Episode 47: Dan Hogan (WCA-TV)

Meet Dan Hogan! He's the Director of News and Studio Operations at WCA-TV here in Watertown. In this conversation we talk about how he first got involved in video and news production (from throwing darts and Starsky and Hutch to covering sports all around New England), the process of building a 30 minute weekly news show, how WCA-TV is now focusing on becoming part of the community rather than just covering it, his personal favorite stories over his 10+ years covering the city, and more!

(Click here to listen on streaming apps)

Find out more about Dan and WCA-TV at wcatv.org

—————

Come celebrate Little Local Conversations’ one year anniversary on March 18th!

Sign up for the Little Local Conversations email newsletter to know when new episodes are out and keep up on everything Little Local Conversations.

Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at https://watertownbusinesscoalition.com/.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Dan Hogan, who is the Director of News and Studio Operations at WCA_TV. He's got his finger on the pulse of Watertown so it was good to sit down with him and get a little bit of the story of the person who covers all the stories of Watertown. So let him introduce himself and then we'll get into our conversation.

Dan: 0:33

Hi, Matt. My name is Dan Hogan. I am the Director of News and Studio Operations at WCA-TV. I've been here for I think I'm just about to hit 11 years here at WCA TV. It's been a great 11 years. Yeah, I love this job.

Matt: 0:50

Nice. Yeah, you had like a big 10 year thing last year, right?

Dan: 0:52

Yeah, I still have the two balloons like on the floor in my office. I have a big one and a big zero and they're still inflated and just like sitting on the floor in my office. I don't know what to do with them.

Matt: 1:01

They've lasted almost a year, wow.

Dan: 1:03

I know, yeah, and they're still just as inflated as they were. I guess helium or I don't know. The staff got me this great little newspaper clipping of popular songs in 2014 when I started and what the number one movie at the box office was. But yeah, it was really nice. It's flown by a crazy journey but yeah, it's been a great 11 years.

Matt: 1:21

Nice. Well, my format is I always like to go back in time first, so we'll get through those 11 years and your current view on things. But let's go back in the wayback machine. How did you first get interested in this type of work to begin with?

Dan: 1:32

Yeah, it was probably in middle school, it was like seventh, eighth grade. Me and my friends, we just decided one day like hey, we wanted to do a shot for shot remake of the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson version of Starsky and Hutch. I don't know what prompted it.

Matt: 1:46 

Classic middle school project. 

Dan: 1:50

Classic classic, yeah. So we grabbed my dad's little camcorder and we hooked up a like a little string to like a little tiny RC car and drove it around the. 

Matt: 2:00

Did you do your own stunts?

Dan: 2:01

Yeah, sort of I guess. Yeah, if you count like doing somersaults on the grass stunts then yeah. We even did the voiceover thing.

Dan: 2:07

I didn't do any actual editing to the movie it was, wou know, my friend would just be playing starsky, but my friend standing behind me on the camera would be like I'm starsky and I'm a cop, but it was supposed to be like their voiceover. So it was like really low quality like that, so that was like sixth or seventh grade, yeah yeah. So we did that and then it kind of evolved from there. We made other just kind of short videos. Like we did one where it was supposed to be like the world's longest dart throw, so my friend just threw a dart from a room and then we just did like a bunch of individual sequences of the darts just traveling throughout the house doing loop-de-loops and stupid things like that. And we made a series of movies that we had a blast making, all just using my dad's camera. Eventually in high school I took video production, made some more short films or not even films, just like segments. I actually did a little mock news reports in high school.

Matt: 2:53

What got you interested in the news side particularly? How do you go from throwing the world's longest dart throw to news segments?

Dan: 2:58

It's a great question. I guess I couldn't tell you at what point it kind of flipped and I was like, oh, I want to get into news. I knew I wanted to do video production. So I went to college and the prerequisite for video production was you have to take journalism 101.

