In the context of the current budget discussions and the closing of the Ann Arbor News, Paul Bancel went to the podium and asked city council to think about ways to make CTN relevant. One concrete suggestion he had was to make sure some public bodies who do not currently meet in front of CTN cameras have their meetings recorded: Downtown Development Authority board (they’re working on it), the library board, and the public art commission. The board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority could be added to the list.

But part of making community television relevant entails an understanding by the community of what it offers. If council has a role to play in making CTN relevant, then so does the community.

For readers who’d like an analysis, a CTN case study by University of Michigan student – and occasional Chronicle commenter – Matt Hampel is compelling reading. For readers who haven’t watched anything on CTN in a while, or who’ve never watched an episode of an Ann Arbor City Council meeting, we’d suggest that tonight’s a good night for viewing.

On Channel 16, May 11, at 7 p.m. CTN will broadcast the city council’s work session on the city budget. Their vote on the budget will take place the following week, May 18.

Last week, live broadcast of public meetings was interrupted due to a cable cut related to the new municipal building construction.  However, Greg McDonald, assistant manager for the city government productions at CTN, spoke to The Chronicle early this afternoon (Monday, May 11), and reported that the connection had been restored. Though there is no signal to the monitor inside the council chambers, the feed out to CTN studios on South Industrial is again working.

After watching the meeting live or later online using CTN’s video on demand feature, perhaps Chronicle readers will be in a better position to think of ways to make CTN more relevant.

Here at The Chronicle, we’re contemplating a slightly different way to approach our meeting coverage to make it somewhat more timely. Tonight at the work session, instead of taking notes on a local laptop hard drive, we’ll try Twittering them live on A2ChronicleMeet. One possible result is that the meeting’s Twitter feed, when cleaned up – but with time-stamp entries left intact – could provide useful time codes for finding content in CTN’s recorded broadcast. It could be a way for viewers of the online stream to orient themselves and find specific places in the video when action at council occurred  – that feature is not currently provided with CTN’s video on demand feature, which allows viewing of the meetings over the web.

That feature might be provided soon by CTN itself. According to McDonald, efforts are underway to integrate the meeting minutes information into the video stream. The technician in charge of the meeting already inserts the subtitles of agenda item numbers into the stream. Making it easier for users to navigate the online video would be a good step forward.