Town of West Newbury Massachusetts Launches Webcasting Technology

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) December 2, 2009 -- West Newbury residents are now able to watch town meetings broadcast live on the Internet.
The Town officially launched the new webcasting technology on November 18th , 2009 by enhancing the accessibility of local programming to citizens who may not have access to Verizon FiOS or Comcast service, but do have a broadband internet connection.

"The Town of West Newbury has made open government a priority by listening to the residents and implementing a state of the art solution to support enhanced access to public meeting”, said Cable Advisory Committee Chairman Jim Teal. "We are excited to be able to offer a diverse number of options for our residents to become more informed and engaged with local government and the related issues that affect our town and our school district."

West Newbury is a new Local Cable Access startup and this effort will be largely volunteer supported. The Cable Advisory Committee, with the help of volunteers, plans to start broadcasting of the weekly Selectmen’s meetings, with the hope of more public meetings to be made available live and on-demand on the web as the volunteer base grows. These meetings can be accessed live at their regularly scheduled time on our two cable channels (Comcast 9/Verizon FiOS 42). The broadcast schedule is available both from http://www.wnewbury.org as well as the stations web site http://TheToWN.tv.

“The Town is very excited about this new technology as a way to outreach to a greater number of residents and members of the Pentucket School District.” said Glenn Kemper, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen. “We look forward to providing more ways for our voters to engage with our Public Process through TV and through enhanced Internet access.”

The new on-line service is powered by San Francisco-based Granicus, Inc., the premier provider of government webcasting and public meeting management solutions to over 500 government agencies spanning 49 states across the nation. West Newbury is proud to be the first municipality in Massachusetts to go live with this new service.

“West Newbury is a great example of the positive direction cities and towns across the US are moving in to foster openness in government with innovative technology. They are the first town in the State of Massachusetts to deploy this type of technology,” said Hilda Stevens, Strategic Accounts Manager of Granicus, Inc. “The more meaningful information they can put online, the more they can encourage citizen awareness and involvement.”

The Granicus solution includes streaming software to capture, manage, store and distribute online video recordings. The video player window includes the meeting agenda with direct links to access specific agenda item discussions within the archived meeting.

Contact:
Jim Teal, Chairman–Cable Advisory Committee, West Newbury visit http://thetown.tv for contact info
Aileen Horgan, Client Marketing Specialist, Granicus, Inc., 415-357-3618 x1753

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