Dan: 3:13

So my freshman year of college at Northern Essex Community College, I took journalism 101, which was just straight, interviewing people, finding stories, writing, which I wasn't big on writing at the time, but I took a journalism course, eventually took the video production course at Northern Essex, made some other like we did a game show and some other things there. But it wasn't like very, it wasn't super hands-on, it was a lot of lectures about lighting and camera angles and not a ton of hands-on stuff. But at the same time, my buddy, I took these classes with one of my friends who also went to Northern Essex and we were both big sports fans. I've been a big sports guy since Adam Vinatieri kicked that first field goal in Super Bowl 36 for the Patriots. Ever since that day I've kind of been a big sports fan. So over time, through my love of sports, through my love of video production, I kind of decided oh, I want to do sports broadcasting. I want to be a sports broadcaster. I didn't really know what that meant at the time if I wanted to just film sports, if I wanted to do play-by-play, if I wanted to anchor a sports segment, I didn't really know. But I really loved sports. I really enjoyed the experience of capturing moments in sporting events and I love watching game coverage and things like that.

Dan: 4:27

So I eventually went to the New England School of Communications in Bangor, Maine. My sophomore, junior, and senior years of college I transferred. This was 2010. There I majored in sports journalism and NESCOM was very hands-on. They had us producing entire game coverage of the colleges, like lacrosse teams and baseball and football. I did play-by-play for a bunch of teams. I cut highlights. 

Matt: 4:50

Did you have a catchphrase?

Dan: 4:51

I didn't have a catchphrase but I feel like I had a lot of phrases that I just kept saying over and over again.

Matt: 4:56

Unintentional catchphrases.

Dan: 4:58

But I never had like a Stuart Scott, like cooler than the other side of the pillow or anything like that, but I wish I did. Being on air was never my strong suit because over time I really found my skills were better behind the camera than in front of it. So, yeah, my time at NESCOM I was just very sports journalism centric, but then I started to do a little bit of regular journalism with the school paper and then when I graduated, I wrote for a few different newspapers doing sports coverage. I was just a sports writer for about a year and then I got this job just as news producer in 2014. It encompassed all of the skills I had amassed in college, in high school. I just had to really turn my focus to news specifically and not just sports, because the other thing that I found out going through sports journalism was it's basically an impossible field to get into unless, like, either you have god-given talent to be on air or you know people, which I did neither at the time.

Matt: 5:56

Right, so Watertown. So you came from Maine to Watertown. Where did you grow up to give us this triangulation?

Dan: 6:00

Yeah, I grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts. I was born in Beverly, grew up in Haverhill, lived in Haverhill right up to college. Yeah, then I went to school in Bangor, moved back to Haverhill 

Matt: 6:10

How did you find out about the Watertown job then?

Dan: 6:12

So I graduated college in 2013. Out of college, like I said I got some jobs at some local newspapers. I wrote for the Eagle Tribune in North Andover, which is the biggest one. You know I would cover their like Division Four upstate New Hampshire athletics, like I would be going to like Pelham football games who were like the bottom of the barrel of high school sports in that area. So I would cover like the little guys but I would do a lot of sports writing for them. I did some for the Newburyport Times and a few others. I even did a magazine. I covered one of the first Boston Callings that they did. I did like a free thing for some magazine in Toronto where I covered Boston Calling.

Matt: 6:49

So that one was nice though, because then you got to be local to it rather than having to travel up to it, like that's. I think that's something people don't realize about like the sports writing is you have to travel to all those places.

Dan: 6:58

Yes, exactly. A lot of traveling around, a lot of just standing sitting in the bleachers and like 20 degree weather, which is still part of this job. It's a lot less fun when you're just kind of watching the game and taking notes. But I did it. So I did sports writing, freelance for about a year out of college. Was still living at home, wasn't really making any money, didn't have any other job. At that point my family, my parents, were like super supportive of you know my journey and you know, let me live at home while I kind of figured things out. After about a year, so now we're looking at like early 2014.

