Media centers helping voters to decide in 2024

Community media is perhaps at its best when it’s able to educate voters through the use of local candidate forums. In anticipation of February primaries, several centers are producing forums to allow voters to make more educated decisions at the polls.

Staff from Oshkosh Media worked with the League of Women Voters of Winnebago County to produce a candidates forum for Winnebago County Circuit Court Branch 1 Judge on Wednesday, January 31. The forum appeared live on Oshkosh Media Gov TV and can now be seen on-demand here. Voters will see the three candidates for Winnebago County Circuit Court Branch 1 on their primary ballot on February 20. The top two vote getters will appear on the ballot for the April election.

On January 31, Marshfield Broadcasting presented a live forum among the seven candidates running for the Marshfield Unified School District School Board. The forum can be watched here. All seven candidates will be on the ballot on February 20 with six moving on to the general election in April.

Marshfield Broadcasting also fills the gap in local election coverage with “Get to Know Your Candidate” with studio program host Tom Loucks and producer David Ballerstein. Loucks interviewed seven Marshfield School Board candidates eyeing for three seats on the board for the upcoming February 20 primary. Each 28-minute program was shared on multiple platforms and is getting a lot of engagement from the locals of Marshfield. You can find them here.

The station is building viewers at a rapid pace because local media is silent and without community television coverage the public would be in the dark when going to the polls, said Loucks.

After the primary election, Marshfield Broadcasting will turn its sights on local City Council election coverage giving the same opportunities to those candidates.

Also, the Sun Prairie Media Center hosted a forum between the three candidates running for the city council seat being vacated by Brent Eisberner. The candidates are Bill Baker, Matthew Hill, and Santiago Rosas. The two candidates with the most votes will move on from the February 20 primary to the April 2 spring election. That forum can be watched here.

If you know of any locally-produced candidate forums not mentioned here, please let us know and we’ll highlight them next month.

For more information on any and all upcoming elections in the state, voters can go to www.MyVote.wi.gov.

Hebl retires from Sun Prairie Media Center board after 45 years of service

Former Representative Gary Hebl (D – Sun Prairie) announced on January 25, 2024 that he was resigning from the City of Sun Prairie’s Media Center Commission after more than 45 years.  Wisconsin Community Media would like to congratulate and say thank you to Gary Hebl for his decades of tireless advocacy on behalf of community media in the state.

Hebl began serving on the city’s cable commission in May of 1978. Throughout that time, Hebl’s guidance, wisdom, and support helped to ensure that the SPMC grew into one of the most active and vital media centers in the state.

“I had a great run at Sun Prairie,” says Hebl. “While I was there we went from KIDS-4 — which is still going strong — to bringing in a lot more members of the community to do their own shows, which was helped by adding the radio station. It’s really right now the very ideal of what a community media center should be.”

“Having Gary on the board was a tremendous asset for us,” said former SPMC executive director Jeff Robbins. “Not only was he one of the most engaged and knowledgeable commission members, but he was also always willing to advocate for our concerns and speak on behalf of the SPMC to city staff or the city council. Having Gary in your corner was always a huge plus. I miss working with him but I am very honored to consider him a friend.”

It was Hebl’s 18 years of service from 2004-2022 in the State Assembly where perhaps his greatest impact on community media was felt. Along with many legislators and organizations, including the League of Wisconsin Municipalities and WCM (then called WAPC) Hebl fought hard to stop the state video franchise bill that passed in 2007.

“Gary knew that taking away the right to negotiate local cable franchises from municipalities would be bad for consumers and bad for PEG access television,” said Mary Cardona, former executive director of WCM. “He was a leader of the large opposition to the bill.”

In the next session, to claw back some of the power communities had lost, Hebl authored the Cable Consumer Repair Bill. Among its provisions were improved oversight of video service providers and the reinstatement of funding for PEG channels.  “Every session WCM worked on legislation to improve the situation for PEG channels,” said Cardona, “Gary was there, offering his unconditional support. His office at the capitol became my home base where I was always welcome to rest and recharge whenever I walked the halls of the capitol. I can’t overstate how much WCM has benefitted from his support through the years.”

“I’ve always believed in the power of local media,” says Hebl. “Municipalities like Sun Prairie and Cottage Grove can’t always rely on even the nearby Madison stations to cover them effectively. We need community media to focus on what’s going on locally and that’s never been more true than it is today.”

 As a thank you for his continued backing of community media, Hebl was the first two-time recipient of the WCM’s “Friend of Access” award and remains one of only two (the other being U. S. Senator Tammy Baldwin to receive the honor twice.

RLCM, Barron County team up for 'A Christmas Carol'

Rice Lake Community Media recently teamed up with UW-Eau Claire Barron County’s Theater Department to co-produce a radio play version of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” for Rice Lake Community Media’s WYRL-LP radio station.

RLCM Director James Wyngaard engineered the production which consisted of students, faculty, and staff of the regional campus. True to the golden days of radio, live sound effects were produced in addition to using pre-recorded music and other sound effects. The radio play aired four times on Rice Lake’s station and it was also shared with Hayward’s WOJB-FM.

The cast and crew of “A Christmas Carol,” including RLCM director James Wyngaard (center, with microphone)