MINNEAPOLIS—North Penn Television is the educational access channel for the North Penn School District in the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County. To help students continue to get school-related content during the pandemic, NPTV relied on Tightrope Media Systems’ CableCast Community Media platform and Screenweave LIVE cloud-based service.
The Cablecast platform had been part of NPTV’s infrastructure before the pandemic, helping the student-run station cover school meetings, sports and concerts, including daily morning and a monthly newscast to the larger community.
In April, after schools were closed due to lockdowns, NPTV began using Screenweave LIVE, which enabled student broadcasters to continue reporting the news from their homes by adding live Zoom web conferencing feeds to the Cablecast system.
“We continued doing a full live television show each Friday with our high school students in their homes, me managing it from my living room, and pushing it out on YouTube, Facebook and our Comcast and Verizon channels,” said Bob Gillmer, North Penn School District’s coordinator of communications media. “It also lets us bring our virtual school board meetings into our channel live, across all our platforms.”
Gillmer also praised the ability to access Cablecast remotely through a browser-based interface, as well as the remote upload feature.
Even when things return to normal with students back in classrooms, Gillmer says that they will continue to utilize Cablecast and Screenweave LIVE as part of its broadcast infrastructure.