Dan: 7:30

I was like all right, I got to start making some actual money at this point. I've been out of college for almost a year just making you know a couple hundred bucks a month, not really going anywhere. I think I got to get some kind of supplemental income here to just kind of start moving things along here. So you know, I got the job that basically anybody can get. I got like a direct marketing position for a company and I forget what the name of the company was, but basically my job was I would go to Home Depot, total suit and tie, walk around Home Depot all day, go up to people, poke them on the shoulder and be like, hey, do you want to remodel your kitchen?

Dan: 8:04

Do you want to remodel your kitchen, do you want to remodel your kitchen? I would just do that eight hours a day. Minimum wage, commission base. They say, you know, if you got someone to say yes, if somebody said yes, if I went up to somebody and then they said, yes, I want to remodel my kitchen, I would then have to, like, take them over to a desk, call a number, have them fill out a form, have them book like a free consultation, do all these things. If they went through with all of that, I would maybe get a little bit of commission.

Matt: 8:30

But it sounds like this is a good practice for like man on the street segments right. Going up and approaching people.

Dan: 8:34

It kind of was in a way, but it also sort of scared me off from that because a lot of people would be like get away from me. Like I would go up to like actual contractors and they'd be like you're taking business away from me. I was getting yelled at, it was. It was horrible. So I did that for two weeks. I did that for two weeks and I quit. It was funny. I went into my boss's office and I was like, yeah, this isn't for me, I quit. And she was like, yep, that sounds about right.

Dan: 9:00

Cause, I think like daily somebody quits doing that kind of work. So I did that for two weeks at the beginning of January of 2014. Then it was like back to the drawing board. Next day after I quit. I go back to you know, I'm searching Indeed and LinkedIn and whatever at the time and I saw news producer Watertown Cable Access in Watertown and I was reading through the requirements and I was like I fit the bill for all of this. They were just looking for college experience. They were looking for someone that could film, someone that could write scripts, someone that had knowledge of sports and general news and things like that. I was like, all right, I fit this bill pretty perfectly. So I applied and I got the job. That was like February, March-ish of 2014. I started out part-time. The job at the time was news producer, part-time news producer. So I was working three days a week, sometimes four, still commuting from Haverhill and that really stunk.

Matt: 9:50

And did you still have to, but you weren't following around sports teams or something so like at least you, it was the same consistent commute.

Dan: 10:00

Yeah, it was every day to Watertown and then I just stayed in Watertown for the day covering Watertown and then I would go back home to Haverhill. I think I might've still been doing some part-time sports writing around that time, because I would usually work like Tuesday, Wednesdays, Thursdays here in Watertown and then I kind of had that Monday, Friday, and weekends to kind of do other stuff. So I think I still did some sports writing on the side. I was part-time here for about a year and then I started to kind of go backwards again because I was part-time for a year commuting to Haverhill. I was leasing a car at the time, so I was running up miles on the lease and the commute was killing me. So I was like I gotta find a place closer to Watertown.

Dan: 10:36

So a couple of my friends I had a friend who worked in Boston, another friend who worked in Brighton. They were also looking for an apartment, kind of in this general area. So we got an apartment in Brighton, the three of us. But I quickly discovered, oh, I am not making enough money part-time to pay rent and buy groceries and pay for a car and all these things. So I was like, okay, I probably have to start looking elsewhere again because I don't think that this part-time job is going to sustain me.

Dan: 11:04

So I eventually in this would be like early 2015, applied for a job in Danvers, and I don't even remember specifically what the job was, but it involved writing for a medical journal. I can't really remember the actual job title or description or what I was doing, but I got the job and it was full-time. It was in Danvers, so it was like back in the North shore. So I was like I'm just I'm all over the place here. I could have just stayed in Haverhill. So I got this job, accepted the job. Put my two weeks notice in here. About 12 days into my two weeks notice, so I have like two days left at this job, my boss comes to me and was just like hey, full-time and benefits, will you stay here? I'm like yeah, I think. And I asked what would the salary be? And the salary was actually significantly, fairly significantly lower than what I would have made at the new job. But I really liked the work here, I really liked what I was doing here. So I was like I'll do it. So I took kind of a pay cut to stay in Watertown at the time. But yeah, I became full-time here. It was like kind of at the 11th hour. I was this close to leaving year one.

