Broadcasting Live from Town Meeting

Westwood Community Access Television (WestCAT), the town's non-profit public access television corporation, long in the planning stages had its first opportunity last night to provide live gavel-to-gavel coverage of a town meeting. An overflow crowd in the high school auditorium for a Special Town Meeting, viewed a presentation on the need for a new library, participated in heated discussion and overwhelmingly voted to approve the $13-million in construction costs. WestCAT recently hired an Executive Director and purchased equipment to launch a public access channel that will covering town meetings, events and provide an opportunity for local residents to showcase programming endeavors. WestCAT's state-of-the-art equipment was employed in the coverage. ED Greg Moberg manned the camera which provided a live feed set up by WestCAT board member, Dave Atkins, that could be seen 'live streaming' on WestCAT's website. With the high school auditorium filled to capacity, WestCAT's live internet feed was piped to the small auditorium for the benefit of the overflow crowd. Those who watched seemed very impressed with WestCAT's first effort at town coverage.

"We're extremely excited that we were able to provide coverage of our first Town Meeting and doubly so because our live streaming experiment actually solved a potential problem for meeting organizers", said WestCAT's President, John Craine.

Still in the formative stages, WestCAT's short range goal is to provide coverage of Selectmen, School Committee and other town meetings. The group is also working with Comcast and Verizon to get the programming on the local cable channels. In the meantime, video from town events will soon be available on WestCAT's website www.westwoodtv.org.

WestCAT is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation.