By Don Rush
For almost a quarter of a century one thing has been consistent for Teri Stiles: Oxford Community Television (OCTV). She’s been a volunteer, board member, an employee and, since November, station manager.
“I started out reading The Oxford Leader on air with Howard Hoeflein,” Stiles said. “It’s been a fun job — 23 years of working with wonderful staff. We all work well together, we’re like family. I love the people in this community. It’s true, if you love your job, you’re not really working.”
Stiles has seen a lot of changes with OCTV since first volunteering at the turn of the last century. The station was first housed in Oxford High School (now Oxford Middle School); they then were located north of town on M-24 for years before moving into their current digs three years ago. Their offices, studio and production rooms are located in the Oxford Township Parks & Recreation office complex at Seymour Lake Township Park.
Where once the station had limited shows to air, they are now on-air 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“I am really proud of the OCTV staff and what we do for the community. We put out the most staff produced content of any independent community access station in the state,” she said.
A sampling of the locally produced shows include Connie’s Kitchen, Keeping it REALestate, Kids Kitchen, Senior Moments, Senior Break and My Life. They also record little league sports in the summer, local government meetings, and lately have streamed live meetings of Oxford Township, Oxford Village, Oxford School Board, Addison Township and Leonard Village.
The show My Life has received awards for shows on local veterans of foriegn wars.
In the near future they plan to air shows to target younger viewers. One show, Kids Camp will explore podcasting, how to do it and what is accepted and what not to do. Another will target “20-somethings,” and will be “edgy.” It will deal with the local music scene called All Access Underground.
OCTV can be viewed on Spectrum/Charter Channel 191 and Channel 99 on AT &T U-verse. Their shows can be watched on YouTube, Rumble and Facebooks. Folks can even download a Roku app and watch OCTV programming.
The station is funded from franchise fees collected from cable subscriptions. This year’s approved budget is a little over $340,000 and pays for wages, utilities, office supplies and equipment maintenance — basically the cost of running a station. They search out grants to fund major equipment upgrades.
On Stiles’ wishlist is upgrading the studio and adding on a Podcast booth for members of the community to use. “If you know of any carpenters who want to volunteer to help, send them our way,” she said.
Stiles believes OCTV helps preserve the community’s history and character through local programming. “We are all professionals here with degrees of some sort. We’re not doing this for the money, we’re doing it because we love the community. Everybody here wears many hats. Everyone of us shoots, writes, edits and produces.”
Aside from Stiles and volunteers OCTV is staff by 11 people: Office Manager Dave Kenny; Camera crew Jebediah Calhoun, Al Campbell and Alex Massacesi; Producers Joseph Calhoun, Chuck Cameron, Joe Hewitt, Kyle Snage and Daniel Zwiez; Programmer Connie Miller; and Intern Marissa Hruska
OCTV is also available to local groups for producing Public Service Announcements (PSAs), “Give us a call and we’ll be there she said.
She also wanted to let the community know that OCTV will, in some way, document what happened in Oxford on Nov. 30.
“When it’s not so raw we will do something. We don’t want to offend. We haven’t been front and center out of respect. When it’s time, we’ll do it,” she said.
Have a show idea? Want to volunteer? Give their office a call at 248-628-9658.