Winter 2001
Volume 3, Number 2
  


WPSX continues “Our Town” success

By Greg Petersen


It’s an outreach project that Penn State Public Broadcasting’s WPSX-TV has been having success with for more than four years now. It’s an outreach project that has involved 16 communities and thousands of individuals in the station’s coverage area. It’s an outreach project that turns the TV production process around 180 degrees. It’s called the “Our Town” project, and it recently broke all records for a single fundraising program on Penn State’s PBS station.

Airing during the August on-air membership campaign, more than $34,000 was pledged by more than 400 individuals, families and businesses in support of Channel 3 during “Our Town: Ridgway.” The total set a new single program fundraising record for the station. The previous record had been set just three months earlier when “Our Town: Clearfield” aired in June and raised more than $24,000.

In addition to the membership pledges called in, the Ridgway program was supported by $10,000 in production funding grants from Ridgway area businesses that included Horizon Wood Products, MascoTech, Clarion Sintered Metals Inc., Alpha Sintered Metals and the Ridgway Industrial Development Corp.

“We are most grateful for this tremendous show of support from the Ridgway area,” said Ted Krichels, general manager for Penn State Public Broadcasting. “The ‘Our Town’ series has been a wonderful way for us to connect with the communities we serve, and, at the same time, raise the funds needed to purchase, produce and broadcast quality programming.”

The unique aspect of the “Our Town” project is that all of the in-the-field production work is done by residents of a town. It’s not unlike the “day-in-the-life” photography books, where a group of people goes out on one day and takes hundreds of photos. After developing the film, the best shots are selected, captions are written and a book is published.

The process for “Our Town” is very similar, except that residents use their personal camcorders, and then they are interviewed by WPSX-TV staff about just what they shot video of and what venues they visited. Then their interviews are incorporated with the video images they took and edited down into a 60- to 90-minute TV special.

Dale Lauricella, Ridgway resident and co-host of WPSX-TV’s “Our Town: Ridgway,” had this to say to the WPSX-TV staff: “We want you to know how much the show meant to the people of Ridgway. So many people, even kids from the high school, told me that it helped them appreciate just how beautiful their town and surrounding area is. (They played the tape in every classroom in the middle and high school on Friday.) … Working with all of you has made me an even prouder supporter of public television. ‘Our Town: Ridgway’ had an enormous impact on the town, and we all thank you for it!”

PBS stations in Erie, Harrisburg, Urbana, Ill., and Albany, N.Y., are doing their own “Our Town” projects as well, and WPSX has helped all of them get the project started.
The clock tower of the Elk County Courthouse and Trinity United Methodist Church were two community landmarks featured in “Our Town: Ridgway,” a Penn State Public Broadcasting program produced by WPSX-TV in collaboration with the residents of Ridgway, Pa.
  

U.Ed.OCE 01-8002/mkm/GSM