Important Roles KOCT Plays

One of the important roles that KOCT plays in our North County community is to provide media exposure, real world experience and job opportunities for young people. There are many young people currently working in the commercial television and film world who got their start at KOCT.

El Camino High School Group with Sharon Stong

Oceanside High School Group with Frank Zimmerman

One of the services we provide for students, our community and the Oceanside Unified School District is our High School Spectrum series. KOCT staff work closely with the students at El Camino High and Oceanside High School to teach them how to use the cameras, switchers, audio and other tools to produce their own television programs. They provide the hosts and select their guests—such as the two new Principles for their high school’s. Frank Zimmerman, who teaches at Oceanside High and Sharon Strong, who teaches at El Camino High, enjoy the opportunity to have their students experience a professional television studio and learn the craft from KOCT’s professional staff. Many times these same students come back as college students or volunteers and help KOCT in our quest to produce programs for by and about our north county community.

Director Jade Yusi at the Controls

Floor Manager Jaycee Scheri and Summer Dominguez on Camera 1

Oceanside High School Student on Camera 2

Oceanside High School Spectrum Set

Oceanside High School Student on Wide Camera

If you know a college student seeking an internship with KOCT you can have them download this Internship Application.

Our High School Spectrum series is now being edited by the Oceanside and El Camino High School students and I’ll provide a link to the show, here in Community Connection when completed. I’m looking forward to finding out what’s happening at our two local high schools!

Host Robert Rasul and Guest Principal Pirayoff 

Guest Jade Yusi with Hosts Devin Settles and Amalia Neil

On Set with Principal Bennett

Community Connection

Up…Up and Away!

KOCT’S camera crew took to the air last week to capture Hi-Definition video footage of Oceanside and North County sites.

Jacob Rush, KOCT Station Manager

Station Manager Jacob Rush was joined by videographer's Angela Wong and Addison Wolf on a beautiful but windy Friday evening flight. The crew is gathering aerial footage for a tourism video that is being funded by a Community Enhancement Grant from the County of San Diego. Additional funding has come from underwriters AT&T, Scripp's Health and the Oceanside/California Welcome Center.

Angela Wong, KOCT Videographer

The footage will also be made available to the Welcome Center to help promote tourism in Oceanside and North County. Look for this new video in June!

KOCT visits the Oceanside Boys & Girls Club

Peter Bonscher and Addison Wolf interview Jodi Diamond, CEO of the Oceanside Boys & Girls Club.

KOCT Producer Peter Bonscher and Videographer Addison Wolf recorded the first program in our new 3-part Arts & Culture series.

Addison Wolf, KOCT Videographer

This is funded by the City of Oceanside’s Arts Commission. The KOCT crew traveled to the Oceanside Boys & Girls Club to document their “Art of the Masters” program premiering in June.

 

North County Economic Summit now available as VOD!

In March, KOCT joined over 450 businessmen and women, elected officials and economic experts gathered for the 2nd Annual North County Economic Summit. The audience heard from a number of speakers and panelists about our National, State and San Diego Economies. This new series is now available as Video On Demand.

Watch it now by clicking here.

NAB Reflections by KOCT’s Chief Engineer Bill Peters. Video geeks look forward to April each year, not for the spring flowers but because that’s when the National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB) comes to Las Vegas and all the latest and greatest video gear are on display.

In the old days, you could tell an NAB visitor because their knuckles would drag on the ground from carrying bags of swags around—now they just swipe your card and send you all their promotional material via e-mail. Our renaissance man-who-knows-everything, Chief Engineer Bill Peters and his wife Beverly made the annual journey to the desert and he jotted down these quick reflections:

The Las Vegas Convention Center is huge! I'm tired!

Lots of shoots being done in 4K.

Cameras getting smaller and better even as image quality gets better.

Finding the camera body not always easy.

Know your formats: SD, HD, Ultra HD, 2K, 4K, 8K,???

Think also about the actual pixel sizes of the image when resizing.

Increases in image resolution leads to increases in distribution channel bandwidth (obviously)•

Will the internet really prevail as the ultimate distribution channel?

Thanks Bill for your research, day to day professionalism and your willingness to risk encounters with Vegas Showgirl in order to help KOCT!

2nd Annual North County Economic Summit

On Tuesday, March 10^th at the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort over 450 businessmen and women, elected officials and economic experts gathered for the 2^nd Annual North County Economic Summit. The audience heard from a number of speakers and panelists about our national, state and San Diego economies.

