The Commons TV is a non-profit, non-commercial Internet television channel built on the PBS model. It is not Public Access, we take no government money and answer only to the communities we serve. Our objective is to bring a progressive voice to the Red states in the Midwest. Our mission statement is include - inform - empower
It has been a horrible, terrible, very bad two weeks!!! We launched and everything was sweet, better than we could have hoped. We had 400 viewers watching on average almost 4 shows, it was a success beyond anything we had expected. Jump and I will fill you in on the horrible, terrible parts.
We had over heating issues with our switcher after being up 40 hours. ( The fly case was fine as long as the air conditioning was on.) We were down for a couple of days while we chased down an appropriate rack to house our electronics. Omaha is NOT a big city and for someone who has lived in BIG cities I am forever frustrated by the things i CAN'T get here. Anyway, got back up and all was going fine and 4 hours in our encoder completely lost its mind. It was a week of testing to see if it could be fixed remotely and no go. Then waiting for the RMA to find out the repair and return could take up to 90 days. This is an expensive piece of equipment used strictly by professionals and 90 day turn around is outrageous! We just couldn't wait so we had to scramble to buy another new one. It came Friday afternoon and we ran some tests yesterday all is working fine and at 12 midnight on the dot the stream started. The good news is when the original encoder is returned we will have a back up. We have an alternative if our switcher goes down but no way to get around the need for an encoder and still provide a high quality stream.
The good news is we can monitor and fix almost any problem remotely. At my age any emergency I can handle in my jammies is a good thing.
I invite you to tune in https://new.livestream.com/... . We have some special programing coming up. Monday evening we are showing Salt of the Earth, it was originally scheduled to air on Labor Day. Salt of the Earth is one of only 100 films chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation because of it's social and cultural significance. Outside of the occasional college level film class it hasn't been widely seen in more than 50 years. Tuesday evening we have a live telecast with Brad Ashford candidate for Congress hoping to unseat Lee Terry, for those of you interested in that race. Next Saturday afternoon we start a 12 week series on the films of Oscar Micheaux pioneer Black film maker. We have blocks of children's programing morning and afternoon. Hard hitting fact based independent news including Democracy Now! A little bit of something for everyone. Each day's previous stream will be available on demand for 7-10 days incase you miss something you wanted to see. Also our channel schedule is available at http://thecitycommonsstudio.org there is a link to a PDF at the bottom of the front page.
SO WELCOME BACK!!!!!