001uh my name is uh tom wright i am the uh cable chair for the um cable commission and um i am in saleem michigan and i'm honored to be part of this committee and this cable access television station i am lisa wondrous i am the communication director for the city of ann arbor welcome to the cable commissions wednesday may 5th 2021 regular meeting um we'll start with roll call and due to recent changes to the open meetings act we now require all our virtual attendee members to state the city and state that they are um calling in from so we'll start with uh roll call tony ramirez i'm tony ramirez i'm in grand marais michigan thank you from the uv as you can see the wood stove thank you tony carol dunnitz i'm carol donetsk
002and i'm here in ann arbor david pittman tom wright tom wright i am in the city of celine and um that's it that's it zach damon hello everyone good afternoon i am zach damon i'm a commissioner on the cable communications commission for the city of ann arbor and i'm coming to you from ann arbor michigan and we do have bonnie gabowitz who is attending from ctn studios and we're having some technical difficulties but um she is in ann arbor michigan um attending virtually and very quickly um i would like to introduce our newest cable commissioner who we're thrilled to have um on with us now is zach damon many of you may already know zach who is a ctn producer and he is very familiar with ctn and our services and we welcome him um
003are looking forward to working with him so please welcome back so we can move on to the agenda now tom back to the approval of the agenda all right i'd like to uh have our board approve the agenda minutes from our february meeting actually we need to approve the agenda first if i can have someone move um to approve the may 5th agenda if i had a first and a second from someone i moved to approve the may 5th agenda thank you and zach ii great thank you now on to the minutes of february [Music] does anyone want to move to approve the minutes i move to approve the minutes a second thank you tony so public comments i'm just going to give a few minutes because at this time anyone who wanted to call
004in to participate in public comment needs to dial 1 2 0 6 three three seven nine seven two three and enter the webinar id number nine seven five seven two oh seven four one one and then you can raise your hand and press star 9 on your phone and we will just identify callers by the last three of their phone number if we do have anyone who calls in so we'll just give a few minutes we typically do not have a lot of public comment at the cable commission meeting but we can just give a few minutes if anyone um is going to call in and share their public comments i'm going to mute myself my bulldog is snoring very loudly okay we might want to move on in the agenda and um if greg
005mcdonald would like to review the ctn quarterly report that was included in the packet that would be great greg okay so we have the quarterly report for january through march and i'll just go over the uh the highlights from our report the activity highlights uh during this quarter we started providing city council meeting caption transcripts for posting online we do captioning provide captioning for city council meetings planning commission and commission on disability issues and this during this quarter we started we get transcripts of those captions so we start providing them to the clerk's office for them to post online for people to view after the meeting they want to we also premiered a new program show your love ann arbor uh that we started to help uh sort of highlight some of our local businesses
006businesses that are sort of unique to our area staff attended two dei trainings uh diversity equality and inclusion um it was something all the city staff did during this time uh we had a premiere of our 2021 sustainability forum series i think they're up to the fourth or fifth episode in the series now um we got bids for a new automated captioning system which actually just got approved for purchase monday night by the city council and that will be a way for us to expand uh the number of programming that we do captioning for down the road once we get it all situated uh we produced our sixth season of let's watch with the ann amber film festival uh we began coverage of the council of the commons meetings that's the group that is overseeing
007the uh i guess it's the commons park which is the the library lot the top of the underground structure next to the library the downtown library we also got some more equipment uh gorilla pods and griptight mounts for the smartphones and some other little odds and ends for public to check out uh help facilitate people doing their production work out at home or out in the field uh and we did purchase new macbooks to replace the current crop that we have those are still in the queue they're not ready yet but in the meantime we also got some gear to allow people to check out the imacs which we had in our edit suite so that people could actually take the edit suite home with them instead of having to come in then we have
008our programming numbers for the last quarter you can see 58 meetings that we covered um and 31 additional programs that our staff produced uh the public access channel we still get a lot of programs submitted you can see 207 programs were submitted and a lot of 184 programs premiered during this quarter um and then on the educational channel we had 172 programs premiere uh and we have those board of education meetings we're still doing those uh and then our video on demand our youtube had 24 740 hits um i'm not sure exactly why but the top one for the last three or for this quarter was for all three months was a psa on breaking down boxes it's for it's like less than a minute i think and it's basically about recycling how to collapse
009the box when you put it into your recycling bin i have a feeling it was probably put on a page that a lot of people were going to and that's why i became the top hit every month uh followed by city council which is usually in there and that's the report to this last quarter thanks greg tom for regular business we were going to talk about the um or provide an update from the subcommittee meeting that was held on march 24th do you want to take the ball and run with it on providing that update certainly um what's happened in the last year is i've been able to partner with non-profit organizations two in particular one is racing for heroes that's a program that helps veterans with traumatic brain injury primarily become part of racing
