Curious Characters

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable character. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men." - Samuel Adams

We're all Sam Adams fans here at GrassRoots.  Sometime into the second pitcher, we might drift into a discussion of why GrassRoots exists at all.

If one follows the thread back far enough, past John Smith and the 70's Aspen radicals who founded the first community-operated access station in the country we might go all the way back to Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who really, really disliked not having the right to vote.

That's the GrassRoots Idea's origin.  We believe that if we all exercise our natural freedom, use it to think, speak, and vote our conscience, then we will collectively create the best possible society.

Today in the GrassRoots Red Brick studio, the ever curious Brent Gardner Smith finishes up his ProbeLine interviews with all nine candidates on the May 7 ballot in Aspen.  The idea of a probe line is to find something hidden under the surface of a jumbled pile of debris.  Maybe we'll find an exceptional character, a barely breathing body, or even a skeleton or two.

These hour long interviews, an in-depth format that does not exist on any other channel, in any other medium, give us a chance to get to know the candidates as caring neighbors, posturing new comers, thoughtful leaders or fascinating visionaries.  One thing for sure, every one of these candidates is running because they honestly care about the collective future of the people who chose to live in a very weird place.

Watching GrassRoots on cable or broadcast, or here on this website is your best opportunity to satisfy your curiosity about their character.   Only on GrassRoots can you see and hear these candidates tell their stories, express their visions, veil their political tendencies, and wonder out loud how they'd regulate hash bars.  You will also get a feeling for who they are as humans... because its TV!   TV is awesome!  You get to analyze their expressions...  their calm, purposeful eyes or quivering, sweaty brows.   Can't see that on radio!   No hems and haws in the newspaper!

GrassRoots will also be airing candidate forums, Squirm Night, ACRA interviews, and of course, live election coverage from City Hall on May 7.

Be curious.  Judge character.  Exercise your freedom.  Vote your conscience.  Drink beer.  Watch GrassRoots.

Thanks Ellen

You wouldn't be reading this blog if it wasn't for Ellen Winter.  Ellen joined GrassRoots six years ago and moved on last week.  With a staff of just four or five running two 24 hour TV stations, everyone not only wears several hats, but must also be damn good looking in all of them. 

Ellen, like pretty much everyone who works for the community at GrassRoots, operated studio and field cameras, edited video, directed live multi-camera shows, directed government meeting coverage, greeted guests, vaccumed, emptied the garbage and recyling, washed dishes, answered phones, chased down Pancho when he got freaked by the avalanche guns... 

But unlike everyone else, Ellen created, sold sponsorships, hosted and expertly field marshalled years of FreeRange Open Golf Tournaments, taught our non-profit partners how to create and post messages on the Valley Billboard, learned the unfathomable ways of our IT systems, and gave birth to beautiful Estella, all the while stopping thousands of shots on goal for the Mother Puckers, following and leading the boss into untracked Highlands glades, and making more friends than all the rest of us will make in our lifetimes.  Aspen is full of FOE's.

She did much more, added much more, to the GrassRoots story than all that.  She pioneered our entry into the world of digital file transfers and converting video into infinate formats.  She created the Carbondale 82 logo.  She unplugged the water cooler.  Ordered office, production and studio supplies.  Made us all laugh.  Made the Final Cut Pro Studio hum.  Furrowed her brow at each of us at some point.

She also deftly and professionally took over management of CGTV from Brad when he left for his walkabout (Brad is done discovering America, and flys off tomorrow for a couple of months Down Under).  That cool transition assured everyone that CGTV would continue as a smooth running government access channel for three jurisdictions.  That accomplishment is hardly obvious, but getting three different governments to share anything as facily as Aspen, Snowmass Village and Pitkin County share CGTV is a sublime management success.  We don't know anywhere else in the country where that works.

Most importantly though, Ellen created this website from scratch.  It's a big, complex website, featuring a seamless interface between our web server, GrassRoots' live stream and thousands of archived community programs.  When asked if she could build a brand new, totally custom website from scratch, she told the boss, in her minimalist Minnisota Nice, "Oh Sure."

Actually, Ellen didn't have a clue how to build a website.  But over the next few months, she self-taught and mastered the mysterious languages of HTML and ASPX, wrote thousands of lines of code, showed the software developers of our master control system that yes, their system could be integrated into a website, and created an exceptionally useful community tool; a resource where tens of thousand visitors per year, the vast majority of whom live outside the Roaring Fork Valley (in over 120 countries), have been able to watch GrassRoots programming, download our weekly schedules, find out who Jerry Bovino is, for some reason find special interest in staff photos, order DVD's, and otherwise learn all about GrassRoots.

She also created this blog.

Thanks Ellen.  Good luck and best wishes.  See you on the ice. 

Welcome AVSC!

Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club has a new program on GrassRoots Community Television.  Every week, AVSC Director of Excellence, Walt Evans discusses exciting topics relating to AVSC and the ski world.  "Weekly With Walt", also includes results and highlights from their various ski and snowboard competitions that have taken place that week.

AVSC is in it's 76th year of operation, they have five areas of focus:  Alpine, Adaptive, Freestyle, Nordic, and Snowboarding.  There office is near the base of Highlands ski area, where their athletes can train year-round.  They are a 501-c3 non-profit and their website is: www.teamavsc.org.  Click here to watch the show: http://grtv.me/11PTAl6

New Year!

Happy New Year!  We wish everyone the best 2013.  The start of a new year brings feelings of hope.  At GrassRoots TV we have a lot of hope for many great things to happen to our little station.  We set our goals high in hopes that next December we can look back and rejoice in our successes.

