Musings: A small station adapts while our culture shifts
LTV Studios, a nonprofit public-access TV station in Wainscott, has served East Hampton Town since the early 1980s. Credit: Christine Sampson
In some ways, Aug. 15 was a business-as-usual day at East Hampton Town’s public access TV station, LTV Studios. On the to-do list: broadcasting a government meeting and filming a TV talk show. But in other ways, it was a test not just of a public-access TV station’s capabilities, but also its ability to adapt to the world around it.
That’s because a famous wedding dress designer rented LTV’s studio space and technical services for a special video shoot in the Wainscott studio. Later that night, the sports network ESPN was on-site to tap into LTV’s broadband connection for its own remote needs, and a popular news anchor delivered his usual nightly broadcast from a private LTV studio.
People often ask what “LTV” stands for. The answer is “local television.” It’s got a long and delightfully idiosyncratic legacy of freedom of speech, creative expression, and pure, raw character. Think “Wayne’s World” meets “The Last Days of Disco” with a soundtrack of electronic dance music and hip-hop deejayed by LTV’s crew of elder-millennial and Gen-Z creative staffers. Weird and wonderful.
But as NPR, PBS, and other critical services have had their funds slashed, the sense of security for those in the public-access television world is at best a thin, translucent specter, and high-profile client rentals like a fashion icon and ESPN sure ease that anxiety.
Today, the ever-evolving LTV also hosts plays, concerts, cabaret shows, two youth theater groups, panel talks, educational events, film screenings, political debates, and even weddings. This provides a key avenue of income supporting an old-school media platform that, for all intents and purposes, is likely to find a bull’s-eye on its back.
Everyone at LTV is acutely aware that this could all go away, so day after day, they dig in and serve the community. This journey of adaptation is mission-critical.
A massive push to fight for its future lies ahead — not for the first time, and definitely not for the last.
— Christine Sampson, North Sea
The writer is LTV’s director of community engagement.
WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO JOIN OUR DAILY CONVERSATION. Just go to newsday.com/submitaletter and follow the prompts. Or email your opinion to letters@newsday.com. Submissions should be no more than 200 words. Please provide your full name, hometown, phone number and any relevant expertise or affiliation. Include the headline and date of the article you are responding to. Letters become the property of Newsday and are edited for all media. Due to volume, readers are limited to one letter in print every 45 days. Published letters reflect the ratio received on each topic.