Matt: 12:07

We almost lost Dan the newsman.

Dan: 12:10

Just the amount of things that would have been different if that hadn't happened. So yeah, full-time ever since then.

Matt: 12:14

Cool. So why don't we dig into the job here, then, and dig into what does a news person do at a place like this? You know, let's start scratching that surface.

Dan: 12:26

Yeah, so my job has evolved a bit over the years in certain ways, but largely it's also stayed the same. My primary responsibility as director of news and studio operations is I produce a weekly, usually 30-minute, newscast, now called Watertown Cable News, all about the city of Watertown. The newscast was actually started in 2008. We actually, if you walk down WCA-TV's main hallway, the breaker box in the hallway is painted to look like a video cassette and on that cassette it has the name Watertown Weekly News and then the date of the very first episode, which was way back in 2008, I believe. So newscast started in 2008.

Matt: 13:00

Still makes me feel old to say way back in 2008.

Dan: 13:04

I know and we have an anchor, one of our volunteer news anchors which I'd love to actually talk more about, Rob Scudder. He has been anchoring here ever since then, he anchored, I think, that first episode and to this day still basically on a weekly basis, comes in to anchor that show. Very dedicated volunteer through and through. But I'll circle back to them in a second. So yeah, the crux of my job is I produce a 30-minute weekly newscast all about Watertown. We film it live, every Thursday night usually come hell or high water. If it doesn't work out, I'll try to move mountains to make it so it happens. I've missed, if you don't count holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, I could probably count on two hands the number of Thursday nights that we've missed since I've worked here. Also not counting COVID, which even then I think we were off for one week during COVID and then we rolled it back.

Dan: 13:53

So we do a weekly Thursday night newscast where we'll do recaps of the city council meetings, school committee meetings, subcommittee meetings, sports coverage. We'll do highlights of whatever sports are happening at that time. We don't cover all of the high school sports, but we cover most of them. So you know like right now we're in the thick of the winter sports season and Watertown High School has two very good basketball teams and a pretty good hockey team. So my winter is busy with that, or all of our, entire staff here is busy in the wintertime just because of the sports coverage. That's the crux of my job. My weeks fluctuate but a lot of it is spent writing script copy for Thursday night. You know, watching through our municipal meeting coverage to see like what issues were talked about, what topics were talked about, what was voted on, what was discussed at these meetings. You know finding other events happening in town that we should cover. You know a lot of people will contact us, be like, hey, can you cover this event? And usually it's a yes, unless we just have no staff available. But usually we try to make it to as much stuff as we're invited to cover.

Dan: 14:54

So my week it's a lot of script writing, it's a lot of researching, it's a lot of filming and it's a ton of editing. I get a lot of help from the staff, our part-time videographers they film most of the meetings and the sports and all those things. I don't actually go out and film those usually, but I still have to sift through them and find out what's newsworthy that happened during these events. So a big part of my job is spent sifting through those and editing out editing a short 60-second soundbite of the city manager talking about the parking ban. Or going through the school committee meeting and finding out what the superintendent talked about. Or going through a basketball game and just seeing what were some of the more noteworthy moments of this game. And I do get a lot of help, but the actual putting everything together, a lot of that kind of falls on me on a weekly basis. I'm making graphics. I have to make new graphics every single week, write new scripts, edit new videos every single week. So that's just the news part of my job.

Matt: 15:47

Yeah, and I'd like to dig into that a little bit. So let's talk about how you condense down that information. How do you decide, like, what is the 60-second soundbite in like a 60-minute-long meeting? You know, like, how do you come to that?

