GPA offers live Internet streams

You now can watch Gillette Public Access anytime, anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection.

GPA now is streaming live its three channels off of the city of Gillette’s website. The new endeavor started on primary election night — Aug. 21.

To get the live streaming up and running, the city budgeted about $6,000. It works through a private company’s bandwidth. If it were to run the stream off of the city’s bandwidth, it would have slowed the city’s system considerably, said city spokesman Joe Lunne, who also oversees GPA.

To Lunne’s knowledge, the live streaming has been running smoothly so far. It is also a big step to broadening the accessibility people have to their local governments.

“Basically, what it means is more people will have access to GPA programing,” Lunne said.

Before it started to stream live online, GPA only was carried by Optimum, so residents who didn’t go through that provider couldn’t watch it.

“I think it really stretches the reach of GPA,” Lunne said.

That includes giving people greater access to their government.

GPA airs and streams live multiple governmental meetings. Those include the City Council, County Commission, both the city and county planning commissions and the hospital board. The cemetery board meetings are recorded and aired later in the day.

All of the meetings are replayed several times for those who missed it the first time around. And if someone wants to look for a specific meeting, they still can go through the archives on the GPA website, Lunne said.

The station also covers local sports, which are played on a delay, and will stream live major events such as high school graduation and the grand march during prom.

“I think that really helps out families that don’t live here,” he said.

Another benefit is that the people who live in the county will be able to watch whatever meetings they want to see, he added.

Up until now, GPA has not been able to monitor its viewership, but it now can get an idea because it can track how many people click to watch each channel.

“It will be the first chance we have to get ratings,” Lunne said.

It likely will collect the viewer numbers at the end of each month. September’s number should paint a decent picture of how many people now use it, he said.

Lunne suspects that the online streaming will be well received in the community. He believes there already are quite a few people who watch the meetings on TV. The viewership may fluctuate depending on the hot topic being discussed.

If there’s a big topic like chickens and pigs, the Field of Dreams or the Pioneer Manor zoning, quite a few people will tune in and watch those meetings, Lunne said.

GPA has been around since 1993 and has broadcast on television since 1994. While it does subscribe to regional and national programming, the GPA team does about 30 percent of its coverage, with its primary focus being government, Lunne said.