World Affairs Council - Pilot Production

Tonight, 360 North will shoot a pilot episode of the Juneau World Affairs Council lecture presentation in Juneau.

The Juneau World Affairs Council (JWAC) is a private, non-profit, non-partisan membership organization. They work to encourage dialog and understanding of important international economic, political, and social issues through informed discussions, personal contacts, and other educational activities.

Juneau World Affairs Council organizes lectures and panel discussions for the benefit of its members and the public. Speakers include ambassadors, professors, business leaders, and other prominent and interesting presenters.

We are recording a lecture by Frank Ruddy on Western Sahara. Ruddy is an attorney who has held positions such as: Senior Attorney, The White House; U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea; General Counsel, U.S. Dept. of Energy; currently Counsel member of the firm Sale & Quinn in Washington, D.C. In 1994 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Western Sahara.

360 North is hoping to partner in the future with JWAC to bring its presentations and speakers to a larger audience throughout Alaska. We start tonight with this project in hopes that it will allow us to bring many enlightening presentations in the future. A broadcast date for this lecture will be determined soon.

The Alaska Short Forum - A Film Festival on 360 North

The Alaska Short Forum, a show focusing on short films created by Alaskan artists, has announced an open call for submissions. The program seeks films up to fifteen minutes in length for inclusion in episodes to air on 360 North and to podcast over the internet starting this winter.

Submission forms and guidelines can be found on the program website at
http://shortforum.com

“We’re looking for everything. We want documentaries, animation, experimental, whatever people are making. We want this show to be representative of the short films being produced in our state.” Pat Race, of The Alaska Short Forum said.

“Filmmaking is a relatively new art form and a lot of the barriers have come down in the past ten years. We want the show to not only give people an outlet for expression but to help teach them to use these new tools.” said Aaron Suring of The Alaska Short Forum. “The show will mostly feature short films but we’re also planning to do some quick tutorials and interviews with contributing filmmakers. We want to help people develop their skills and also build a better sense of community.” Race said.

The pilot episode of The Alaska Short Forum will be seen on 360 North in December. Submissions are now being accepted for the first, and subsequent episodes.

Aadland Marketing to Provide Advertising Support

Aadland Marketing Group has been hired to provide advertising and media support for 360 North through the end of 2007. Although media production for 360 North remains in-house at KTOO, Gregory Galik, President of Aadland Marketing Group, has agreed to oversee creation of the initial media plan and provide consulting, analysis and media purchase services.

360 North is eager to work with Galik and the team at Aadland. They will bring a fresh perspective and a wealth of experience to the promotion of our television service. Their unique background in the advertising world will help us get a lot of coverage with our limited ad budget.

"I am personally excited to work with you, and do what we can to get your promotional efforts underway. Alaskans need insightful and intelligent programming that can help them understand our State, its government, and people that make it all work." -Greg Galik

Bristol Bay Fisheries Films

Three independent documentary films about fishing in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska have been licensed for broadcast on 360 North.


Caught in Bristol Bay


Making Waves


Reds & Blues in Bristol Bay


Caught in Bristol Bay explores the heyday of the salmon fishery in the region. Making Waves looks at womens roles in the fishery and highlights female captains. The third program in this 'fisheries trilogy' looks at the downturn in the industry after the 1990's and how it affected people who worked in and counted on fishing as a way of life. The unique connection between the programs is that they were produced over the course of a decade and bring a long-term dedication to understanding the subject.

Producer Donald Blank, a New Yorker, is also known for his work on films in other parts of the country. The broadcast of these three half-hour programs as a 90-minute special on 360 North will bring an outsiders perspective of this very Alaskan way of life.

KYUK Provides Rural Perspecitve

KYUK in Bethel has teamed up with 360 North to provide a wealth of interesting documentary and cultural event programming.

For over thirty years KYUK has served the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska as a broadcast entity providing both television and radio services.

During this time they have also been producers of a litany of radio and television programs. Now, KYUK has agreed to share their rich library of productions with 360 North.

Some of the programs that will be in future 360 North schedules include:

-Platinum Dreams
-Racing the Wind
-Pursuit of Excellence
-The Fastest Trail
-One Vision, Many Voices
-Following the Star
-Cross on the Yukon
-Cama-i Dance Festival productions from many years
-Uncle Sam's Men

.. and more. Watch for KYUK programs this winter on 360 North.

Evening at Egan-Season Underway

Fall marks the beginning of the Evening at Egan public lectures for the season. For years, the University of Alaska Southeast Juneau campus has been host to academics, dignitaries and visiting lecturers and made their presentations open to the public at the Egan Lecture Hall. Now, 360 North will join UATV to make these events available to Alaskans across the state on television.

