Programing notes
By MTN Program Manager, John Aker



If you missed Appreciation Night on TV, watch it on the Web!

     Those of you who were able to be at MTN for Appreciation Night know that nothing can compare to being there, but if you can't watch one of the repeats on television, or if you liveoutside of Minneapolis, you can still watch the show, thanks to the wonder of "streaming video".

Viva and Jerry Beck
     If you haven't visited the MTN web site lately, pay a visit, and don't forget to come on over to the Video side. On the Video side of the MTN web site you'll find weekly updated schedule listings for Channels 32, 33 and 58 (36B) as well as programs for our daytime programming and the schedule for the Board of Education's Channel 35.

     Once you get to the video side home page, click on one of the channel numbers to go to our weekly schedule grid. You'll see both series and stand-alone programs listed on the schedule. Many of the series programs are clickable. Clicking on the name of a show will take you either to a web site designed by the producers of the show, or to a web page prepared by MTN. These MTN program web pages include show descriptions, schedule times, images from the show, and a few contain video clips that you can watch on your computer if you have a Real Media player. If you don't have one you can download one free from the Real web site. You'll find a link to that site on all the MTN pages with streaming clips.

     Anybody with a 28.8 kbps modem or faster can watch these clips. "Streaming" video works by sending out just a small bit of inform-ation at a time, and keeps sending it, so you don't have to download a big file to watch it. The picture is jerky and the sound is not the greatest, but once you've watched a few streaming video clips you just might find yourself hooked and wanting more.

     You can find your fill of streaming video on MTN's web site, including clips from shows like Viva & Jerry, The Mary Hanson Show and others. You can also watch "MTN Appreciation Night" in its entirety. To do that, point your web browser to http://producers.mtn.org/appreciation/
MTN Adopts a Five to Five Schedule

     When you submit a program for airing on MTN you are given an evening showtime, but until mid November your program might have shown up at other times during the day. These repeat times were often unpredictable, because we were simply playing back a recording of much of our evening cablecast. The image and sound quality were also degraded because of this, and shows never quite started at the top and bottom of the hour.

     This method also provided a perhaps insurmountable challenge to a programmer. Eight p.m. on television has a very different feeling than noon, and trying to program for both at the same time is nearly impossible. What feels right on television at nine at night, opposite NYPD Blue, does not always work if it is repeated opposite Barney. And so we've begun a winter test, putting an end to the daytime repeat of the evening's shows but offering some daytime programming on Wednesdays and Fridays.

     We will still use the recording of our evening schedule between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., but the rest of our schedule will be a little more predictable. Now you can find public access programs on MTN between the hours of five p.m. and midnight every day of the week. The first five hours of this schedule is repeated at midnight, and then we run information and music on Channels 32, 33 and 58 (36B) from five a.m. to five p.m.

     In addition, MTN has started daytime programming on Wednesdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. On these days you will find longer programs, meetings and specials. On other days you'll find community calendar and schedule information during the daytime. Every week the schedule is posted in detail, with stand-alones, series programming and daytime shows all listed.

     So for now it is 5 to 5 at MTN: programs from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., with daytime shows on Wednesday and Fridays.

In this Issue:
MTN Page One: MTN Appreciation Night
Page Two: Programming Notes
Page Three: MTN Profile
Page Four: View From the Northside
Page Five: E-Mail from Derrik and Open Studio 1999
Page Six: MTN Features
Page Seven: MTN Appreciation Night Awards, Oct. 23, 1998