1984 Cable Act that restricts much public funding of cable access channels to capital only without operational support. This clause, which is supported by virtually no one, has contributed to the closure of community media centers across the state of California.

On the less wonderful side, a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rulemaking process on cable franchise renewals appears to be taking the path of least resistance under the leadership of Commissioner Peevey, and endorsing a rubberstamp process that ignores service level to the community and complaints received during the cable service renewal process. Media Alliance's latest set of (somewhat futile) reply comments can be found here.

More news in support of PEG channels like KOCT:

And recently, at the 82^nd Annual Meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, a resolution was made calling for the restructuring of the 1984 Cable Act. The resolution, which was passed unanimously, encourages the U. S. Congress to amend federal legislation pertaining to community access television stations. These stations like KOCT, currently receive Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) fees. However, PEG funds. must only be used for capital improvements. The resolution calls for allowing those funds to be used for operation costs as well.

With the support of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, KOCT urges the U.S. Congress to make the minor legislative changes that will allow PEG fees to be used for the operations of our community access television station. The resolution supports the power of public access stations. Community television channels provide transparency and access for local governments with their residents and business owners by broadcasting City Council and hospital  meetings, voter information for local elections, topical talk shows on local issues and topics and other events like the recent Independence  parade. 

One of the services KOCT has provided for Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista residents since 1997 is coverage of the Tri-City Medical Center’s Board of Directors meetings.  Tri-City is one of a handful of community hospitals in San Diego County and local homeowners fund and care about this important medical center.  In fact the reason we began covering these meetings is that in the mid-90’s there was talk about privatizing the hospital. Community members and the Board of Directors themselves felt the community needed to be informed if such a decision was going to be made and coverage of their meetings was the first step in keeping the public informed about the workings of their hospital.  

Pictured in today’s blog are some of the talented young people who provide this television service. KOCT rolls its sophisticated Mobile Studio to the hospital and set ups a four-camera shoot on the 4^th Thursday of every month and documents the meetings in a style we call ‘live on tape’.  It requires 7 crew members to cover these meetings and every meeting is shown 4 times on KOCT as well as shown on the government channels in the City of Vista and Carlsbad. KOCT also makes each meeting available as Video On Demand (VOD) too.

The Affordable Care Act has brought to the publics attention the cost and importance of health care and KOCT is proud that we’ve been bringing the public’s attention to our local health care facility for seventeen years.  A shout out and thanks to the KOCT talented crew who carry the tripods, cameras and cables down a flight of stairs once a month to keep our community informed! 

As we mentioned in an earlier blog KOCT has completed the field recording of Community Health Matters, a new series about health issues and north county health resources. But that’s only half of the production work needed to bring this 16-part series to north county residents.

KOCT uses the Final Cut Editing system on Apple’s Macintosh computers.  Editing is the time-intensive part of production that few viewers are aware of but where the production value is added and polished. First the footage must be digitized or ingested and stored in virtual bins on Final Cut. When shooting this 30-minute program in the field there are many ‘takes’ to each segment sometimes there are technical problem or the guest needs to start over---these shots are eliminated and only the best takes are stored and then pieced together on a virtual time-line. After the story-line is constructed the editor will add PSA’s, graphics, titles and ‘b’ roll (footage to illustrate the interviews). So, for example, in the program on Robotic Assisted Surgery you’ll get to see these sophisticated new surgical tools in action while the surgeon is being interviewed. The final program is then sent to KOCT’s servers for airing, to our website for VOD and to the Oceanside duplicator, PMI, http://koct.org/ for DVD duplications.

KOCT is blessed to have many creative editors on this series and one of them is Angela Wong, Angela is very familiar with Community Health Matters as she was also the Camera and Teleprompter operator for the series.  She is originally from South Florida and attended Ithaca College (in upstate New York) where she studied Cinema Production. She graduated in 2012 and now works at KOCT and freelances on the side. Angela, despite not having studied Spanish in any particular level, enjoys editing the English and Spanish CHM series anyways. She told us this about the new health series: “With editing, I’m excited to see the show truly come together and finally stand on its own.”

Community Health Matters was funded by a Tri-City Healthcare District Community Grant and Tri-City Medical Center. It is collaboration with Vista Community Clinic, North County Health Services and KOCT. The series will start airing in late February and free DVD’s of the programs will be available at the hospital and clinics too. Stay tuned for more information.

Whew! After two long production days KOCT has concluded the first part of our upcoming new television series: Community Health Matters. 

This past week we shot 8 programs in both Spanish and English on Heart & Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes. KOCT’s Station Manager, Jake Rush directed these two heavy production days and he was assisted by a talented production team including Assistant Director Angela Miranda, and Addison Wolf who ran the audio board. (And we wouldn’t have rolled our mobile studio to record these programs if not for Chief Engineer Bill Peters who quickly diagnosed a battery problem!).

On the special television set for these shoots were Shawn Lennon, Maya Maravilla &Tamara Ilich on camera, also Angela Wong on Teleprompter. Tom Reeser was the floor director and Isabel Escalle from Tri-City Medical Center was our script advisor. Our host for the series is Univision’s Ricardo Berron.

Angela Wong on Teleprompter

Host Ricardo Berron with guests Jorge Gaspar Vista Community Clinic and Dr. Samuel Poniachik North County Health Services

In this coming month, right here on our Community Connection blog, we’ll show you the next part of the process:  The Art of editing this new series and the talented young people at KOCT who perform this time-consuming task.

Our goal is to start airing the first of 8 new programs in late February.  The programs will be shown in English and Spanish and, besides airing on KOCT, we will distribute them to our local library for check out and DVD’s will be available at North County Health Services, Vista Community Clinic, Tri-City Medical Center and at KOCT.

These programs were funded by a grant from The Community Healthcare Alliance Committee of the Tri-City Healthcare District and with funding from Tri-City Medical Center and from KOCT.  They are special tailored to emphasis the many health care resources right here in North County.