UWW-TV, WSUW-FM claim 17 student awards at the WBA annual student forum

University of Whitewater TV and student-run WSUW-FM are proud to announce that together they were honored with 17 total student awards at the 2024 Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Annual Student Forum, held Saturday, February 24 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay

Jim Mead, general manager of UWW-TV, said of the event, “It was a proud event not only for the many students who won, but for our Communication Department faculty as well.”

Here is a full list of the winners:

Newscast (TV)

1st Place – Whitewater Wind-down – “Episode 4, Week of 10/30/2023” (Erin Greshay, Kaz Walke, Ramsey Richards and Jessica Conway)

General News Story (TV)

1st Place – "Candlelight Vigil Baby" (Abbey Hamachek and Corey Ferris)

2nd Place – "Peace for Palestine" (Drew Best)

Photojournalism (TV)

1st Place – "Candlelight Vigil Baby"(Abbey Hamachek and Corey Ferris)

News Writing (TV)

1st Place – "Peace for Palestine" (Drew Best)

2nd Place – "Career Fair" (Angie Carchesi and Brian Gale)

Feature Story (TV)

1st Place – "Sister Cindy" (Drew Best and Abbey Hamachek)

Sports Story (TV)

1st Place – Inside Warhawk Sports – “Men’s Basketball” (AJ Kober)

Sports Play-by-Play (TV)

1st Place – "Warhawk Football vs. Wheaton, Warhawks Take Control" (Nolan Kopydlowski, Drew Best, and Matt Ellis)

Web Site (TV)

2nd Place – UWW-TV Web Site (Angie Carchesi and Abbey Hamachek)

General News Story (Radio)

1st Place – "The Rising Star" (McClane Noffke)

News Writing (Radio)

1st Place – "The Average Actuary" (McClane Noffke)

Feature Story (Radio)

2nd Place – "The Average Actuary" (McClane Noffke)

Audio Storytelling-Sound (Radio)

1st Place – "Lily Weitner Storytelling" (Lily Weitner)

Special Programming (Radio)

2nd Place – "Inside Warhawk Bowling" (Sam Strash)

Special Programming (Radio)

3rd Place – Nobody Really Cares - Ep. 1  (McClane Noffke, Erin Greshay and Angie Carchesi)

Public Service Announcements/Commercials (Radio)

1st Place – "Halloween Promo" (Erin Greshay)

Elsewhere, UWW-TV reports that they had a successful production of the Chancellor Corey King Inauguration, which streamed live at uwwtv.org.  The full-length presentation has been released on the UWW-TV web site.

UWW-TV also had a very successful winter live event broadcast season, which was capped by their live broadcast of the NCAA Division III Women's Basketball Tournament, Rounds 1 and 2 on March 1 and 2, 2024.

Finally, UWW-TV also collaborated with UW-Whitewater Athletics to provide over 13 hours of live streaming coverage for the 2024 WIAC Indoor Track & Field Championships held February 23 & 24. 

Noting the overlapping of many of these events, Mead would like to thank his “fabulous, hard-working student crew” for making all of the coverage possible.

OCA Media increasingly relying on YouTube channel for viewership and revenue growth

YouTube has become Oregon Community Access Media’s “go-to” for the viewership data that OCA’s director, Paul Zwicker, uses to be able to successfully solicit local business sponsorships.  

This past year, despite losing some large sponsors, Zwicker was able to secure $15,750 in sponsorships. While that amount may not have a huge impact on OCA Media’s overall operating budget, Zwicker says that the non-profit organization needs every dollar it can find. 

Over the past eight years, OCA Media has streamed content to YouTube at an ever-increasing rate. Back in 2016, OCA Media streamed 41 events, mostly government and school board meetings to its YouTube channel that boasted a subscriber base of about one thousand users. 

Fast forward to 2023: Last year, OCA Media streamed over 200 events to YouTube and ended the year with a subscriber base of 3,220 people who viewed live content over 185,900 times! 

These 2023 figures are a huge bounce back from the days of the COVID pandemic. In 2020, 74 programs were streamed by OCA Media as many events simply disappeared or evolved into virtual meetings. But just one year later, OCA Media streamed 162 programs including the Oregon School District’s performing arts and varsity sports events as well as meetings which had largely reverted to being held in-person.  

Since then, the workload for OCA Media continues to increase as their small staff some days finds itself streaming as many as three events simultaneously. As programming increases, so does the reliance on technology, a fact Zwicker notes brings with it frustrations as he says encoder can often stop streaming for no apparent reason. OCA Media’s equipment arsenal currently includes three Teradek VidiU Live video streaming encoders along with several streaming-capable cameras.  

While Zwicker feels that viewers do not fully understand everything that is involved in streaming content on a regular and consistent basis, he is grateful that the technology is there to allow for inexpensive and fairly consistent streaming and its due to that technology that he feels viewers have come to expect to find live local content looking as good as that coming from the broadcast networks. Zwicker marvels that OCA Media can stream as many events as it does at the excellent quality without a team of broadcast professionals.  

Zwicker again credits YouTube and its readily-available viewership data for giving community media stations like OCA Media cost-effective ways to reach an ever-increasing number of viewers. In February 2024 alone, OCA Media added 118 new subscribers who viewed YouTube content over 26,000 times! Zwicker notes that is more than the total number of views during all of 2016! 

Zwicker acknowledges the importance of his relationships with his video service providers Charter Spectrum and TDS, who carry OCA Media’s two channels. But the outlet that Zwicker counts on for data he can take to the bank is YouTube. 

MN organization working on legislative solution for PEG funding

MACTA (Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators, Minnesota’s state chapter of NATOA) has contracted with the lobbying firm Goff Public to work on a legislative solution to modernizing funding for PEG programming (and local government rights-of-way). 

A MACTA informational flyer on the effort can be found here.

To modernize funding for PEG programming there are two proposed solutions:

• Fee on digital video services (MACTA’s bill)-  SF 3930 as introduced - 93rd Legislature (2023 - 2024) (mn.gov) and its companion HF 4186 as introduced - 93rd Legislature (2023 - 2024) (mn.gov)

• Franchising of broadband providers in the rights-of-way (League of MN Cities’ bill)- HF 4182 Status in the House for the 93rd Legislature (2023 - 2024) (mn.gov) and its companion SF 4262 Status in the Senate for the 93rd Legislature (2023 - 2024) (mn.gov)

Both options have been introduced in the Minnesota legislature current Session, which runs from February 12 to the end of May 2024. The digital video services fee bill is “MACTA’s” bill, and the “broadband franchising” bill is the League of MN Cities’ bill.  Both organizations are working together on supporting both concepts, and it is possible/likely that the concepts could be combined into one bill as the session moves forward.

There is also interest from the authors in introducing additional language to allow municipalities to build broadband networks without the current 65% majority referendum requirement and without the current requirement that there be no other private competition in the marketplace.

WCM will be watching the progress of this legislation as it has potential to be an interesting model for use by WCM and other ACM member stations in their respective state legislatures.

More to come . . .