Last modified: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:38 AM EDT Norton TV studio director Jason Benjamin displays a selectmen's board meeting on the Norton Cable Access Web site. (Staff photo by Martin Gavin) Norton TV accessing the future BY M. JUNAID ALAM SUN CHRONICLE STAFF NORTON - At first - and even second - glance, the Norton Community Television Studio is no dazzler. The entrance, at the rear of the unassuming high school, is partly obscured by a giant green garbage canister. The door is locked shut with a steel keypad. A corridor adjoining the studio's tiny rooms echoes with thumping music. There is no band recording here, only a stereo blaring - an aural adrenaline rush for students pumping iron nearby. But this unassuming site is a central hub for some of the most forward-looking changes among local cable access channels. In recent years, Norton TV has completely overhauled its equipment, outlook and orientation, bringing Web-based television, online channel editing and even a "Youtube"-like segment to the fore. Making local access relevant again The result, initiators hope, is to make local access television relevant again in an uncertain media landscape by bringing the community closer together. "Local access TV is something that's marginalized, dismissed, mocked at," said Jason Benjamin, studio director here for the past five years. "That upsets me." But it also motivates him. "I asked myself, 'How do I make cable access relevant for our culture today?'" In answering that question, Benjamin first took stock of the cable model, itself. Under current guidelines, a cable provider allocates a small part of its gross revenue - in Norton, 4 percent - to the local access channel. It must also negotiate its contract with the town government to win access rights to the community. But, Benjamin said, the existing model is under attack by some companies, such as Verizon, who want to bypass the community level. "The franchise model is being threatened," he said. "We're planning for the future." That planning also involved a fair bit of prodding, said the channel board's chairman, Bill Gouveia, who also hosts a show there. "Jason dragged us kicking and screaming from the 19th century into the 21st - I think we skipped the 20th, altogether," Gouveia mused. Benjamin concedes that when he first arrived, the equipment was a far cry from the digital storage, backup power supplies, and file servers the channel currently owns. "When I came here, it was just VCRs," he said. Once Benjamin got through to the board, he spearheaded plans to transcend the limits of the cable subscriber base. And that meant going online. "We have 5,000 cable subscribers in Norton," Benjamin said, "but now we can serve a lot more of our demographic." Last month, the director struck a deal with Brightcove, a major player in the ascendant service of Internet TV. For a nominal fee, Norton TV uploads thousands of gigabytes of data onto Brightcove's servers in Cambridge. Norton end users, in turn, can access the digitally-recorded videos of town meetings and community events from Norton TV's Web site, www.nortontv.org. "We're usually looking at a 24- to 48-hour turnaround," Benjamin said of the time it takes to shoot events with digital equipment, encode it and then whip the data across broadband lines. The ample amount of storage also allows NortonTV to maintain an archive of videos. While the technical achievement is impressive, Benjamin said it is merely a means toward garnering greater community involvement. "Before this (Internet TV) system, we were lucky to get five people to our Web site," he said. Gliding his hands across the keyboard of his Macintosh laptop at the studio, Benjamin summoned up the site's latest statistics. "10,977 hits this month," (as of April 10) he noted with evident satisfaction. In related efforts to draw in more community involvement, the channel is hosting a contest for local residents to submit their own home-made digital videos. Winners will receive gift certificates for local businesses. Gouveia said the contest has potential. "What we're trying to stress is that this is public access television," he said, emphasizing the word "access." "We want to be the vessel by which people communicate." Furthering that vision is an agreement the channel struck with TelVue Corp., a cable technology company that enables local access channels to customize and edit their content via the Internet. The company does not add staff or produce content for access channels, but helps make the staff's work easier, TelVue CEO Joe Murphy said. "We help them, but we're in the background," he said. "It's a very advanced version of bulletin board content, and it gives a unified look the channel," Benjamin said of TelVue's system. He also noted that the technology allows authorized users to make critical updates to Norton's channels - such as a school officials inputting class delays. "Any computer out there can now be an extension of this studio," he explained enthusiastically. Though pleased, the cable director wants to flesh out more features for Norton TV. He and the board are working closely with Wheaton College to record some of its events, including a recent immigration panel, for online viewing. With the help of the staff's graphic designer, Keith Grennon, Benjamin has also revamped the Web site. And in its "NortonTube" experiment, the channel now fields a reporter, Peter Glantz, who ventures out to gather residents' opinions on issues such as the war in Iraq, and then uploads the interviews online. Though Benjamin is eager to explain - and re-explain - the details of his vision for Norton TV, his most succinct statement on his inspiration for leading such changes may best capture his broader view: "Why not?" M. JUNAID ALAM can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at malam@thesunchronicle.com.