MMTV Provides Platform for Creativity and Discussion
By Patrick DeVivo
Melrose Massachusetts Television (MMTV) is a non-profit entity funded jointly by the two corporate cable television providers serving the city, Verizon and Comcast. From its studios at 360 Main Street in Melrose, MMTV produces and broadcasts local community-related programs on channels 37, 38, and 39 for Verizon customers and channels 8, 9, and 22 for Comcast customers.
MMTV’s roots go back to the 1990s, a time of rapid growth in the telecommunications industry. Both federal and state governments passed regulations to help manage this growth and promote community-based cable TV while ensuring that the programming remained available to all voices and perspectives. Specifically, these regulations require a cable provider serving a city or town to include public, educational, and governmental (PEG) channels as part of its cable package for that community.
Over the years, MMTV has produced a busy and diverse schedule of Melrose community programs. A government channel broadcasts City Council and School Committee meetings, candidate debates, mayoral addresses, and other events and activities relevant to city politics and government.
MMTV and Melrose High School partner to produce broadcasts on an education channel that include school graduations, music and drama performances, high school sports, student-produced videos, and many other school-sponsored events. With the support of MMTV, Melrose High School has developed one of the best high school broadcasting and production educational programs in the state.
The third channel is available to any Melrose resident who wants to produce their own program, regardless of whether they have experience doing so.
Mike Miner, a senior member of the MMTV team, speaks with pride about the programs produced over the years by Melrose residents with support from MMTV. “We sit down with each person who contacts us and talk through what they want to accomplish. If they don’t have any experience, that’s not a problem, we’ll set up a few sessions of training to get them started with basic studio production and editing.”
Even after the person has produced their first show, MMTV team members are always available to answer questions, teach new aspects of production, and lend encouragement. According to Miner, watching someone with no experience develop their production skills and become more confident and creative is extremely gratifying to the MMTV team.
From the Kiros Report
Teodros Kiros is a Berklee College of Music professor and Melrose resident who hosts The Kiros Report on MMTV. Kiros began hosting a community access talk show in Boston on the Boston Neighborhood Network around eighteen years ago. Since moving to Melrose, his long-running talk show has been one of MMTV's most popular productions.
“The Kiros Report” consists of hour-long interviews, broadcast 2-3 times a month, with guests who are experts in a particular field. Philosopher and political activist Cornell West, philosopher Noam Chomsky, and actor Yara Shahidi have been his most celebrated guests. Each interview is “a serious discussion on an issue that may be obscure to the public, but is important to the cultural, political, economic, religious, and spiritual health of society at large.” Like any dedicated educator, Kiros’s goal for his program is to enlighten community members to viewpoints expressed on important topics that they may not otherwise have a chance to hear.
Louise Fennell
Photo Credit: Nancy Clover
Louise Fennell also learned the basics of TV production before moving to Melrose. She developed a program titled “Livin’ the Good Life” on Beverly’s community access station. When she moved to Melrose twenty years ago, she reached out to MMTV. Soon, she and friends from a writing course she took at the Milano Center started a new program titled “Have You Been Here?" The show ran once a month and consisted of spontaneous conversations with everyday people on topics that are unique and of interest to her audience.
In recent years, the MMTV team has assisted Fennell with producing a podcast titled “Fabulous Females.” For fifteen minutes every other week, Fennell interviews local women doing “interesting and fun things.” This has included women in politics, entrepreneurs, artists, and educators, among others. She says she has always been interested in talking to people and learning about what they do and what they value. Producing “Fabulous Females” satisfies those interests.
From Touchdown Ladies
Sandie Blake loves football. In fact, she’s such a fan of the game that over the past year, she has produced 35 episodes of her program, “The Touchdown Ladies,” on MMTV. Once a week during the NFL season, she prepares a 5 to 10-minute talk dissecting that week’s games and player performances. During the off-season, she focuses on trade rumors and contract signings, and she reviews the spring football games of the United Football League.
Blake describes her program as “football from a fan’s point of view.’ Her goal is to convey her passion for the game to people who may not have had an interest or opportunity in the past to follow the game closely, men and women included. She had no experience or knowledge of TV production before being urged to try it by friends and family, to whom she would often send her home-made videos from her phone. She trained with the MMTV team for about two weeks and has become more and more comfortable with her program, lengthening what she has to say to 10 minutes or more. Her program is a labor of love, and she continues to learn.
MMTV's space on Main Street includes two full-size, state-of-the-art production studios. According to Mike Miner, MMTV has done a better job than most local access production teams at keeping up with the developments in technology, from VHS to DVD to all digital.
Most recently, MMTV has begun providing access to local content on streaming platforms and social media, supplementing traditional cable TV and allowing Melrose residents to access MMTV content anywhere on the globe. He also states that podcasting has exploded in the past 4-5 years. MMTV has been out in front of that wave, building a custom-designed studio in the front window of the Main Street studio.
Photo Credit: Nancy Clover
In addition to Miner, MMTV staff includes co-director Pat Doyle, studio manager Josh Miller, and office director Mary Beth McAateer-Margolis. Over the years, this team's work has been supplemented by contributions from numerous volunteers and interns. MMTV has provided internships that have helped launch careers in broadcasting for many MMTV alumni.
Miner states, “From working at major national networks, to local Boston area stations, alumni point to their early days at MMTV as a formative period in their education on how to navigate an increasingly fractured media and information environment.”
Interest in MMTV cuts across a surprisingly wide range of ages and demographics. Technology makes production user-friendly enough so that even those without technical skills can broadcast their content with increasingly sophisticated productions. Miner notes that easier access to MMTV technology will continue to expand interest in production because of the pleasure many people experience in broadcasting content important to them on their own TV show.
But Miner and his team also take a long view when it comes to MMTV’s role as a resource for the Melrose community. With the rise of social media and the decline of moderated news media, Miner reflects, “The public square is not yet gone, but it’s surely become a lot less active and definitely less civil.” Miner believes MMTV can help promote healthy public discourse by providing a platform for local information, respectful discussion and debate, and performances by emerging artists and entertainers. The platform is available; it only takes individuals willing to use it.
For more information about MMTV, email melrosetelevision@gmail.com, call (781) 665-MMTV (6688), or stop by the studios at 360 Main Street in Melrose.