Membership has its privileges
$6 for one DV videotape. $25 dollars for MATV membership. $20 for learning how to use the equipment.
Finishing your first edit? Priceless.
Yes, membership does have its privileges, and that’s why I’m writing this column – to reinforce what a great deal it is to become a member of MATV, Malden’s Media Center.
The qualifications are simple. All you have to be is a resident, student or an employee working in Malden and you get access to training, equipment and channel time on one of our three community channels. You can either work on a production as part of a studio crew or create your very own TV show yourself. It’s that easy, and we have been doing this for almost 20 years.
We have various categories of membership for people to take advantage of. They are set up simply as Individual, Family, Youth and Senior Citizen. For businesses and non-profit organizations, we have what we call, Community and Business Partnerships. The idea of this type of membership is to encourage clubs, non-profit organizations and local businesses to join MATV as partners to not only help support what we do as a community media center, but allow their membership to produce programming that promotes their own resources and the type of work that they do for the city.
Organizations such as the Malden YMCA and the YWCA have been a part of our partnership program for many years and have been instrumental in creating after-school activities that benefit youngsters by teaching them how to use the equipment and produce programming that matters to them. They learn media literacy in the process and that makes them better consumers as well as communicators.
Organizations such as the Malden Rotary Club, Mystic Valley Elder Services, the Malden Chamber of Commerce and more recently, the Cambridge Health Alliance have all learned how to take advantage of this incredible resource available to them. These collaborations have led to original programming that promotes what wonderful work these organizations do for the community.
In fact, more recently the new President of the Rotary Club, Dr. Tim Tierney, had begun hosting a new updated series called “Rotary in Review,” which can be seen on Channel 16 on Thursdays at 7 p.m. and Fridays at 6 p.m. He clearly understands the value of using television to spread the news on what “Rotary” is all about.
But membership not only gets you access to equipment and training. It’s much more than that. MATV is also a like a family where members come together to volunteer their time to help each other out, whether its to operate a camera for someone else’s production or offer to edit a video someone else shot of a community event and doesn’t have the time to edit it on their own.
We have many members who, like Christine Murphy, are retired; or, like Brent Robie, who love to edit and share their excellent skills at putting together productions that they have taken on. There are countless programs that have been completed by volunteer members such as these and MATV is very grateful for their work. It was Brent who helped finish the recent taping of that incredibly ambitious Visioning Project that was held in June. Through his volunteer work, the rest of Malden was able to see what went on that night as hundreds of citizens offered suggestions on what was right with the City and what was wrong.
Membership also offers a chance to help in deciding the direction of MATV. Each year, the membership has an annual membership meeting where the members vote on who should be on the MATV Board of Directors. It is this seven-member board that sets policy and oversees the financial aspects of the organization. MATV is truly a membership driven organization whereby the people who participate help decide the future of the media center and have a say in what goes on. The evening is also a fun time, and this year it will be held on Sept. 16 at Anthony’s in Malden. The theme this time is “Heroes of Access” and it will be a night of entertainment and humor.
Everyone is encouraged to come down the facility at 145 Pleasant St. to see for yourself what an incredible place this is. You not only meet interesting people, you learn the art of video production while you’re having a good time. Come and visit and see for yourself the incredible advantages of becoming a member.
