Your Town Meeting TV is Remote But We Remain Near

April 20, 2020

Channel 17/Town Meeting TV offices remain closed, but we remain open and active in support of open democracy and free speech.

Streaming and Archiving Your Meetings
Town Meeting TV is recording, streaming, airing, and archiving your remote municipal meetings. We are keeping an eye on the new open meeting provisions for this time of social distancing as summarized here by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. 

Our municipal partners, are using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting and other platforms to host public community meetings. Our remote field producers ‘attend’ via any of these platforms, add titles and live stream the meeting to your municipal Youtube playlist. Viewers see the meeting and a telephone number to call in and connect while watching live. Your point of contact for meeting production is Dan Logan, at maketv [at] cctv [dot] org

Submit a Video or Announcement For Airing

Send us your video update. Record it on your phone or webcam. We can add titles and information screens. We will air it, share it online, and archive it! www.cctv.org/SendYourVideos We are continuing to share announcements on our televised bulletin board and have created a compilation of up-to-date local resources on our website. Want help with this? We can interview you online about initiatives in your community. You can start your own community based talk show. Here are simple steps for using Zoom as a remote studio. Send your ideas to morourke [at] cctv [dot] org
 

More Local Meetings Being Recorded?

We are aware that many of our municipal partners are recording board and commission meetings not usually covered by Town Meeting TV during this remote meeting period. Town Meeting TV can facilitate the archiving of this extra meeting content. Please be in touch with us if you have extra meetings to add to your Youtube playlists or the online content library that we maintain for your municipality. 
 

Continued Community Content

We have launched the series Caremongers: Dispatches From the Front Line exploring local initiatives in response to COVID-19. Share your ideas with us for the series! We have hosted remote training sessions with munis and community producers on creating and submitting content while our studios remain closed. We are beginning to receive content from community producers who are getting creative with remote TV production!
 

Partnership and Advocacy

More than ever we are working with other local access centers around the state to share skills, messaging, and advocacy for community media, free speech, and open government. The lack of 100% broadband penetration and challenges for distance learning are weighing on the minds of Vermont legislators. Working with Vermont Access Network, CCTV/Town Meeting TV is continuing to advance our proposals for a statewide public network and for generating public funds from the private use of the State’s right-of-ways.
 

Head’s UP! ‘Channel 17’ is moving!
For those of you used to tuning in on Comcast cable channel 17 to find Channel 17/Town Meeting TV, please be aware that as of May 28th, we will be seen ONLY on Comcast Channel 1087. On the Burlington Telecom system we will remain seen on channels 17, 217, and 317. For more details on why that is happening visit here. Yes, we are also working on a new name!

 

What are You Learning?

We love hearing from you during this time of disruption and innovation. What are you learning from remote democracy? How will you implement continued remote participation in future face-to-face meetings? 
 

We stand by to assist local community leaders and elected officials to use this time effectively while maintaining the best open meeting standards. Let us know how we can support you.
 

Please be in touch!