Earlier this year the City Council approved the awarding of art project funds to KOCT and five (5) other non-profit organizations. The Oceanside Arts Commission, consisting of 11 volunteers, had reviewed many grant applications before passing on their recommendations to the Council.

The mission of the Arts Commission is to foster the development of the performing, visual and cultural arts. The goal of KOCT’s successful grant application was to produce three programs about other successful grantees and share with our north county community our rich art culture and heritage. KOCT is thankful for the support of the Arts Commission and the City Council. KOCT will provide matching funds for this project to our City Council.

In the coming months you’ll see the KOCT camera crew at the following events:

·         The Boys & Girls Club of Oceanside’s Art of the Masters program

·         The First Friday Art Walk (May 1^st)

·         Oceanside Theatre Company’s Radio Program Series

KOCT’s objective is to share with a greater audience these short television and web programs that capture the creativity, excitement and content of our vibrant Oceanside arts community. We live in a busy, fast-paced environment and not everyone can get away from family, business and other obligations to participate and enjoy the arts. KOCT hopes to share and preserve these ‘art moments’ with a larger community and for a period of time longer than the event itself!  Donald Stump with North County Lifeline wrote in a supportive letter on behalf of KOCT: “…these programs highlight the many positive projects that take place in Oceanside and KOCT’s coverage helps to insure a larger audience for our non-profits, artists and musicians.”



KOCT camera crew at North County Lifeline mural creation for a previous "Arts & Culture" production.

Jennifer Lacy, the Board Chair of the Oceanside Charitable Foundation wrote: "We are fortunate to have such a responsive television station in Oceanside....their commitment to promoting Arts and Culture has been evident by their innovation and willingness to work with the community".

KOCT has covered the Arts in Oceanside since its inception. Here the late poet, writer and ‘artist’ Robert Nanninga & KOCT Executive Director Tom Reeser create a promo for a KOCT program about the very first ‘Days of Art’ in the late 1980’s.



2014 has been a great year for community television. KOCT produced 132 programs for, by and about our north county community. We had two elections this year and KOCT produced 12 in-depth programs to help voters make informed choices.

Thanks to generous grant donors KOCT was able to produce Community Health Matters—in both English & Spanish, an Arts & Culture series and a new series on Bike Safety called Bike Shorts. Our thanks to Tri-City Medical Center’s board of directors and the Community Healthcare Alliance Committee, the Oceanside Charitable Foundation and SANDAG for their support of quality community television.

We are also in the final editing stage of a new series called the Adobes & Ranchos of North County—funded by the Parker Foundation. Look for a community event to celebrate this new historical series in February 2015!

KOCT worked with youth and produced two High School Spectrums (El Camino & Oceanside High Schools) and covered the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship event at Janet Bledsoe-Lacy’s home (and Janet was also featured in a Journalist Roundtable program when she announced her decision to step down from the OUSD Board of Trustees) We also sent a News Brief crew to cover the opening of the new Veterans Information Center on MiraCosta College & to Carlsbad High School to cover their amazing morning news show television program.

KOCT celebrated 30 years of service to the Oceanside community in 2014, since our inception KOCT has produced over 6,134 programs! It’s a challenging and exciting time for community television. Challenging because our standard definition channel placement means viewers no longer see our programs if they only ‘surf’ the high-definition tier of programs. Exciting because our many high-definition programs can be viewed via KOCT.org’s video-on-demand service—anywhere in the world!

As 2014 draws to a close I want to thank the KOCT staff, Board of Directors and volunteers who support the station and helped us to produce our unique mix of north county programs. And thanks to our viewers too!  If you value KOCT please consider becoming a Friend of KOCT in 2015. With your support we can continue to provide quality community programming for another 30 years.

As we mentioned in an earlier blog KOCT has completed the field recording of Community Health Matters, a new series about health issues and north county health resources. But that’s only half of the production work needed to bring this 16-part series to north county residents.

KOCT uses the Final Cut Editing system on Apple’s Macintosh computers.  Editing is the time-intensive part of production that few viewers are aware of but where the production value is added and polished. First the footage must be digitized or ingested and stored in virtual bins on Final Cut. When shooting this 30-minute program in the field there are many ‘takes’ to each segment sometimes there are technical problem or the guest needs to start over---these shots are eliminated and only the best takes are stored and then pieced together on a virtual time-line. After the story-line is constructed the editor will add PSA’s, graphics, titles and ‘b’ roll (footage to illustrate the interviews). So, for example, in the program on Robotic Assisted Surgery you’ll get to see these sophisticated new surgical tools in action while the surgeon is being interviewed. The final program is then sent to KOCT’s servers for airing, to our website for VOD and to the Oceanside duplicator, PMI, http://koct.org/ for DVD duplications.

KOCT is blessed to have many creative editors on this series and one of them is Angela Wong, Angela is very familiar with Community Health Matters as she was also the Camera and Teleprompter operator for the series.  She is originally from South Florida and attended Ithaca College (in upstate New York) where she studied Cinema Production. She graduated in 2012 and now works at KOCT and freelances on the side. Angela, despite not having studied Spanish in any particular level, enjoys editing the English and Spanish CHM series anyways. She told us this about the new health series: “With editing, I’m excited to see the show truly come together and finally stand on its own.”

Community Health Matters was funded by a Tri-City Healthcare District Community Grant and Tri-City Medical Center. It is collaboration with Vista Community Clinic, North County Health Services and KOCT. The series will start airing in late February and free DVD’s of the programs will be available at the hospital and clinics too. Stay tuned for more information.

Whew! After two long production days KOCT has concluded the first part of our upcoming new television series: Community Health Matters. 

This past week we shot 8 programs in both Spanish and English on Heart & Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes. KOCT’s Station Manager, Jake Rush directed these two heavy production days and he was assisted by a talented production team including Assistant Director Angela Miranda, and Addison Wolf who ran the audio board. (And we wouldn’t have rolled our mobile studio to record these programs if not for Chief Engineer Bill Peters who quickly diagnosed a battery problem!).

On the special television set for these shoots were Shawn Lennon, Maya Maravilla &Tamara Ilich on camera, also Angela Wong on Teleprompter. Tom Reeser was the floor director and Isabel Escalle from Tri-City Medical Center was our script advisor. Our host for the series is Univision’s Ricardo Berron.

Angela Wong on Teleprompter

Host Ricardo Berron with guests Jorge Gaspar Vista Community Clinic and Dr. Samuel Poniachik North County Health Services

In this coming month, right here on our Community Connection blog, we’ll show you the next part of the process:  The Art of editing this new series and the talented young people at KOCT who perform this time-consuming task.

Our goal is to start airing the first of 8 new programs in late February.  The programs will be shown in English and Spanish and, besides airing on KOCT, we will distribute them to our local library for check out and DVD’s will be available at North County Health Services, Vista Community Clinic, Tri-City Medical Center and at KOCT.

These programs were funded by a grant from The Community Healthcare Alliance Committee of the Tri-City Healthcare District and with funding from Tri-City Medical Center and from KOCT.  They are special tailored to emphasis the many health care resources right here in North County.