Transcripts For CSPAN3 Pennsylvania Cable Network 20170121

Every time he house and senate is in session, we have them online. We carry hearings in press conferences, the Supreme Court of pennsylvania is on pcn. We have callin programs. Basically all the ideas for cspan we stole here. This network was started in 1979. The people who started it or some of the people who founded some of the earliest Cable Systems in the 1950s. They had all done well in business and they wanted to give something back. They created this network is a public service. The woman who was running pcn at , she was a cspan fan and wanted to turn it into a cspan for pennsylvania. We talked for about six months of what it to be. I came here and put in place all of the things that brian had been doing at cspan. Capitals, State Capitol newsrooms have been shrinking over the years. Its half the size it was when we started doing pcn. It still diminishes. Reporters are being downsized, newspapers are dropping capital your reporters. If we werent covering the State Government, people would have no idea what the State Government is doing. We are funded the same way as cspan. We get our money from the Cable Companies who carry our programming. Most are covered i the legislature. That is challenging in other ways. We have editorial independence. Our Editorial Department decides what to cover. We can get calls from powerful legislatures urging us to do something. We dont have to follow their bidding. The challenges we have to provide a product they think has value to subscribers. We have added a lot of programming elements that appeal to just different groups of pennsylvanians. They all have something in common. They are all about pennsylvania. They are cspan pot style. We have to keep our costs of production per hour as low as possible. There are things you cant find an cable anywhere else. Television,se in every channel you come to has more money than we have. We cant compete with them headtohead. We have to offer things you cant get. We put together a format of programming that has a lot of different genres that appeal to small groups of people. The National Park Service Rangers do walking tours of the battlefields. They are two hours long. We just take a camera down there and follow them around. We show it that night unedited. No Television Channel in their right mind would do that. It doesnt appeal to a mass audience. It appeals intensely to a small group of people. Us becausee loyal to of that. For those days, they love us. There are other things we do in january. We cover the state farm show. In january. S we walk around and find a teenager who is grooming a goat for the 4h competition. We cover the square dance competition and the cake judging and the quilt judging. Have a fanatical following for our farm show. The people who watch gettysburg might not watch the farm show. We dont have to appeal to nice nielsen ratings. Its on a statewide level. The legislative process. One of the things i feel good of the guests are willing to come on pcn that might be skeptical of other outlets. Its not about our host or personality. Its about being the conduit to give our tests and opportunity. A regular basis to talk about whats going on in the legislature. This assignment board, we use a computer based web shared format. We started off easily 20 years ago with this oldfashioned dry erase board. Some of us have become emotionally attached. It is easy to look at the board. Stay there are events we are aware of. This deals with our crew based in harrisburg. We have people in philadelphia and pittsburgh. This will show you a quick rundown of what the events are and what people are assigned to cover. We can say who is the capital, who is at a certain location. We shift our staff around. Thats based on where people might be at that day. One of the main goals that we do is shed daylight on what the legislature is doing. We have up bag. 88. Lived to be i want to make sure that people like that know whats going on with their elected officials and what decisions are being made and whats being done with our money. Whenever we talk about the different issues are the different bills being considered, i keep people like that in mind. How is that going to affect them . Pcn is in a unique situation. We are funded by the cable system. We dont receive money. That is a big misconception. We do not receive any state or federal or money. There is no influence. We have good relationships with the people who are legislative leaders. There is never any influence in determining what we cover based on where the money is coming from. We are in the Operations Department here. I am the chief operating officer here. Inside here is master control. This is the heart of the network. All the signals come in here. The master control operator who is working in this room which is usually four or five hours a day. They have to be very detail oriented and highly trained in this room. Its going to occur on the air. Signals come in. They can be the house, the senate, the governors office, it can be a football game. Hereaster control operator , his responsibility is to put the graphics up on the air. They are making sure that everything is up at the right time. The name is correct. Things like that. Now we are going to go into another room. This is what we call the tape room. Its a vintage name. Most of our programming is not taped anymore. All of the signals that come are monitored by operations staff. Besides all the television we need to monitor, we also stream our signal. In this room, thats one of the responsibilities of the staff. We make sure we monitor our website. Our app, our mobile app. In this case its on a tablet. We have a pcn select mobile app. Its one of our subscription services. On aan view the mobile app phone or a tablet. You can view it on a computer. A lot of our programming will be delivered online. Cable is still our bread and butter. It is our main source of distribution for the foreseeable future. More people are interested in mobile devices. There are places in rural pennsylvania where we have to make ourselves available. Doing, we havee a programming format that appeals to a lot of people. Audiencee potential watches us at least once a month. Those are remarkable numbers. We have a format that appeals to people. We are financially sound. We have good support for me Cable Companies. We can keep it going. This weekend, we are featuring the history of harrisburg pennsylvania. Learn more about harrisburg and other stops on her cities tour at www. Cspan. Org city tour. Watching American History tv on cspan three. Announcer each week, American History tvs real america brings you archival films that brings you context for todays Public Affairs issues. Prescription opioid and hair heroine killed more than 33,000 americans in 2015, more than any year on record. The report calls this an opioid overdose epidemic. Up next, subject, narcotics,