Prior to the meeting KOCT’s Station Manager and I gave a tour of the KOCT television station to Carl Morgan, the CEO, and Karen Pearson, the Director of Investor Relations for the San Diego North Economic Development Council (SDNEDC). We discussed the informative value of this annual summit and the need for our community to better understand the economic challenges and potential of north county.

Carl and Karen convinced two important supporters and investors with SDNEDC about the value of recording the summit and sharing with a larger audience via local television and the internet. KOCT sent three production professionals with the latest hi-definition cameras to set-up and record this one-of-a-kind event.

Thanks to the Underwriters of the television production: Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians and Federal Heath Sign Company this summit will air on KOCT in April as well as being made available on KOCT.ORG as Video On Demand.

KOCT Editors are currently ‘breaking down’ the show into four episodes and you will learn a lot about our North County region via this informative series.

Pictured are Station Manager Jacob Rush with KOCT’s Aaron Capehart utilizing 2 Panasonic AG-HPX370 Series P2 HD Camcorders to capture the 4 hour event. Also on site was KOCT’s Angela Wong using a Panasonic AG-AC90A AVCCAM Handheld Camcorder to catch audience reaction and other perspectives. The show will be edited in Final Cut on our Mac Editing platforms.

We were pleased to see that KPBS’s Alison St. John (and a regular on KOCT’s Journalist Roundtable) was one of the moderators for her panels discussion about the education and training needed for todays workforce.

KOCT provides a number of production services like the coverage of this event for north county governments, businesses and non-profits. KOCT has a state-of-the-art high definition Mobile Studio, a full equipped studio at our Industry Street location and more than six different high definition editing bays. If you would like to have your meeting, event or conference documented so you can share with a greater audience AND preserve the event for future review please call KOCT’ Station Manager, Jake Rush at KOCT: 760-722-4433.

And look here for air dates and times for the 2^nd Annual North County Economic Summit.

A Great Way To Help Non Profits

Does your business have a favorite non-profit that you support? Do you donate, volunteer & help a non-profit with the good work they do in our community? KOCT has a great way for you to help that charitable organization, church or fraternal organization. Sign them up for KOCT’s Oceanside Spectrum—a 30-minute television show hosted by the amazing Elaine Swann. It’s free and a great way to share with our north county community upcoming events or the need for volunteers, donations or awareness.

If you live, work or go to school in Oceanside, you are invited to call the station at (760) 722-4433 to reserve a free five-minute interview. This is a very popular show so you’ll need to reserve your space well in advance of the event you wish to promote (45-60 days in advance!).

KOCT is so lucky to have a skilled host like Elaine Swann to interview your non-profit representative. Elaine has also been seen on the “Today Show, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX News” as a Social Media Commentator. Elaine is a special correspondent on San Diego’s NBC 7, has a syndicated column and offers workshops and seminars. Besides being on camera, Elaine is an Author, Speaker and Etiquette Consultant. She will make your guest feel comfortable if they are on camera for the first time and remember: Oceanside Spectrum airs numerous times throughout the month on KOCT’s channel 18 as well as on our website: KOCT.ORG. You can add a link to the program in your civic organizations newsletter, blog or e-mails and make sure your supporters see your publicity efforts.

Oceanside Spectrum is taped at KOCT’s Oceanside studios at 3038 Industry Street, Suite 101. KOCT is a nonprofit, non-commercial television station and Oceanside Spectrum is prohibited from advertising commercial events or businesses. To schedule an appearance on Oceanside Spectrum contact  Angela Miranda at  (760) 722-4433 or e-mail her at: amiranda@koct.org.

Thanks to San Diego U-T Reporter Linda Mcintosh for a great story about our Tuesday, February 24^th event to celebrate the launch of our new documentary series: “The Adobes & Ranchos of North County”! Hope you can attend and make sure to watch these programs on KOCT. We all love north county because of the waves, weather and environment—this new series will give you reasons to love north county for its rich history too.

RANDOM PIXELS

KOCT’s major project, to convert our mobile studio to a hi-definition production facility moved closer to completion today with the ordering of two additional hi-definition cameras. Thanks to Station Manager Jacob Rush and Chief Engineer Bill Peters for the extensive research and efforts on this important KOCT production tool.

KOCT is producing many more Newsbriefs on a variety of topics that you can look forward to seeing in the coming weeks with Editor Shawn Lennon, creating a new hi-definition opening. Editor and Producer Angela Wong has begun working on her most recent Newsbriefs: “El Corazon Recycling Center” and “Oceanside Museum of Art new Marketing Director and Artist”. Editor and Producer Peter Bonscher recently completed another Newsbrief on local sustainable grocer “Frazier Farms” and is currently working on a Newsbrief about an Adult Music program at the Museum of Making Music while also producing a Newsbrief on Oceanside’s LGBTQ Town Hall meeting on January 30^th, 2015. Thanks to this talented production team for helping to shoot, edit and share the many community events occurring in our North County community.