010crews and the reason is it helps give them a new purpose and trains them for new jobs um we actually uh have done a couple of live programs it's broadcast every week out of new rochelle new york and then we also have um actual videos from the racetracks which we merge in with the program in addition to that i now produce a disability program called danny's miracle angel network the d-man foundation we've um put in over 112 videos that we've put in in the last three to four weeks we have a regular time slot and um in addition to that so that i could be better at doing these sorts of things melissa bondi had me actually attend some state of michigan acm meetings so i could learn best practices from those uh organizations throughout
011the state and um what the result of the meeting was is that for danny's miracle angel network and for the d-man and for um racing for heroes we're looking at actually getting short vignettes broadcasting them and making that as part of the uh grant making we're doing to major foundations the money is going to the foundations but part of the appeal to the funding organizations is that we broadcast on ctn and then also apply to have those videos broadcast on alliance stations first throughout michigan and beyond mike wazner who's the head of the alliance for community media nationwide has given his input given his input as to how we can work and uh increase visibility of our programming here in ann arbor so i'm most appreciative and we'll see how things go and we'll take
012the baby steps and um i hope in the future to report back that um people with disabilities veterans etc have been helped because of the visibility their causes have gained on community access television that's it this might be a good time to um it fits here but it also could have come during staff commission comments but um zach and i had met recently um to do a new cable commission orientation and he has been working with a company and doing some work that he had wanted to bring to the cable commission's attention so it was an ideal time for that for him to fill you in on the work that he's doing and some possible um training video exploration that ctn might be able to um work towards the caveat being obviously that we still
013have our trainer position that's open and until ctn um is reopened um which all city buildings are closed right now per executive order and staff who can work remotely are so until that's lifted the governor had just updated those measures as to when workers would be able to be back in offices um and that's what we would be following until that time comes um we're not going to be filling the trainer position because that's not really a position that can work well virtually um so zach did you want to uh take the reins and um fill the commission in on the work that you've been doing and some of the things that you and i have talked about sure absolutely and thank you lisa and thank you to tom wright and um all the commissioners
014for the great work that they're doing tom uh tremendous work that you're doing for racing for heroes and uh for as well as the d-man foundation uh just just amazing stuff so congratulations but yes the program um that lisa was alluding to um i came across the disability channel and they're a great uh disability television network out of toronto and um the reason i wanted to bring this up to the cable commission was because they actually um already have a virtual program that is put together uh to train uh people with disabilities who are interested in media and ultimately get them employment and jobs a little bit to what tom alluded to at the racing for heroes foundation the disability channel has media training programs for people with disabilities specifically and they already put together
015the packages in toronto it's been hugely successful they've partnered with mohawk college in toronto and it's been an amazing program and when i got contacted and they said hey zach you know we're expanding from canada to other states in the u.s i immediately thought of ann arbor and i immediately thought of our community because i thought to myself my goodness how amazing would it be to have a media training program completely virtual and completely online for people with disabilities in ann arbor and of course you know it could give them some great skills in terms of learning how to do podcasting uh again learning how to do some of the other different skills in media but i also thought you know what a better place to really bring this up and partner um and talk
016to you know greg and melissa and all of you about you know how the disability channel and possibly ctn uh going forward you know could possibly explore a partnership down the road and of course nobody can make any commitments at this time but what i would be willing to do uh greg and melissa and lisa is um at least set up a time for all of us to uh to to e-meet if you will and uh and kind of just talk have them talk about their awesome program and the success that they've had and then sort of explore that option but they're called the disability channel uh you can visit them at thedisabilitychannel.ca and take a look at their content there and then we actually just launched in march the disability channel today show detroit
017um and so i'm talking a lot about what the disability community is doing in detroit uh and stuff and of course uh you know really involved with that as well but um i just think it would be a great segue because it really isn't to where anybody would have to reinvent the wheel because it's already there the biggest thing is um just looking at the program and then just kind of seeing what that would entail in terms of you know uh talking to ctn and how that could sort of blend together so can i make a statement sure uh my statement is the non-profits that i'm working with in the disability area include um first step foundation which is part of mike barwitz um he actually produced a show on disability on the discovery channel
