Wisconsin Rapids Community Media (WRCM) is an integral part of the City of Wisconsin Rapids. Ever since its first show was cablecast on Jones Intercable in 1986, it has been serving an important role in local democracy. The media center has gone through a few name changes along the way, but it has always been known to residents as the “public access channel.”
A new team has been leading WRCM since 2020. "We want to create 'must-see TV' for the community, and for the state of Wisconsin,” said Joe Bachman, Multimedia Director and manager of WRCM. “I feel that this station can pump out a quality product that will not only engage the viewer, but also connect them to their own community. We want to rival any other major cable network you'd find on television."
The focus of the department has not changed since the beginning. Today WRCM is a division within the Information and Technology Department of the City of Wisconsin Rapids. Two full-time multimedia staff manage WRCM as an open media resource for the community. Local residents learn the craft of television production and produce their own multimedia projects. Together with city-produced programming, residents can view it all on Solarus and Spectrum cable as well as on several online platforms. WRCM covers city government, local news, and non-profit organizations. They also provide a rare opportunity for local entertainment
The station first known as Public Access Channel 4 (PAC 4) started out in a tiny room in McMillan Memorial Library with a couple of cameras, VHS tape decks, reels, and tube TVs. A small wooden box held the transmission equipment that connected the station to the cable operator. Jones Intercable carried the programs produced on cable channel 4.
The station operated on a very small budget provided by the city using cable TV franchise fees, but that didn’t stop them from carrying lots of sports coverage. The station covered lots of games live including Mid-State basketball, high school football and wrestling, and state waterski tournaments on Lake Wazeecha. In the tradition of C-Span, city meetings at City Hall were also televised live, gavel-to-gavel.
The station hit its stride in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, becoming a very popular community hub. It had outgrown its space at the library. In 2003, the city council voted to increase the cable TV franchise fee from 2.5% to the federal allowable limit of 5% to move the station into a bigger space available at the newly completed Centralia Center, which was also housing agencies serving seniors and adults with disabilities. The new space included a waiting room, studio, and editing suites. The station is still based there. Coordinator Jim Walsh was key to the station’s early success, promoting it with a lot of outreach and making it a welcoming place. Just before the move, to signal its new broader mission to serve not only the city, but all the communities around Wisconsin Rapids, Walsh and the City Cable Commission changed the name of the station from PAC 4 to River Cities Community Access (RCCA). During Walsh’s tenure, the station grew from a few programs created by volunteers, community producers, staff, and interns to several dozen. Walsh even had his own live daily show called River Cities Today.
Now fast forward to 2015. The station rebrands itself as Wisconsin Rapids Community Media (WRCM) to reflect the changes in the industry. Under the direction of Tom Loucks, multimedia coordinator from 2011 to 2019, the station is now a “media center” expanding its distribution platforms to include online apps and social media. The most exciting highlight was getting high-definition (HD) carriage from Solarus. Solarus, which had formerly been known as the Wood County Telephone Company, had begun offering cable service in 2004. It was already proving it wanted to serve the media needs of the community by carrying WRCM on easy-to-find channel 3. Now it was offering to upgrade its carriage of the PEG channel to HD when precious few other companies were doing it. Tom Loucks remembers, “We had an opportunity to go HD on Solarus Channel 3 and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity, so we made the move to purchase a new HD playback system and workflow. Solarus provided the channel space, encoder and tech work at no charge to the city, which we’re so grateful for.”
Solarus is still one of only a few cable systems in the state that offers HD to still just a handful of public access channels. By way of contrast, in 2008, Charter Communications (now Spectrum) pushed Wisconsin Rapids’ public access channel off channel 4, its long-time and easy-to-find location, and put it on analog channel 98 and digital channel 985. WRCM had to scramble to promote the new hard-to-find Charter locations to its audiences.
The team in charge now, Joe Bachman and Kevin Bargender, both started at WRCM in 2019. They each had to learn what Public, Education, Government (PEG) TV was all about. It was their first encounter. "You quickly find out how vital a resource PEG television is for our community,” said Joe. “The very cornerstones that make Wisconsin Rapids great are featured on our station daily."
Joe Bachman
Joe took over as multimedia coordinator in 2020. He had previously worked for many years as an editor for several news publications in the area. He found his background covering important stories in the community to be a plus. “My experience was highly transferable to my career in PEG media and as a city employee,” said Joe. “I’m a lifelong writer and creator and being able to serve the community in this new way is a perfect and natural fit.” Along with Kevin, who is the multimedia specialist, the team is leading the way into the future. “My ultimate goal is to lead the station beyond what "public access television" is historically defined as. This includes the potential for podcasts, and investigative series.”
Over the years, many things have changed – the location, the name, and the technology used – but not the mission. Today Joe and Kevin manage more than cable TV channels. Programs are carried on Solarus Channel 3 (HD), Spectrum Channel 985 (SD), and an HD ROKU channel. They are also streamed on the city’s site, www.wr-cm.org, Facebook and YouTube. The team’s responsibilities have expanded to include city website maintenance and social media outreach.
The media center continues to serve the broader community by providing a local media resource to city residents as well as to those living in the surrounding communities. Currently, the station has around a dozen volunteers and over 20 community producers who film church services, concerts, studio programs and more. The staff provides gavel-to-gavel meeting coverage for the City of Wisconsin Rapids City Council and most other city committee and commission meetings, Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools School Board and the Wood County Board. WRCM also plays meeting submissions from Nekoosa, Port Edwards, Grand Rapids, Mid-State Technical College and the Town of Rome.
The excitement around the media center these days is the new podcast set up. Joe and Kevin are making preparations to use it for the first time. They purchased a new backdrop for in-studio shows that will be used for both video and podcasts, and they have new podcast-quality microphones. "Podcasts have been a popular medium for some time now, and we wanted to get away from the cliché 'public access' look,” said Joe. “Updating our backdrop and moving to a podcast-like setup not only keeps us relevant, but heightens the fluidity of the conversation, as well as broadens the topics we can cover."
In 2022, Joe plans to add new cameras to the council chambers for city meetings, continue to upgrade the studio with new video equipment, and potentially start a bi-weekly news show. Sports coverage, long a reliable staple on the channel, is going to get beefed up. "We have a working relationship with Lincoln High School A/V Club to offer more sports than ever,” said Joe. The media center will continue doing a business series with the President of the local Chamber of Commerce and, according to Joe, there is “much more in the works." For starters, Kevin is starting a new program called Humane Society Spotlight and a program called Community Connections that will help inform the community about local businesses and organizations. Kevin said, “I’m excited to work with new and existing businesses and organizations in Wisconsin Rapids to highlight them and to inform the public about what each of them does for the community.”
The team has a goal. According to data released to them by Solarus, WRCM is among the top 50 to 70 programs in terms of viewership out of 600 channels. “That’s pretty good,” said Joe. But you get the feeling they’re itching to move up.