Shawn Lennon

Angela Wong

Peter Bonscher

You might have noticed on our most recent Journalist Roundtable a new graphic addition “Why This Matters”—KOCT will add this brief explanation to many of our programs in order to help you understand why we pick certain subjects, invite specific guests and ‘Why This Matters’.

KOCT could not produce the volume and quality of programs without  the efforts of a our many part-time employees AND our student interns and volunteers:

• Thanks to volunteer Maya Maravilla who edits our North County Talks program “Faith and the Common Good”. She has done a great job and spends many hours to not only edit this program but provide quality camera work in our studio.
• Palomar Community College Intern Damian Mickey has been working on our ongoing Archive project. KOCT has produced well over 6,000 programs and many of them are on older, obsolete video formats—S-VHS and U-Matic ¾. We are reviewing our older programs and transferring to digital DV cam and/or DVD.
• Finally KOCT welcomes our newest volunteer Board of Director Frank Gould who will help our other board members to raise funds, encourage viewers to join our Friends of KOCT and other behind the scenes efforts that have helped make KOCT Your Community Channel. 

     

Maya Maravilla

    

Damian Mickey

THE STORY OF YOUR COMMUNITY

This week in pictures:

Journalist Roundtable

       

        

       

Ribbon Cutting Encinitas Community Park

        

        

Oceanside Spectrum

       

       

Friend of KOCT Recording

                            

Attention Spans & Community Events

One of my first creative editing projects at KOCT occurred about 27 years ago and is reflective of today’s topic ‘Attention Spans & Community Events’. Matt Beck and I spent an early spring day videotaping the ‘beach opening’ event at the pier band shell, musical groups, jet ski’s, dancing and speeches. I edited a 12 minute highlight program and showed it to my boss, the late founder of KOCT, Bob Bowditch. He said he enjoyed the program but that KOCT normally didn’t spend that much time in the field, editing and not produce a 60 minute program.

Fast forward to the new monthly series of Newsbriefs that KOCT is now producing that average 2 minutes in length. There is a multitude of reasons (and media choices) that explain shorter programs and shorter attention spans including:

•     People with smartphones/tablets now spend an average of almost 3 hours each day on them
•     Viewers are watching less live television but spending more time in front of other media screens
•     On-line video viewing is increasing for all Americans

A article in the Brookings Institution, ‘The Bad News about the News’ stated it well “ Today’s young people skitter around the Internet like ice skaters, exercising their short attention spans by looking for fun and, occasionally, seeking out serious information. Audience taste seems to be changing, with the result that among young people particularly there is a declining appetite for the sort of information packages that great newspaper provided….”

Another article on the increasingly blurred line between advertising and ‘straight news’ puts this dilemma well:  “…audiences only have a fixed amount of attention, and that on the Web they’re only one cluck away from every piece of information on the planet, the challenge was not on  how to compete against other brands, it was how to compete with media-all of it”.*Columbia Journalism Review / Nov-Dec 2014 “The Wolf at the Door”

KOCT has done a good job meeting some of these challenges all of our programs are available as Video On Demand which means viewers can watch any program not just when it is scheduled on KOCT’s television channel 18 & 19 but wherever they are via their smart phone, tablet or computer.

However one dilemma both we the program producer and you the viewer face is the challenge of connecting with local information. Tonight’s Journalist Roundtable is a perfect example we have 4 great guests each of whom will be interviewed for about 12 minutes each, a reasonable amount of time to explore issues such as gang violence, our community hospital or hear what our Mayor believes are the important issues he will address in 2015.  But 12 minutes is about 10 times as long as the ‘average’ cable news interview and far longer than the average funny cat video.

The difference is that community issues do more than amuse, they inform. The topics involve your family, neighbors, co-workers and children. The topics may concern your neighborhood and for example, could affect your commute in the morning. Community issues often require an attention span and a little bit of time to learn about the various sides and issues.

KOCT’s disadvantage is we are in a world-wide-web competition for your attention. Our advantage is we are the only one of those media choices whose sole focus is the issues and events of North San Diego County. KOCT doesn’t expect we are your only choice, but we should be one of them. Because you can stay connected to your community by tuning to KOCT-Your Community Channel.