One big hope for GrassRoots TV is a successful start to raising funds to get our Carbondale location stocked with equipment and get the cameras rolling.  This will take a mighty effort, but we have hope that our efforts will be fruitful.  To start we are planning on organizing a fund-raiser in Carbondale to jump start our efforts.  Let us know if you have any ideas for a fun fund-raiser.  We are open to all suggestions and ideas for a fun event that we can get the Carbondale community to be excited about.

Another hope is to keep our 2012 field production success rolling.  We had a really productive 2012, with a lot of community support getting GrassRoots TV involved in local events.  As you might know, all of our programming is community initiated.  For example, a community member has an event that they would like to preserve and share with those around the world.  They hire GrassRoots, and we take care of the rest.  GrassRoots TV does an excellent job making video production as easy as possible for clients.  Think of GrassRoots when you have an event and would like to share it.

A third hope is that you are inspired to create your own show using our 'easy as pie' studio.  Seriously, using our studio for your production is easier than hiking up Aspen Mountain.  For a small fee you have a production that includes 3-cameras, with full audio, studio space, professionally directed, and broadcasted on television and the web.  Call us with your fabulous show idea.  We'd love to make it happen in 2013!

Cheers to you all!  Here's to the best 2013!

GrassRoots Community Television is a 501-c3 non-profit, to contribute in any way, please contact Ashley: ashley@GrassrootsTV.org - or - 970-925-8000.

Community Television

Many people are wondering if the new commercial television station in Aspen will interfere with GrassRoots TV.  Our answer is "No".  GrassRoots is community television.  Our content is created by the community, for the community.  We are not influenced by advertisers or private investors. 

The GrassRoots staff is here to help you create the television programs you want the community to see.  The staff does not create any of the programming ourselves.  Nor do we decide content of the programs.

This is how you help GrassRoots thrive.  You use us.  Think GrassRoots TV when you have an event you want to preserve and share through video.  Think GrassRoots TV when you have a forum you want more people to see.  Think GrassRoots TV when you have an idea or point of view you want to  spread.  We'll help enable you to see your vision on television.  The community is in control here, so let's make some television!

To create use GrassRoots Community Television in your life, call us: 970-925-8000 - or - email us info@grassrootstv.org.  GrassRoots TV is a 501-c3 non-profit.

How Things Have Changed and Stayed the Same

GrassRoots has been covering local elections for 40 years.  This year we looked for insights into how we, as a community, have addressed the pertantent issues over the years, and how some of the grand themes of local politics are a constant in our valley.  On Tuesday night GrassRoots will provide you with the earliest possible local election results on the crawl, while presenting some truly fascinating conversations from our community archives throughout the night. 

Aspen Times reporter Mick Ireland passionately discusses the future need for affordible housing with Kenny Moore in 1982.  Everyone's favorite curmudegeon Wink Jaffee wrangles with Pitkin County Commissioner Bob Braudis about freedom and governing in 1986.  The same year, outgoing Sheriff Dick Kienast spars with Wink on the drug war and his, at the time, radical philosophy of law enforcement.

County Commissioner candidate Bob Child (voice and mannerisms eerily like present candidate Steve Child) discusses environmental policy, airport expansion and a variety of  still hot topics with opponent (now Basalt Town Councilman) Herschal Ross and former Aspen Mayor Eve Homeyer in 1992.

And then late night, something that hasn't aired since it's original live broadcast in 2001... the experimental, wild and wierd KSPN Retro Dance Party in the GrassRoots studio.  How many Steve Skinners can you count?

Tune in.  You might find GrassRoots election night programming to be the most interesting, intellegent and relevant, and irreverant, on television.

Vision For A True Community

We hadn't heard from Grass-Roots Network founder John Smith in a long, long time.  Last month he sent a note wondering how it was going, after hearing from an old friend that GrassRoots TV was still an invaluable community asset.  GrassRoots is still here, 40 years after John and a handful of hippies plugged a camera into the cable system, because we still channel their original vision.  John wrote in 1975:

"Communication binds people together.  When a relationship works it is because communication works.  In the same way, good communication makes a community work. In fact, the words communication and community have the same root: communis, in common. A town is not a true community unless its residents are continually discovering and discussing their common concerns and developing common goals.

"In a personal relationship, face-to-face communication is most effective. But when we need to address a larger audience about an issue that concerns the entire community, face-to-face communication isn’t enough.  We need Mass Communication: newspapers, radio, television...

"Unfortunately, television has been expensive, complicated and exclusive, with a relatively small group of professionals speaking to the rest of us. Network television, for example, shows us sports, drama, comedy, news, but it almost never shows us ourselves.  Because it is national, and therefore general, it can entertain us, inform us, and sell to us, but it cannot respond to us.  Thus we cannot respond to it in any real way.  In short, because we cannot participate in network television, it offers little opportunity for making connections between people-particularly within our own community.

"But there is another kind of television.  It is inexpensive, flexible, inclusive and responsive.  It creates a link between the individual and the community. It is of, by and for the people of the community.  It is called community television.

"Since 1971, Aspen has had community television, Grass-Roots Network.  Grass-Roots offers everyone in the community not only a forum but also the opportunity to learn to create his or her own programs.  No view is excluded.  No issue is avoided.  No experiment is condemned.

"Literally hundreds of people have participated in this endeavor.  All of the programming on Grass-Roots has been created by local residents who are mastering a new technology and a new art form.  They are developing their own creative skills, discovering the rewards of participating with others in community television and finding a new and effective way to speak directly to their fellow residents."

John has been working his little farm outside Eugene, Oregon ever since moving on from Aspen in 1978.   "I don't do media anymore, I do life," John said in an Aspen Time article a few years back.  He seems quite fascinated, however, that 40 years later, his crazy experiment in communis is still connecting us to one another, still building true community.