Dan: 15:59

Yeah, it can be a varying process depending on the week and depending on kind of how much time that I have, because there's a lot of other aspects of my job I kind of have to tend to every week. Ideally I'd want to sit down and I would want to watch this whole two-hour city council meeting. I want to watch every second of it to get the information, not usually my reality. So one tactic that I've used a lot is I'll just ask the staff member who covered it, like hey, what was talked about here, what was particularly noteworthy? You know what stuck out?

Dan: 16:29

Or Charlie Breitrose, great resource in this town, over at the Watertown News. We're a weekly newscast, he's a daily newspaper. He'll oftentimes pump out a news story before we do, so I can go to his article and I can just read Charlie's summary and see what happened, what was noteworthy, and then you know, I'll go through the meeting and kind of find those moments and cut them up, whether it's a news package or just a soundbite or whatever it is. The other tactic I've kind of started using a lot which I have to be very careful with, is chat gpt, AI. What it can do is I can feed it a transcript of a meeting, and then it can spit out a summary, or I can even ask it to write give me a draft of what a news copy would look like. Like I'll feed it scripts that I've written. I'll be like, hey, make it kind of sound, look like this, and it'll give me something. But then I still have to go and watch the meeting to make sure that's actually what happens.

Matt: 17:12

Oh yes, I've definitely messed around with that stuff and they, so like do you know, the Google one, Notebook LM?

Dan: 17:20

Oh yeah.

Matt: 17:22

Where you can put in like your notes and it’ll make a fake podcast out of it. So, like I've experimented with that. So you're like what is this about? And it's, you know 90% of the information will be there, and then like, what? Then it'll say, like one sentence where it's like that is so completely wrong. And if you didn't know the background information, you'd just be like, oh, this sounds right because all the rest of it was right. Yeah, you got to be careful with that.

Dan: 17:40

And something it also loves to do is it loves to paraphrase things that are said in meetings. So it'll give me a quote and then I'll like type into my editing software to look for the quote, nowhere in sight. It'll paraphrase like that and kind of make things up from time to time. So it's incredibly helpful to guide me, point me in the right direction. But you gotta go, I have to go and double check it. But it's very helpful to just kind of point me in the right direction so I don't have to, instead of spending two hours sifting through a meeting, I can spend five minutes giving it a transcript. It tells me what happened and then I can go to those specific points in the meeting and find things. So that's been a pretty helpful tool and I'm sure people listening to this will be like ah, AI, you know what do you do when using AI. It is helpful, especially in my job, cause I can get a lot more done because of it. 

Matt: 18:26

Yeah, yeah, you're doing your due diligence. 

Dan 18:28

So that's kind of just the news part day to day, because I'm director of news and studio operations. So the other part of my job is studio operations, which I was promoted to really when we moved into this new space, that kind of became my job because I was kind of the one that was familiarizing myself with a lot of the new equipment and technology that we got at WCA-TV when we moved in late 2023, early 2024.

Dan: 18:51

So I manage any volunteers that want to come in and use our studio, use our podcast studio, use our TV studio. They'll coordinate with me to schedule a time. If they need help learning the equipment, I'll teach them how to use the equipment. We do offer workshops that are taught by other staff members here at WCATV where they will give people an introduction to the equipment here. But when it comes to the actual like day-to-day, week-to-week scheduling, operating of the equipment, that's really where I come in.

Dan: 19:20

You know we have some people that are doing podcasts here at WCA-TV now so they'll set up times with me where they can come in and record their show. If they still need some help editing, you know I'll make myself available to help them do that. And then I'm also in charge of kind of upkeep in our two studios. If there's an upgrade, if something breaks, if another staff member needs to learn how to use a certain aspect of like our control room, like if they don't know how to use the switcher and they want to learn how to use the switcher, I'll go over that with them. So the studio operations side is also a very big part of my job, and now I'm also taking up some more workshop instruction. I'm doing a podcast workshop here at WCA-TV. I've done one or two of them already and we're going to continue offering that. So that's also a big part of my job, which is very much in conjunction with my job as news director. Yeah, it's something I'm still kind of getting used to.