018called american muscle they have an entire range of programs and i'm talking to them they're now in four different states throughout the united states they have a wealth of stuff i just met with the father of the producers of the show uh the pharah brothers and i let them know about community access tv nationwide and how we should be getting new eyeballs on their work and being that they deal with like brock miller who was paralyzed and mike helped to walk i think our content could go quite nicely towards that uh d-man foundation helps musicians who have disabilities actually work to get recording contracts and i'm working with veterans agencies nationwide operation encore that's actually going to be appearing in film festivals throughout the united states so if we leverage zach's contacts with some of
019my contacts i feel that we could have truly unique content and um melissa helped me put together a flyer that we're sending out through the mpeg network which all the people can pick up our content if we do it properly we could contact the different cable access stations throughout the state of michigan and see if they could perhaps pick up content obviously there's work to do before that would happen but i think i would love to see ann arbor to be the hub if you will of this sort of disability programming and um i think we have some great great content and the key is simply strategically planning and taking baby steps so that we use what zack has what i have and what um ctn has to make a difference and with melissa bondi
020being on the alliance for community media board for central states region it could give us a great opportunity for next year to perhaps put some of our content up for the philo awards for next year and i will say that the ctn staff in ann arbor has been invaluable to me and finding new ways to get content out i'm even being contacted by commercial radio and tv stations asked to put together electronic press kits and send some of our b-roll because they don't have anything like us that's phenomenal it really is and uh i completely agree with you tom i think there's a great synergy there and um i'm happy to to you know connect you into this as well and and send you more information i would be honored to do that i've always
021admired what you did and have done zach i loved when you had your show at ctn and was always privileged to be there and i think you're a great addition to our board and if we can find ways to extend our reach i think that's great thank you for your kind words tom that means a lot and you know obviously uh a community is a big team so uh thank you for your kind words and you know i wouldn't be anywhere without the uh the work of many other people so thank you to all of them and thank you tom for the compliments i think that sounds like definitely some um great ideas to explore and like i said i think the timing of it um hopefully will be perfect in the sense of us
022hiring a new trainer who we would definitely want to be instrumental in evaluating this company and their work and i didn't want to negate though um and greg will need to assist me though in mentioning the online training that we do have and i just wanted to make sure that everyone was familiar with the online training that ctn does have and if you're not then we definitely need to promote that more to our producers and our clients um as well as send out a link to our commission so greg do you want to talk briefly um about the program training that we do currently offer um yeah we've had a online training service that we've uh contracted with for a while um excuse me um but it's actually transitioning right now uh because it got
023bought out i guess by another by linkedin so we're going through a transition process so what to see after that gets done how things smooth out and then we'll be able to share that so people can make use of it again uh it was one of those things that i think the the trainers would use from time to time um as they are helping people understand how to produce their programs so they would look for something online that might help in a particular situation that's awesome you guys i had no idea about that so i hope uh you know that resource can uh also be promoted and prevalent as well thank you greg are there any other commission or staff comments that we wanted to provide sorry bonnie you'll have to if if you had
024anything um you can let us know via email okay zach i'm hoping that you can connect with me separately and i'd love to see and get your ideas on some of the stuff that i'm producing and see prior to the evaluation by the new trainer position what we might be able to find for content to supplement what i'm doing absolutely uh absolutely i'm uh definitely on board to do that and um i can be in touch with you um you know after this meeting to uh to set something up and and move that forward um then yeah but then as far as um also just getting everyone familiar um it would be nice greg or melissa as well as tom if you guys are interested in just meeting the staff of the disability channel and
025kind of finding out what their success story is already and kind of what they're doing and because because they're really excited about ann arbor they love the community they know of it they know of the university of michigan um and all that stuff and you know and once i mentioned you guys they were like oh my gosh zach you know you got to connect us with uh ctn out there and stuff so you know greg um you know would you be interested um in just meeting with them you know for a few minutes okay i think that would be a good idea we just might need to um do it again once the trainer position is hired but definitely to have a introduction meeting um and i think um including melissa as well yeah um
026that if you guys set up a meeting with a company just to learn about them and in the meantime um we are hopeful this summer um that we'll have a better idea of when we're reopening and get the ball rolling and getting that trainer position you know posted and start hiring for that um and tony can you tell me one more time where you're calling in from because i did not write it down and i thought i'd remember and i have to include it in the minutes that's grand marae michigan how do you spell the marae m-a-r-a-i-s it's one of the beautiful spots thank you thank you um i think we're ready for someone to suggest an adjournment in a second i'll suggest an adjournment thank you all for your time you've been great and
027zach if you can send me an email with the phone number i'd like to touch base with you absolutely sir i will definitely do that yes that'd be awesome thank you happy cinco de mayo heck yeah yes yes happy cinco de mayo my friend i hope you have a good day enjoyable i will god bless you thank you you