Besides the interesting new productions scheduled for this winter, UAS Campus Technology has given 360 North permission to broadcast the presentations they have produced in the past. These include artists, writers, scientists, scholars, researchers, professors and visiting speakers. Programs being recorded this fall include:

-Economics of Climate Change, Britteny Cioni, UAS Assistant Professor of Economics

-Innovations in the Remote Monitoring of Marine Mammals, Russ Andrews, UAF Research Assistant Professor, Sea Life Center

-Digital Kids, Digital Storytelling and the Future of Learning, Jason Ohler, UA President’s Professor of Educational Technology

-Reconstructing Iraq and the Establishment of the Rule of Law-CANX, Judge Zuhair Jumma Bash Al-Maliki, legal advisor of finance and rule of law issues in Iraq

-Alaska Water Challenges: A Dialog, Sine Anahita, PhD, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Nicole Grewe, PhD, Alaska Division of Community Advocacy

-North of Alaska: A Visit to Canada's High Arctic, Nick Jans, author, photographer and contributor to Outside Magazine and Rolling Stone

-November is the Cruelest Month:A Misanthrope’s Historical Almanac, David Noon, UAS Assistant Professor of History

-Southeast Alaska’s Languages, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Richard Dauenhauer, UA Presidents Professor, Nora Dauenhauer, Tlinget Birth Speaker, Alice Taff, UAS Research Assistant Professor Alaska Native Languages

-Freedom in the Extreme: Where Adventurous Athletes Meet Stoic Philosophers, Kevin Krein, UAS Associate Professor of Philosophy

-Is Southeast Alaska at Risk From Global Mercury Pollution? Sonia Nagorski, Research Assistant Professor of Environmental Science

All of these programs will be seen on 360 North over the next year through a partnership with University of Alaska Southeast-Campus Technology.

They Made It Look Easy

At a little before 10:30 this morning, the transition button on the new switcher was pressed and the Gavel to Gavel Alaska coverage of the special session began with new equipment from the rebuilt control facilities and re-wired capitol building.
If there were technical difficulties, they were transparent to spectators in the room and to the viewers watching the proceedings begin on the air.

In the above picture you see (L-R) John Kelly, Will Judy, David Waters and Mary Williams. John, David and Mary are control room directors who switch and coordinate the on-air signal and that of meetings being saved for later broadcast. Will is the Director of IT and Engineering for KTOO and supervised the integration and construction project for the station. He doesn't usually sit in the control room but was on hand in case of difficulties. We didn't see him do anything during the big launch, so he must have had everything under control all along. Will's associate, Carmelo D'Amico, was keeping an eye on things in the transmission room just out of sight.

Not shown are the entire crew up at the capitol building under the direction of Skip Gray. Randy Burton, Gavel to Gavel Alaska producer, was at another station programming the automation system, web streams, the web site, and working on the ever-changing schedule for the rest of the day and week.

They make this extensive and sometimes complicated coverage look easy.

KAKM Partnership Increases Anchorage Coverage

DT 7.3

A new partnership with KAKM in Anchorage will bring 360 North to viewers in Southcentral Alaska in a new way. For the Gavel to Gavel Alaska special session coverage that begins tomorrow, KAKM will broadcast 360 North as a multi-cast channel on its digital transmitter. 360 North will be seen over-the-air by viewers with digital televisions in Alaska's largest city on DT 7.3.

We are very excited to have KAKM participate and help with the demonstration project that brings 360 North to Alaskans. And, we appreciate that KAKM sees the value in bringing coverage of government and the legislative process to as many Alaskans as possible.

360 North is working with KAKM to bring Alaska Weather and other locally-produced programs to a statewide audience when the special session concludes.

PPT-101

OIL TAXES IN ALASKA

To help viewers understand the history and complexities of oil taxes, KTOO is producing a four-part series of short programs as a primer to the subject. This tax and legislation regarding changes and the future of petroleum profits taxes are the focus of the upcoming Alaska Legislature special session that starts Thursday, October 18.

Producer Anne Sutton will explore the history of oil taxation in Alaska, how other states and countries tax resource extractors, and ACES, where Alaska stands today. The four programs will be seen during the extensive Gavel to Gavel Alaska coverage of the special session starting this week on 360 North.

Countdown to Special Session

The clocks really are counting down in the KTOO production and transmission facilities. Luckily, the clocks and most of the other equipment is installed and working.
Above, in the Master Control Room you see KTOO staff and technicians from BURST working to test all of the equipment and make sure it is communicating and interfacing properly.

This image shows the Production Control Room next to the MCR and one of the BURST project engineers programming and configuring the new digital production equipment. You will notice if you look closely that there are cameras making pictures on the monitors. Some of those images are coming down live from the new cameras in the capitol building.

