BILL GAITHER/The Register-MailTom Canfield, a computer operations specialist at Carl Sandburg College, loads a cassette tape into a vcr in the tape library at the Channel 22 station on the Carl Sandburg College campus. Canfield changes the tapes approximately once a week.
CSC's TV-22 still growing, evolving
Educational programming could someday go live
Monday, January 30, 2006
GALESBURG - For a TV station that won't celebrate its third anniversary until May, Channel 22 has made great strides.The educational access station had its beginnings when Insight and the city of Galesburg came up with a new franchise agreement. The station is used by Carl Sandburg College, Knox College and District 205, so the decision was made to have the Educational Technology Center oversee its operations. All three schools were already part of the ETC.
Gwen Koehler, CSC's dean of adult and developmental education, said the programming has to be educational.
Programming is delivered by satellite, DVD or VHS tapes. The station has no studio and no ability to show live programming.
Programming includes the Illinois Channel, a state version of C-SPAN; the NASA Channel; an Illinois Arts program; and a bulletin board promoting CSC events.
Koehler said the channel is evolving, already in the middle stage, which "is to try to find out what is out there and try to select the type of programming (for the community.) This is a way to make it available to everyone and, at the same time, to provide a vehicle for the three institutions to provide information about their events. The ultimate, of course, is to be able to produce local programming."
She said they select programming with a broad appeal.
Samuel Sudhakar, CSC's vice president of technology services, said in his opinion, Channel 22 has already reached another level.
The station, typical of cable "access" operations, had a small potential viewing audience, available on Insight's cable system in Galesburg, East Galesburg and Knoxville. Now, by being piped over the college's EduNet service, the station can be watched by students at participating schools over a 3,000-square-mile area of west-central Illinois.
EduNet is a broadband wireless wide area communication network designed to transmit and receive data, Internet, audio and video traffic. Ten school districts are connected to the system, with more to come this spring.
Sudhakar said two other things are helping the station grow: Western Illinois University joining EduNet and the University of Illinois Extension planning to join.
"The programming is going to be much more robust on Channel 22," he said.
To the layperson, Channel 22 is housed in a small storage closet, but Sudhakar said the room was built specifically for the station. Racks of tape and DVD players, satellite equipment, spaghetti-like wires and the video system controller, along with TV monitors, are the physical portion of Channel 22.
The controller can be programmed from a technician's house.
"The only reason to come here is to switch the tapes," he said. "Otherwise, we do the programming from our offices remotely."
Sudhakar said Channel 22 may soon go digital. He thinks a studio is in the station's future.
"I think the day is coming when we will have live programming on Channel 22," he said.
Sudhakar said that would make possible everything from telecasting athletic events to live theater.
"That's really something we're shooting for," he said.
