KOCT Presents The Adobes & Ranchos of North County

The Kick Off Celebration for the new KOCT series The Adobes & Ranchos of North County was a big success. Over 50 people attended-- some from as far away as Orange County and Temecula. Also in attendance were many of the 'stars' who were interviewed in these historical documentaries.

KOCT wants to thank the Oceanside Library and staff (Sheri Noel and Brad Penner) for the great accommodations, Christine Loyola of Petite Madeline Bakery for some AMAZING cookies and Kristi Hawthorne who shared her love of history with the audience.

Kristi Hawthorne, President of the Oceanside Historical Society

Audience at The Adobes & Ranchos of North County Premiere

Attendees saw a highlight reel of the new 6-part historical series

Left to Right -Tom Reeser, Executive Producer "Adobes",  Lola Sherman,Scriptwriter and 

Co-Producer, Janene Possell Sheperd-Friend of KOCT

Miguel Blanco received a special award for his editing skills in the making of "Adobes"

"A Really Big Rancho - The Story of the Kelly Family" featured interviews with Susan Kelly and Marvin Sippel

KOCT has received a number of phone calls asking how to see this new series:

It will air every week at 7:00PM on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays on KOCT channel 19,  Cox Cable in Oceanside, county wide on AT&T's U-Verse (ch 99 and then surf to KOCT-ch 19). You can also watch it as video on demand via KOCT.ORG each week we'll release the latest episode—this week we are featuring:  “The Story of the Marron Family".

                

Here is the schedule for release of the 6 program series: 

Week of

2/24 - The Story of the Marron Family

3/03 - A Really Big Rancho - The Story of the Kelly Family

3/10 - The Story of Rancho Buena Vista Adobe

3/17 - The Story of Rancho Guajome Adobe

3/24 - The Story of Las Flores Adobe and the Santa Margarita Rancho

3/31 - The Story of Laura Marron Steiger & the John Steiger Family

       

You can also purchase a DVD. Each DVD has three (3) 30-minute programs: $25.00 for one or $45.00 for two (6 programs total). We will also be sending free copies to the Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad libraries and we will let you know when they are available for check out.

One final note: Even though this new series is available in high-definition there is even a higher resolution version you should check out: Go visit these historical sites with your family and friends. There's nothing like exploring the past in person and you could visit at least five of our local Adobes in one day! And if you watch one of KOCT's programs first you'll be able to impress your visitors with your vast knowledge of North County history.

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.

Remembering Melba Bishop on KOCT

Melba Bishop was one of the councilmembers leading the city when I began my career at KOCT. A lot was accomplished during her tenure in Oceanside including the start of downtown redevelopment, the completion of the Civic Center and the building of the College Blvd bridge that spans the San Luis Rey River. Her ‘battles’ with Mayor Larry Bagley were legendary and I would tease them both about the huge increase in KOCT’s television ratings thanks to some of those contentious agenda items.

We are playing a number of programs featuring Melba Bishop on KOCT’s Channel 19-The Government Channel:

The programs with Melba Bishop that we are showing this month are Senior Scene, One on One, and a short Newsbrief about the opening of Melba Bishop Park. The Newsbrief will be interspersed throughout the schedule because it is only 6 minutes in length.

Senior Scene playouts: [All Channel 19]

Tue        2/10       2:30PM

Thu        2/12       2:30PM

Sun        2/15       3:00PM

Tue        2/17       6:00PM

Tue        2/24       2:30PM

Thu        2/26       2:30PM

Sun        3/01       3:00PM

One on One (3 part series – each 30min.)

All parts shown together as one 90 minute block:

Fri           2/06       8:00-9:30PM

Sat          2/07       7:30-9:00AM

Fri           2/20       3:30-5:00PM

Wed        2/25       8:00-9:30PM

Thu         2/26       4:00-5:30PM

An easy way to watch all three programs is to go to KOCT.ORG and click on VOD (Video On Demand) and then click the Specials button. You can watch all three Melba Bishop programs on your computer, smart phone or tablet.

Set Your DVR’s for next week’s ‘live’ Journalist Roundtable program!

You’re going to want to watch next weeks Journalist Roundtable and at the end of this article I’ll show you just how easy it is to set your Digital Video Recorder (DVR) to do so—even a week in advance.

On Thursday night, February 5^th from 6 pm to 7 pm on KOCT’s channel 18 we’ll have a ‘live’ JRT featuring an interesting and informative series of guests:

• Donna Gilmore who founded the website and organization San Onofre Safety will talk about the recent decision to approve long-term storage of spent fuel waste on the site of decommissioned San Onofre power plant.
• Carlsbad Mayor Matt Hall will share with us the Carlsbad council’s short and long-term plans and projects for 2015.
• Tom Missett will discuss his Digital Sign proposal and provide his reflections on the death of Melba Bishop.
• Alice Jacobson, Publisher of the Seaside Courier, will talk about her monthly newspaper that serves our coastal communities.  This segment is a continuation of our ongoing series about the many local on-line and traditional papers that are filling the community news void that has occurred because of the demise of the North County Times.

JRT with former Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis

How to record KOCT shows using Cox’s Digital Video Recorder. A) - tune to KOCT channel 18. B) - push the red RECord button. C) - a menu will pop on your screen—click “Create a manual recording…” D) - using the white circular arrow buttons slide over to Day(s) and scroll down to Thu. 2/5. E) - scroll over to start time- 6 pm and stop time 7 pm. F) - finally click the Yellow Triangle ‘Accept’ and you’re done!

Another way to watch is to go to KOCT.ORG and click on Video On Demand and scroll down to the Journalist Roundtable box. We post each new show by the following Monday (in this case Feb. 9^th) so you can watch on your computer, tablet or smart phone. 

Oceanside Council

Oceanside Council approx 1987

BREAKING NEWS: Beginning with our March 5^th Journalist Roundtable our Video On Demand program will be in High-Definition!! That means our on-line version will be of higher quality than our Cox Cable version. (Cox does not provide their high-definition service for any PEG (public, education, government) channels.)

If you can stream or connect your computer or have a smart television with an internet connection you will be amazed at the quality of our signal and the new technology that makes this possible. Bob Bowditch, the WWII veteran and retiree that helped found KOCT, would be amazed at the advances we have made. Our first mobile studio was a small trailer parked in the back of the old civic center and we could not provide live coverage of those meetings: Instead we would have to edit a two-hour ‘best of’ (don’t laugh) city council meeting program. We would then have to hand deliver those ¾” U-matic tapes to the cable companies head –end for them to replay. We’ve made a lot of progress so take advantage of this new technology and watch a KOCT program on your home computer today.

Bob Bowditch and 1988 City Council Camera Crew

And don’t forget to watch next week’s Journalist Roundtable on Thursday, Feb. 5^th at 6 pm-it local programming at its best.

JRT Hosts Kent Davy, Alison St John and Logan Jenkins

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.