TVHamilton is reinventing itself for city’s growing needs.
Steve Colwell, the Producer and Director of TVHamilton, has seen our local TV station through three decades of growth and change. Its viability as a source of valuable programming about and for Hamilton has been dependent on a willingness to notice how the world of local media is changing, and respond to each change with creativity and thoughtfulness.
The station started, as many local cable stations started, through the local cable provider.
“Years ago, we were funded by a portion of the franchise fee money the City received, and with that money, the city would run a cable channel,” explains Colwell.
As one of the main partners, the Hamilton City School District provided space and had the TVHamilton employees as school district employees, and over the years, TVHamilton has also worked with other funding partners in order to provide valuable cable channel programming to the residents of their broadcasting zone, which includes Hamilton, Fairfield, and parts of surrounding areas.
While the programming has always been focused on city and school district events, meetings, and other local offerings, the way that their programming is delivered has had to change in response to changing times.
“In 2017 or 2018, I started playing around with livestreaming,” explains Colwell. “I concocted the equipment to make it work, though with a bit of an audio delay, but the comments were good. Working on it and getting it better helped.”
Livestreaming, for those who haven’t heard the term, allows people to watch an event in real time via an internet platform.
Using platforms like Facebook and Youtube allowed Colwell to get feedback on how many people were connecting in and watching TVHamilton events, and livestreams also had commenting features that gave TVHamilton instant feedback. In 2021, the videos on TVHamilton’s social channels received 1.2 million views, and their Facebook page currently has more than 12,500 followers.
Being ready to livestream became incredibly important when the station’s bread-and-butter, event coverage, took a major hit in 2020 – with few events to cover due to the pandemic, livestreaming socially distanced city council meetings and other necessary meetings and press conferences helped locals stay connected while staying safe.
The Vision Commission of Hamilton also has partnered with TVHamilton in ways that have showcased the best of Hamilton and broadened TVHamilton’s reach. Colwell pointed out that the Vision Commission’s Jeff Archiable came up with the idea of using TVHamilton coverage to create small news packages that could air on Cincinnati TV news channels. While the stations were initially unsure about this possibility, but Colwell and Archiable were encouraged to try it anyway. For events that Cincinnati stations wouldn’t otherwise have had enough staff to cover, a quick clip of TVHamilton footage that was all ready to air was actually a welcome addition to their typical coverage.
These spots have helped to showcase the positive growth in Hamilton so that more Cincinnati-area viewers know about events and activities that merit a trip to Hamilton.
Colwell believes a spirit of sharing has helped the station weather many changes over the years, pointing out that sharing footage can build goodwill and connect local communities so that everyone gets more of an insight into what Hamilton as well as other local cities have going Colwell is excited to see whether there’s a role for TVHamilton to play as more conventions come to town at the Spooky Nook conference center, and he’d like to continue to improve the livestreaming work TVHamilton already does.
“Working together and partnering has been a big part of who we are,” says Colwell. “We want to get the word out, however we can, to spread the messages about Hamilton.”