Marblehead cable TV group holds first annual meeting

MARBLEHEAD – The board of directors of the 1-year-old Marblehead Community Access and Media (MCAM) promoted themselves as a high-energy, non-profit corporation Monday evening – and survived their first annual meeting with all their tasks accomplished.The fast-growing organization has a “vibrant” red-and-black logo designed by logo contest winner David Barber and 47 voting members, including 14 who joined since mid-May, according to President Robert Peck, who was the sole candidate and was re-elected unanimously to a three-year board term. MCAM has $209,558 in the bank courtesy of Comcast, according to Treasurer Ed Bell.In the past 12 months MHTV, the local access channel, broadcast 1,729 hours of local programming and 1,255 hours of that were produced by MHTV staff and members, according to Acting Executive Director Jon Caswell.MHTV is looking to purchase new equipment that will store programs like the Board of Selectmen and School Committee meetings so that the channel can rerun them instead of only airing live broadcasts.And they are always looking for more members – more information is available at their Web site, www.marbleheadtv.org.But although 15 persons were at the annual meeting at Marblehead Veterans Middle School by the starting time of 6:30 Monday night, there were only five voting members present, half of the 10 that MCAM bylaws require for an annual meeting quorum. The meeting was delayed 15 minutes, then begun by Peck “unofficially” while Caswell and MHTV staffer Bryan Caswell made some phone calls. They located five more voting members. The 10th voting member walked in at 7:17.The quorum also allowed the voting members to accept a board recommendation to increase the board of directors from five members to seven, something that board member Ron Olson said would give the board greater community representation.”I want to find out who’s watching and who isn’t watching,” Olson said, “and I want to find out why they’re not watching.”MHTV currently offers one channel of programming but is in discussion to start a second channel and hopes eventually to offer three. “It’s a work in progress,” Peck said. “We have to have enough programming to justify moving to a second channel.”The group is also seeking a full-time executive director since Caswell, a longtime staff member, “prefers to do the hands-on things and not the administrative tasks,” according to Peck.Caswell had MHTV T-shirts for those in attendance and he also had baseball caps for some local TV personalities: producers Tom Gale and Linda Weltner (26 programs), Phyllis Smith’s Townie Productions (6), Kerry Breymann (5) and MHS-TV (4) and volunteers Ed Bell, Zeke Bogosian, Alex Boldys, Chris Connelly, John Crowley, Pam Evans, Mark Ferrante, Chris Harvey, Dave Howells, Blake Larson, Libby Moore, Kris Olson, Ron Olson, Bob Peck and Patti Williams.”We’re just starting out, we’re 10 years behind Salem,” said board member Ron Olson, a former Salem cable volunteer, as he prepared to photograph the cap recipients. “If you look at their Web site, that’s our model for our future.”