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MEDIA, continued from page 19
"I wanted to get out of the situation
where I'm constantly on the road,"
Hamlin said.
That's when he stumbled across
community-access television, which he
thought was a funny career curveball from
his video-production days in Pittsburgh.
"I thought it was kind of interesting
and that maybe I can kind of do the
pay-it-forward thing and come back
full circle," Hamlin said.
At the time, Lynnfield needed a director
for its media studios. He applied
and got the job.
He began his work in a former storage
closet at Lynnfield High School,
but spent years advocating and searching
for a new location, which led him
to MarketStreet about eight years ago.
"It's a small town and there wasn't a
lot of space or availability to start up a
station," he said. "I looked at commercial
space, but that didn't seem to work
out too well, and that's when Market-
Street came on my radar."
Moving to the studio in Market-
Street from the high school was "like
night and day," Hamlin said.
For the next five to six years, it was
mostly just Hamlin working at the studio,
with freelance help here and there.
Funding for community-access
television depends on the franchise fees
from Comcast and Verizon, which are
based on numbers of subscribers.
Since Lynnfield has a smaller population,
thus less subscribers, they get
around $200,000 to run the facility.
"We were always at a sort of disadvantage
with this, not being able to hire
a ton of people," Hamlin said.
In 2017, he stumbled across a freelancer,
Drew Sanborn, who graduated
from Westfield State University.
Hamlin loved Sanborn's work and drive
and hired him full time as a production
assistant about three years ago.
"He's a great kid and just real positive,"
Hamlin said. "I have him shoot a lot of
the sports games, and then we work handin-hand
with all the boards and groups
townwide that have to be televised."
When the pandemic hit, Hamlin
was forced to rewire the studio equipment
and programs to his house so he
could continue to produce and inform
the Lynnfield community through
virtual programs.
"It worked. We did have hiccups
here and there, but it was very successful,"
Hamlin said.
Hamlin worked with town officials to
get information about COVID-19 out to
the community as quickly as he could.
"You'd shoot something at 8 in the
morning, and it would have to be up by
like 10," he said. "I'd be editing, downloading
a bunch of stuff, and it was quite
the ordeal… We were able to pump out a
bunch of pertinent information."
The recent transition back into the
studio was a little more difficult, having
to reconfigure everything back to how
it was before.
Hamlin said it will be some time
until things are back to normal, with
interviews and live productions in the
studio, but plans to continue to have options
for hybrid interactions via Zoom.
"We're still experimenting with my
engineer on the best ways to do this,"
Hamlin said. "We're just kind of trying
to integrate these new technologies
where we're able to provide these services
in a manner that is easy to watch
and use, but also viable for the studio
and any of our viewers."
Having to deal with the pandemic
and it drastically changing his everyday
work, Hamlin said he did his best to
deal with the curve ball.
Over the years, Hamlin said he has
faced so many "funny things" that led him
on the long road to get where he is today.
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