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Date: 3/1/2021
GRANBY – Granby Community Access and Media (GCAM) is challenging community members to help them keep accommodating and programming for the town with their lightbulb campaign.
GCAM Program Coordinator, Alex LaMarche, said since the coronavirus pandemic began last year they had increased the number of events they live-streamed media for. “People started catching on to us live streaming the meetings because they’re all remote and it was TV for us to do. We’ve been doing a lot that’s COVID based and COVID relevant,” he said.
LaMarche said that while they’ve been doing “different programming,” they haven’t necessarily been doing a lot of programming. “The amount of programming has been low. Right now, I’m trying to come up with different ways to get more programming,” he said.
Two of the biggest events they produced last year, he said, was the Eastmeadow teacher parade and the class of 2020 graduation. One aspect of the parade that he said he enjoyed was being able to ask the public for photos to include in the stream. “I got so much I was able to stagger them throughout the production,” he said. LaMarche added that both events were learning experiences.
“The other one was the live-streamed graduation. Did we have hiccups? Yes, but it was appreciated throughout the community. We’re going to be doing it a lot different this year, we learned our lessons,” he said.
He said while they had not been directly impacted by decreased funding, they had seen a slight decrease in funds from people discontinuing their subscription with cable. “We get quarterly checks from Comcast, and when someone doesn’t subscribe to cable we’re not getting that portion of the money. It’s not much when someone unsubscribes, but it adds up,” he said.
He said this may be a bigger problem in the future as he said “how many people are going to be subscribing to cable in the next 10 years?” LaMarche also pointed to two pieces of legislation currently going through the Massachusetts Statehouse that would require larger subscription-based streaming websites to essentially pay “a franchise fee to the state.” This, he said, would allow for that revenue trickle down to municipalities and eventually public access networks.
Until then, he said any and all donations would help GCAM continue to serve the community and provide programming. LaMarche said this is where he came up with the idea for the Lightbulb Campaign. The idea for the campaign is for 30 people to donate $8 a day, the amount it costs to keep the studio’s lights on for a day.
“I figured out $8 a day throughout the month is what it costs to keep our light and equipment. The media center, we have to keep our computers on if we have to export something overnight, depending on how long it is, it’s going to take a while,” he said. LaMarche added that they were “always uploading to YouTube'' and had a playback system “that pretty much broadcasts all our programming to the town.”
“That runs pretty much 24/7, it also carries our bulletin board too, which has a lot of information that people rely on,” he said.
LaMarche said while a couple of people had donated to GCAM so far, the process of collecting donations had just begun. “It was just around, I believe, November the board approved to let me have a PayPal button for us,” he said. “We’re not looking to get rich off this, but a few extra bucks here or there doesn’t hurt us either.”
However, he said they would continue to provide programming and were listening to community feedback and recommendations that had been given as a result of a recent survey. “We are listening to everyone, or at least most everyone’s requests and suggestions. We’re listening,” he said. “We’re here for the community, this is Granby’s channel, so we want it to be tailored to the community as much as possible.”
Donations can be made by visiting http://granbymedia.com or by mailing a check written out to GCAM Inc. to P.O. Box 379, Granby, MA 01033.