President's Message | April 13, 2020

a mEssage from donna t. keeting - chair, acm board of directors

Covid-19 has become a part of lives and impacts how we interact with our families to how we deliver important information concerning our communities.

Our channels are an important resource as we a stay safe at home and interact with one another virtually. The content we deliver is vital including reminders of the CDC guidelines, stories of kindness between neighbors, healthy tips and the valiant efforts our first responders and essential staff.
Stay safe and depend on one another because together we can all navigate the new normal.

passover & Holy week

There is a lot of remarkable work going on in community media during the Covid-19 crisis.

For example, this past week marked both the beginning of Passover and Holy Week. With both occurring at a time when communities, friends and family have been prevented from gathering because of the Covid-19 outbreak and stay at home orders across the nation. ACM members have been working with communities of faith to bridge that loss of connection this past week.

LMC in Larchmont NY streamed sunrise services on Easter (documented by NBC News) as did Bedford TV in Bedford MA. Click to view Bedoford's Service. BNN in Boston brought a Passover Seder to residents in the city and Acadiana Open Channel brought Good Friday services to the Bayou in Lafayette.

Did you provide faith services this week? If so, let me know by email so we can document your work in the community.

Distance learning 

 Acadiana Open Channel is also at the heart of a distance learning initiative working in partnership with the local United Way and Cox Communications. Click to view article. The effort curates online resources from area educators to provide both online and television resources.

AOC is not alone here and other great educational work is happening across the country including: daily lessons in the Bronx on Bronxnet and on BNN in Boston which has partnered with the Boston Public Schools to provide both pre-recorded lessons and live interactive sessions with students and teachers.

How has your organization stepped up to help kids and teachers during the crisis? Let us know your story.

musiciaNs impacted & Upcoming webinar 

A particular group of business people impacted by stay at home orders are independent musicians. Many of whom have no health insurance and worked on thin margins to begin with before local music venues closed.

ACM member QCTV in the Twin Cities has put together a partnership with a local foundation to help those musicians and to brighten the spirits of folks in their community.  The Relief Sessions is a series of virtual concerts that benefit musicians and stagehands who have been hurt by the shutdown . View relief here. 

I will be talking about those stories and their impacts – along with other work our field is doing during the crisis on this weeks webinar. The webinar will take place this Wednesday, April 15 at 3 pm Eastern Time. Please invite others to tune in to the webinar so we can talk about the collective impact that PEG channels and community media are doing during Covid-19.  The webinar presentation is free and we want to use it to promote your station’s work and our field. Register here for the webinar. 

Thanks again to Kathy Bisbee, Ann Theis, Andrew Doig, Adam McCune and Seth Ring for our discussion last week on Remote Meeting Best Practices. If you missed the webinar, you can view it here. 

join me at the watercooler

I will also be hanging out at the WaterCooler this week at 5 pm ET.  It is our opportunity to catch up with other folks across the country, if only for a couple minutes.  Feel free to stop by on zoom. 

Meeting ID: 625 793 4140
Password: H2O

Stay safe, be well and here’s to the week ahead!

Mike Wassenaar
President & CEO
The Alliance for Community Media