Everything is on schedule to turn over the fully operational facilities on Wednesday -- just in time for the start of the legislative special session on Thursday morning. Don't you love it when a plan comes together?

Gavel to Gavel Alaska covers special session

"Gavel-to-Gavel Alaska,” the statewide television and Internet web casting service, will be providing full coverage of the upcoming special session of the Alaska Legislature, starting on Thursday, October 18th.

Throughout the session, cameras in the state capitol will televise unedited, start-to-finish coverage of House and Senate floor sessions, key committee hearings, news conferences and other state government activity.

Coinciding with the special session, Gavel to Gavel Alaska is moving into all new digital television facilities at the KTOO building in downtown Juneau. Technicians are finishing up work on a six-month, $1 million upgrade to the control rooms and the capitol building wiring and equipment, expected to be finished just in time for the special session. The project replaces old and obsolete analog television equipment, much of it dating back to the 1980s and 90s. The new facilities will allow KTOO to expand programming via a new Alaska channel called “360 North.”

The television service will be carried by 37 cable systems statewide, including all of the GCI Cable systems, as well as on satellite TV’s Dish Network and live on the Internet at www.ktoo.org/gavel. Gavel to Gavel will also stream live audio of most official meetings in the State Capitol building so that anyone with a computer connected to the Internet will be able to listen to almost any hearing, committee meeting or floor session live as it happens. In addition, every event will be saved in an extensive on-line audio archive and will be available for playback on the Internet.

Gavel to Gavel Alaska is produced by KTOO-TV, the public television station in Juneau. The City and Borough of Juneau provides a major grant to support the coverage. ACS provides the Internet web casting service. GCI Cable and several other cable systems are providing cable channels on 37 cable systems in the state and Dish Network provides distribution to their home satellite customers in Alaska.

In addition to the City and Borough of Juneau, special session sponsors include AT&T Alascom, ConocoPhillips, the Association of Alaska School Boards, the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce, BP, AARP, Public Employees Local 71, Wostmann and Associates and the Alaska Committee.

Viewers can obtain updated daily schedules and access the audio and video streams via the web site, www.ktoo.org/gavel. The e-mail address for Gavel to Gavel Alaska is gavel@ktoo.org.

News directors and editors: An updated list of local channels for each community is on the web at http://www.ktoo.org/gavel/cable.cfm. For telephone interviews about Gavel to Gavel Alaska, call Bill Legere, KTOO-TV at 907-586-1670.

Health Care Council - Broadcast Dates

The Alaska Health Care Strategies Planning Council meetings have been scheduled for broadcast on 360 North. The programs will air once a week for seven weeks. They begin on October 28 with the meeting recorded in June and run through December 9.

The broadcast dates are:

Sunday, October 28 – 7 pm
Sunday, November 4 – 7 pm
Sunday, November 11 – 7 pm
Sunday, November 18 – 7 pm
Sunday, November 25 – 7 pm
Sunday, December 2 – 7 pm
Sunday, December 9 – 7 pm.

Broadcast of these meetings was made possible, in part, by The Foraker Group. Their support was instrumental in our ability to produce this coverage for 360 North.

College Track 2

The Alaska College Track project began in 2004 as a follow up to a national PBS series. At that time, producer Katie Bausler visited with rural Southeast Alaskans transitioning between high school and the rest of their lives. The original Alaska College Track program featured young Alaskans with big plans for a college education.

The new documentary, Alaska College Track 2, catches up with these students at UAS, UAA and UAF in 2007 and tells the story of students making their way through the University system. Amanda, Duain and Marita face remedial classes, financial hardship and personal tragedy. Support systems and cultural identity help them stay in college despite challenges. Alaska College Track 2 will have its premiere broadcast over the public television stations in Alaska this month.

Before the first broadcast 360 North, in conjunction with the University of Alaska Southeast, will hold a public screening followed by a panel discussion that includes a question and answer session with the audience. This entire event, held at the Egan Library at UAS in Juneau, will be recorded for broadcast on 360 North.

This production characterizes a good example of how Alaska public television programs can be augmented by longer form, public affairs treatments of their subjects. The College Track 2 program can be broadcast in the future as a stand-alone documentary and also air with its companion "town meeting" program that takes a closer at the topic with experts, students and the public.

Alaska College Track 2 Screening followed by audience Q and A with panel
UAS Egan Lecture Hall, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 7-9 p.m.

Alaska College Track 2 Broadcast:
October 18, 9 pm, on AlaskaOne Public Television stations
October 22, 9 pm, on KAKM-Anchorage

Alaska College Track 2 Broadcast--documentary and "town meeting" follow-up
in December on 360 North