Matt: 20:11

Yeah, it's a nice kind of compliment of you go out and find out what's going on in the community and then this side of it is you're letting the community come in here and spread their story.

Dan: 20:20

Yeah, because something I've in recent years I'm trying to move towards is allowing the community to be its own source of news. By which I mean historically, like I've set up interviews where people would come in here and we'd interview them about a topic, but something that I think is more effective is letting people from the community who have something that they want to talk about come in and talk about it themselves. Now there's a couple different ways that I kind of go about that. So we have two podcasts right now ongoing one called Eye on Watertown, produced and hosted by Clyde Younger, where he comes in independently of me. I will help him get set up on the technical side. All the content, everything that's all on him. He can talk and then we'll post the episode. I don't give any editorial suggestions or anything like that. Same with another podcast we have which is called Settle Down, hosted by Jay Hughes and Ari Koufos. Same deal I'll help them get set up, whatever technical assistance they need and the content of the episode that falls to them. We'll edit it, put it up on our channels. So that's kind of one avenue I want people to come in, make their own shows independently of me.

Dan: 21:25

So another very advantageous relationship that we've built over the last few months is with the schools, specifically Matt McCarthy, who works in the school department. I've been working with him because he works part-time at the sports hub and I know he's a natural on the microphone and he goes to all the school community meetings because he works for the schools and he knows all this stuff. I asked him, I was like hey, do you want to work with me where you come down here and interview this chair of the school committee, interview the athletic director, interview the superintendent. You prepare the content and I'll help you film it and then I'll edit it together and include it as part of my news coverage, so as part of my show.

Dan: 22:04

Rather than me doing all of that legwork and researching and figuring out what is good to talk to the superintendent about, what is good to talk to the school committee chair about, it's just going to be so much less effective. The amount of time it takes to research and prepare for an interview, it's incredible. It's so much time to actually properly research and conduct an interview. But I've been working with Matt to come down and work with him to put together these what have been really well-received segments where he's interviewed the school committee chair, a few times the superintendent, the athletic director. So it's kind of a new type of interview process where, instead of doing them myself, I work with someone to come down and prepare and do the interviews, and that's been pretty effective. So a couple of different ways that I've been coordinating getting guests to come in and talking to people.

Matt: 22:54

Yeah, one other thing I’d like to dig a little more into is with your show, the news show, how do you structure out 30 minutes? So, like we talked about, like editing a conversation to put into 60 minutes, but how do you think about like the structure of a 30 minute show?

Dan: 23:00

You know it's when I'm putting together the newscast each week, depending on kind of what happened that week, the show can kind of look a little bit different. Ideally I like to start out with a few quick reads. Quick updates like the snow emergency will be in effect this weekend.

Dan: 23:16

You know the field hockey team won their fourth straight state championship, kind of the hot ticket or most popular news items. There's a new development, there's a development being proposed for Main Street that there's going to be a community meeting to talk about. So I usually like to start out with just some quick reads, 30 to 45 seconds. And then there'll be a package which will be anywhere from two to three minutes long generally, where we recap maybe an issue that needs a little bit more detail put into it. At one of the more recent city council meetings they talked about the Willow Park housing development and there was a bit of layers there so that I think deserved more of an extensive piece. So that'll be a voiceover kind of more traditional news report kind of thing. Then from there a few more reads, a few more quick reads and then throw in some sports.

Dan: 24:02

We'll throw in our, I produce and film our Raiders report each week, which I'm very proud of, where we bring you sports highlights and interviews with student athletes and coaches. Then there's generally a PSA break. So we film over the course of the year a lot of public service announcements with various organizations. So there'll be a public service announcement from the Amvets or from Project Save is one that we recently did. They preserve old photographs. The Watertown Free Public Library has done a few with us. A cultural council, I think, has done some with us. World in Watertown has done.

