Gowanda Educational Television Channel 21

The Story of GETC-TV
The Gowanda Educational Television Channel

(original text by former GETC TV coordinator Dale Hartlieb)
 

History

The late James Wescott, a former GCS Board of Education member, pressed US Cable of Tri-County (now TimeWarner Cable) to implement an item in the cable company’s contract with the Village of Gowanda which provided for GCS to have the ability to originate educationally based programming under the rules governing local cable access.  This resulted in the first live broadcast originated at the Gowanda High School graduation ceremony in June 1996.  Mr. Wescott coined the name Gowanda Educational Television Channel and since we originally broadcast on cable channel 9, GETC-9 was born.
 
The fall 1996 home football games were broadcast using rented equipment.  Following that football season, a purchase of equipment and the utilization of reclaimed computer equipment provided GETC-9 with two-camera production ability that was implemented beginning with the 96/97 basketball season.
 
Technical

Cable regulations provide for local access to cable broadcasting through one or more channels depending on the scope of the cable service.  These channels are for three categories of access; public, governmental, and educational.  The original cable technology in the Gowanda area called for sharing the public, educational, and governmental access of channel 9 with a commercial music channel. We briefly broadcast our content on Channel 18 but with the recent changeover to fiber optic cable service by the former Adelphia Cable, new channels opened up with three cable channels for local access: Channel 20 for public access, Channel 22 for governmental access, and Channel 21 for educational access.  Hence we are now known as GETC-21.
 
GETC uses a local origination technique known as reverse-channel modulation. We broadcast a specialized television signal (not receivable on ordinary TVs) from the high school over normal cable lines to the West Becker Road head end facilities of TimeWarner Cable. That specialized signal is automatically converted to channel 21 and rebroadcast to the community in the Gowanda, Perrysburg, Dayton, Collins and North Collins areas as a standard cable signal. This is an advantageous arrangement which enables GETC programs to be broadcast in a timely fashion because we are in control of the scheduling of channel 21. By contrast, public and governmental access uses the shipment of videotape to TimeWarner Cable facilities in West Seneca for them to book a time for broadcast.
 
We are not able to broadcast our content to satellite TV subscribers and have no plans in the future for doing so. The coming switchover to Digital TV on February 17th will not affect broadcasts from GETC.
 
While GETC does have the ability to broadcast in real time, we prefer to use taped broadcasts for better continuity and control.  Currently our broadcast content is primarily event driven in the form of sports, and meetings. Taped programming is typically run five times per day at 9 A.M., 1 P.M., 7 P.M., 10 P.M., and 1 A.M by the use of automated equipment.

Broadcast schedule and coming event information is broadcast on cable channel 21 any time there are no scheduled programs. This also includes Adult Education offerings and Village of Gowanda Recreation information.
 
Vision

For the community, the GETC mission is to showcase student achievement in all phases of school life. It is also a vehicle for airing key official meetings and information, public relations for the district, and educational programming specific to the Gowanda area.
 
For the volunteer student crew members, the GETC mission is to provide them with a working knowledge of all phases of television; camera, audio, mixing, commentary, production site setup, equipment selection, scheduling, website management, and editing. These crew members also learn how to work well with school officials and with community groups.  While some crew members lend themselves to a particular phase of television production, the awareness of all phases gives them an appreciation of the scope and interrelationships of the whole production. 

The future holds a studio/classroom that can be used to teach interviewing and newscasting techniques. Additional editing equipment will provide the ability for several student projects to be processed at the same time.  Several former GETC crew members have continued to further studies and vocations involving television production and broadcast engineering.

The current GETC student volunteers are: Shane Miller, Steven Grimm and Juddson Logan

Students interested in learning about and participating in GETC-TV should contact Mr. Douglas Pine, at dpine@gowcsd.org

(Updated January 29, 2009)

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