In 1993, before we were so connected, it was nearly impossible to find out what happened at a Town meeting you missed. Richard Portwine, an electronics educator, and other citizens were appointed to a town committee to work on a franchise agreement with the cable company. Back then, cable companies were small local companies that were eventually bought up by the larger corporations we recognize today. Gorham thus became one of the first towns in Maine with access channels on the air.

As there was a need for content, Jack Critchly, a Gorham resident, took it upon himself to use his personal video camera to document meetings and school activities and publish our town’s local news and events. Eventually the management of the access channels came back to the town and Cindy Hazelton, Gorham Recreation Director, was tasked with manually monitoring the system and creating informational slides on a then state-of-the-art Commodore 64. Technology rapidly advanced, GoCAT continued to expand, and in 1999, Georgia Humphrey joined the team and ultimately became the Community Media Systems Manager.

Gorham’s residents have relied on GoCAT for their local news and information ever since. But the times are changing. Keeping up with the advent of the internet and the explosion of social media has not been easy for many of us, but GoCAT was an early adopter. Over the past decade GoCAT established a website, created a Facebook page, and maintained a presence on VIMEO and YouTube. A live stream of the government channels is always available through the town’s website.

The town of Gorham has to periodically renegotiate financial agreements with the cable company to compensate the town for running their cables in the public right of way. These types of franchise agreements are intended to make cable companies competitive, but this paradigm does not work in rural areas like Maine because there are no competitors.

“Access has always been the David to the corporation’s Goliath. Only government actions have kept Access functioning. The corporations have kept Access in standard definition with its poor signal quality compared to profit channels,” Humphrey noted.

At the state level, there is an effort to push back on the cable companies. CTAM (Community Television Association of Maine) and other stockholders, have been working on a bill called “An Act to Ensure Non-Discriminatory Treatment of Public, Educational and Governmental Access Channels by the Cable Operator.”

“This bill will provide municipalities with important statutory protections and subscriber benefits which are sadly missing from Charters’ current offerings,” said Tony Vigue, past President and Chief of Legislative Affairs Committee for CTAM.

There have been many challenges recently including “channel slamming.” This is the process whereby cable corporations move access channels from a well known location to random channels. In Gorham’s case, and in other towns across the country, Access channels that have always been located at channels 2 and 3 were moved to 1301 and 1302. As Humphrey pointed out, “this will make it more difficult for citizens to to find the channels, but we are still broadcasting and available even on Spectrum’s basic tier.”

To plan for the pending renegotiation of the franchise agreement and better understand residents’ use of all the new media outlets, GoCAT conducted a survey this past summer. Seventy percent of responders thought the franchise fee should be used to support operational costs of local channels. Although 80% of residents have cable and also receive their internet service via Spectrum, only 40% were satisfied with the signal quality.

Using the survey data, Gorham made the decision to implement a marketing strategy whereby GoCAT would shift to GoCAM (Gorham Community Access Media) to more accurately reflect what it had become: a media organization that is presenting government and community information and streaming video on many platforms.

“We’d like to get a fresh look and enlighten people to where they can access local information,” said Humphrey about the strategy to rebrand.

There are numerous ways to get that local news you may be looking for, and you don’t even need a TV. Now all you need is a smart phone to catch that gazebo concert you missed, watch that planning board meeting, or learn of upcoming events.

Residents can continue to access all of the information they have come to expect with GoCAM on television in addition to www.gorham-me.org, Facebook, and Vimeo.