June 2009 - I have done more research on copyrighted musical performances and have found that this is an extremely complicated issue.  From what I gather, we need to have permission to broadcast performances and also to make copies.  After looking at the size of our audience (approximately 2000 households), I feel we would be at minimum risk for copyright infringement, with the high school’s permission, on air airing their concerts.   As far as DVD copies are concerned, SAD9 is definitely against us doing so.  After researching all of this, I don’t believe it’s their call to say that we cannot make copies.  What I think we need to do in order to make copies is to get permission from each song’s publisher.  For research purposes, I contacted the publisher of one of the song’s they played.  After an extremely helpful conversation, they seemed to be quite receptive to us making copies for a small fee (approximately $50).  What it all boils down to, if we want to stay on the up and up, we would have to contact the publisher of each song, get permission, and pay fees for the release.  That being said, I don’t feel that it is a profitable decision to make DVDs for the high school performances.  Going forward, we will broadcast the performances of the high school and hold off on making any copies.

I was contacted by the Police Chief Brown of Wilton.  He would like to bring awareness to the Town of Wilton on what the police officers do on a daily basis.  I have started the police ride along show called “Franklin Five-O” once again and have been collecting footage from Wilton Officer Billian.  The first show is nearing completion and hope to film other officers from both Wilton and Farmington in the coming months.  I receive a lot of positive feedback about this series.  It gives great insight to the officers job that most people are not able to see. 

This spring I held another Gold Leaf Institute MBTV training.  Three people signed up, with two attending.  One of the attendees expressed interest in volunteering for MBTV especially working on “Remembering Franklin County”,  which is our oral history project.  I do feel that it is a good idea to keep our relationship going with the Gold Lead Institute and offer these training classes even if we only get one or two interested people.  It is a good way of networking and getting our name out.

Once again, I was invited to Mt. Blue Middle School for their annual Occupational Outlook Day.  This year I had three full groups that attended and showed great interest.  I received a thank you letter indicating quotes from some of the students that attended my session.  In essence they enjoyed the visuals that I brought which were a power point presentation as well as examples of some of our shows.  They liked my enthusiasm and thought I was “cool”.  The students interacted quite well and seemed genuinely interested in the idea of coming down to MBTV to make shows.  I also took the opportunity to recruit for our summer TV training workshop.  I think this is a great way to get connected with middle schooler’s  and  open they minds to access television in their community.  It looks like MBTV will be a part of the middle school’s Occupational Outlook Day program for many years to come.

We are very fortunate to have two excellent work study students this summer.  What a breath of fresh air it is to have these two students who are pre-trained and know the ropes around the station.  They both worked here over the school year and will be covering many events throughout the summer including Farmington Gazebo concert series in the park.

We have several projects slated for this summer including the Mt. Blue High School graduation which will be filmed with two cameras this year.  We have also done quite a bit of marketing beforehand so we are hopeful of high DVD sales from this event.   The high school is providing two underclassmen to man a table in the lobby for people sign up for copies of the graduation.   I also met with Tricia and Elizabeth from the Western Mountains Alliance and we are going to be producing a video about the Western Maine Market.  The WMM is an online farmer’s market where people can order local foods over the internet.  We are continuing producing Talkin’ Maine, The Simple Gourmet and other local events/meetings from the surrounding area.

Respectfully submitted by

JP Fortier