Aug. 9, 2007 — Coverage of V.I. Little League baseball games in the Junior League World Series may appear on local public television, WTJX Executive Director Osbert Potter said Thursday during Senate budget hearings in Frederiksted.
The station is looking into airing highlights of the games in Taylor, Mich., which start this coming Sunday, Potters said. The V.I. Little League team beat out the rest of the Caribbean and parts of Latin America to advance to the World Series.
“We know this is historic for the Virgin Islands,” Potter said. “We will have some coverage on the ground.”
ESPN owns the rights to broadcast the games, and other media can only offer live coverage, Potter said.
“We were looking at possibly having a live satellite feed, but our affiliate in Michigan does not have the capability,” he said. “We are ahead of many of our affiliates technologically. If the situation were reversed, we could broadcast live by satellite, but they cannot feed it to us.”
More than likely WTJX will get daily summaries of events in collaboration with its sister station in Michigan, and may just have short snippets of footage to show, Potter said.
“I’m happy we will be seeing the best of the Virgin Islands,” said Sen. Carlton “Ital” Dowe. “I’m looking forward to seeing snippets.”
Besides sports, music is also on the WTJX schedule. The station will soon air a new documentary on the life of the late Nick “Daddy” Friday of the Jam Band. The station plans to air as much locally relevant and locally produced programming as possible, while continuing to air Public Broadcasting System standards such as “The News Hour,” “Nova” and “Tavis Smiley,” Potter said.
In addition to local programming such as “Graffiti Street” and “Out in de Yard,” Potter said the station is bringing several outside shows that may have strong local appeal. One is “The Kitchen Diva,” a show out of Austin, Texas, about healthy food, soul food, regional African-American, Caribbean and African cooking. Diva star Angela Medearis is coming to the territory to tape four episodes of the show, which airs Sundays at 5 on Channel 12.
African movies and African video-magazine cultural documentaries will also be on the upcoming year’s show listings, Potter said. Archiving local footage for posterity is a priority for the station, too.
“We continue to place special emphasis on establishing and maintaining an effective archival system that will preserve our cultural and historic programs,” Potter said. “Ultimately, the concept is to make available these programs to the public using a video-on-demand system. Once we have documented and preserved the many historic and cultural programs in our archive, we will begin to air selected programs from our archives on a regular and consistent basis.”
The television station is asking for $4.6 million in general operations funding for 2008.
“This represents a minuscule two-percent increase over last year’s budget request,” Potter said. “We are also requesting $500,000 in our capital budget that would primarily be used to acquire additional parking for our Estate Richmond facility.”
The station recently moved from its old rented offices at Gallows Bay into a building in Estate Richmond, so now WTJX owns all of its facilities and no longer pays rent, Potter explained. But the new facility in Richmond does not have enough parking, and the station has been in negotiations for some time on a piece of adjacent property to convert to parking. The $500,000 for the capital budget will be submitted separately and may be included with a master capital project budget expected soon from Gov. John deJongh Jr.
Back Talk Share your reaction to this news with other Source readers. Please include headline, your name and city and state/country or island where you reside.
