While local cable television coverage usually limited to car crashes and reality television scandals, the Lake Success-based Public Access TV Corporation wants to bring television news a little closer to home.
PATV has launched North Shore News, a biweekly news show that features a roundup of the region’s news as well as original reporting and video packages.
Ben Ratner, the show’s producer, said the station moved to shore up its news coverage this summer in an effort to better inform the North Shore’s residents.
“We decided to really ramp that up this summer to be a twice monthly show – to really include news stories from around everywhere that gets our channel,” said Ratner, a Great Neck South High School graduate currently studying television production at Ithaca College. “We wanted kind of a round up of everything that’s going on around the North Shore.”
Ratner said he approached PATV Executive Director Shirley Bruno and Director of Technical Operations Erica Bradley about a month ago, with the first airing of program airing about two weeks afterwards.
“It was something I wanted to bring here. I know there’s a lot going on around Great Neck, and I thought that we could really benefit from a show that lets people know what’s going on,” Ratner said.
The show, filmed in front of a green screen at PATV’s recently refitted studio, has already broadcast original video reports on PATV’s nomination for a New York Emmy and concerts at Jonathan L. Ielpi Firefighters’ Park in the Village of Great Neck Plaza.
The show is a team production, Ratner said, and is anchored by Manhasset native Stephanie Savage.
Savage, an aspiring broadcaster teaches English as a second language after graduating four years ago from Marymount Manhattan College, began producing segments for PATV three years ago.
Savage said she was excited to have the chance to break into news coverage and bring some local reporting to North Shore television sets.
“It’s been great.” Savage said. “Everyone is working so well together. When we did the first episode, it was amazing how everyone came together.”
Ratner, who has interned for News 12 and Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show, said the team hopes to eventually broadcast live, and that he plans on training the staff to keep the show going once he returns to college in the fall.
And Savage shares his ambitions for expanding the show’s coverage.
“We want to make it a weekly thing, or at least as often as we can,” Savage said.
North Shore News, executive produced by Bruno, will broadcast next on July 20 at 2 p.m. and plans to move to a regular morning time slot in August, according to a press release.
