Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter

November 21, 2003

Re: New Channel 35 Services to Neighborhood Councils. CityText. Air Time Reuests. The Neighborhood Councils Show. Watts Needs Our Help.

CITYTEXT

If you attended the Channel 35 workshop at the Congress of Neighborhoods, you already know about the new ways in which the City’s cable channel will be helping Neighborhood Councils.

But for those of us who couldn’t attend, here’s the scoop.

In a previous newsletter we talked about how Channel 35 will be improving the way in which it broadcasts special notices about special events, such as community fairs.

This is called CityText.

The Information Technology Agency, of which Channel 35 is a part, will display messages for 9 to 12 seconds each, repeated in rotation with other messages. To get the greatest impact, Channel 35 recommends that the message be 12-20 words and that it include a prominently displayed phone number. Names of individuals cannot appear. Channel 35 may be able to take visual material that you have and incorporate it into the message. Three weeks advanced notice is needed.

To make this process easy for you and Channel 35, a form has provided for your use. You can find a PDF version of it on our home page. Shortly, we’ll put an easier-to-use electronic version on our Web site under “Forms”, so when it disappears from the News Flash section on the home page, you’ll know where to look. The form gets sent to us. As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, Channel 35 does not have the personnel to sort out which is a legitimate Neighborhood Council and who are the authorized people within each Neighborhood Council. You may find this hard to believe, but we have experienced some problems with unauthorized people trying to act on behalf of the Neighborhood Council. That’s a bigger headache that Channel 35 can handle, so we offered to help the Neighborhood Councils in this regard. After all, our Charter responsibility is to assist Neighborhood Councils.

AIR TIME REQUESTS

Channel 35 has offered to provide free air time for high quality programming that the Neighborhood Councils have created. The best example would be a Public Service Announcement, or a profile of the neighborhood. Figure that the top end is 30 minutes, but that takes a lot of work to produce. More likely we’re taking about PSAs of 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, or 90 seconds.

The material must be submitted on BetasamSP or Betacam format videotape. But beyond that, everyone must understand that Channel 35 is not a public access station. This isn’t the place where you can watch the person down the street who dresses in tin foil talk about their latest alien abduction experience. If you watch Channel 35, you can see the high quality of their programming. So this option won’t be for everybody. Again, the form is on our home page, and it gets sent to us. You should talk to your Project Coordinator about your plans first. This is not a first-come, first-served offer. Quality is critically important.

Channel 35 does not have production facilities for you to use, so you may want to contact your local cable operator or college. We will do our best to interest the colleges in providing the students with project opportunities.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS SHOW – “The Ultimate Reality Show?”

The Information Technology Agency designated funding to produce and air nine half-hour programs for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. At this point, the format has not been decided, and, as usual, we would like to know your thoughts before any final decisions are made.

To stay within budget, the programs will have to remain within the Channel 35 studio, a half block from our Little Tokyo office. In other words, they won’t be able to send crews to the field.

Some issues for you to weigh in on are:

1. Should the audience be the general public which mainly includes those who have never heard about Neighborhood Councils and need a reason to get involved? Or should it be aimed at Neighborhood Council board members, or feature individual Neighborhood Councils?

2. What should the format be? Interview? Using a professional interviewer? Round-table discussion? An “open mike” session for anyone to say whatever they want to say? Should the program air small segments produced by the community? Highlighting the accomplishments of Neighborhood Councils in order to inspire others?

Channel 35 reaches 600,000 homes, but there is no way of knowing how people are watching.

Let the fun begin!

WATTS NEEDS OUR HELP!

Volunteers Needed for the Watts Flood Victims Neighborhood Clean-up

Saturday, November 22, 2003
Two Shifts Available
9:00am -12:00pm and 1:00pm -3:00pm
Volunteer Orientation at 8:30am and 12:30pm
Please meet in front of Councilmember Janice Hahn's Office
Located at 10221 Compton Ave, Watts, CA 90002

Volunteers will assist in tearing up carpets from residences, loading carpet into trash bins, and serving food.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO SIGN-UP PLEASE CONTACT THE MAYOR'S OFFICE
Jorge Quezada at (213) 978-0639

On the day of the event, please contact Katisha Robinson at (213) 359-6517 for directions or for any questions you might have.

Please wear old clothes and shoes.

If you have the following tools, please bring them with you.
· Pry Bars
· Pick Axes
· Shovels
· Hoes

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Greg Nelson

866 / LA HELPS
213 / 485-1360
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org email
www.lacityneighborhoods.com website