Dan: 24:31

So, there'll be a kind of a public service announcement from a local organization. It's not a commercial break. We don't have like any commercials that we air for or at least not during our newscast for like local businesses. But we work on like a public service announcement. I even did a really extended one this past winter with Tyler Cote at the city. Did one all about the snow shoveling ordinance which was being rolled out kind of gradually. So we did a whole thing on that. So public service announcement break.

Dan: 24:56

From there it might be a couple more longer packages like a feature kind of thing, something a little bit longer with like some music or something a little bit more lighthearted. Generally that's also a good spot for our Raiders report. If it was kind of an uneventful week, if maybe all the teams kind of lost a bunch of games, maybe that's where we bury that kind of towards the end of the show. Or there'll be an interview. Long overdue to have State Senator Will Brownsberger and State Rep Steve Owens to come in. But we'll have an interview with them.

Dan: 25:20

This past week there was that interview with Kendra Foley, chair of the school committee, that Matt McCarthy hosted. Put that in the B block after the public service announcement. After that it's kind of more of a wrap up part of the show where you know it's like hey, if you want to learn more about Watertown Cable News, go online here. You can watch us on your Roku, your Apple TV, Firestick. You know you want to send news tips in. And then I let the anchors just kind of mess around and have some banter at the end of the show, which usually is comedic relief at the end of the show and that's it. So it's kind of a combination of some different things. It varies week to week based on what's going on in town.

Matt: 25:53

Yeah, and have you experimented with that at all, or has it been pretty consistent over the years?

Dan: 25:57

It's definitely changed over the years. Like when I first started doing this job I didn't know how to fill 30 minutes. So I would like reach for things to fill 30 minutes, like we had back when the video production classes at Watertown High School still they had regular programming that they would do. I would just go get the high school video production teacher and be like hey, can you give me like four videos that your students produced and I could just fill the last 20 minutes of my show with those. And like also back then, like I didn't really know how to go and report on like a city council meeting, so there wasn't a lot of actual like updates from the municipal level, kind of in those early years. But that's really evolved over time where now we get a very healthy mix of here's some municipal updates, here's some updates from the community. Polar Plunge just happened. I met the new resource dog at the Watertown Police Department, so we'll do stuff kind of talking about that.

Dan: 26:42

This past week we did a whole feature about the Boston Gold Kings, the single A hockey team. That was long overdue to do a feature on them but glad we could get something in before the playoffs. So it's a lot of that as well. And then, yeah, interviews have always kind of been a staple. Interviews have looked different over the years and I look back at some production decisions I've made in the past. I'm like what the heck were you thinking eight years ago. But, yeah, I think now we have a very sort of consistent feel and format to the show. It'll change slightly week to week, but I think when people tune in now they know basically what they're going to get.

Matt: 27:12

Yeah, you found your, you found it 

Dan: 27:15

And I'm always trying, like I don't want to say I get bored that's not the right word, but I don't like things to get stagnant and I will always look to add something more or do something different. It will often take time, like I updated just the way that the titles look on the screen, like the little news ticker that comes up. I changed how that looked recently. I'll just change like little things about the show as often as I can or as often as I feel is needed. So I'm always trying to change things, but for the most part, you know, the structure of the newscast is, I think, pretty consistent these days.

Matt: 27:45

Yeah, Cool, All right. So then I think we should maybe get into Watertown, your connection with it as you've built all these relationships, and also how it's growing, how that affects this kind of small-scale operation that you have here, where you said you have this huge breadth of work that you do. How does this growth affect your role and how do you see that affecting things in the future?

Dan: 28:06

Yeah. So community media is a very different breed than I think if you went to one of the major TV stations in Boston. Any community media station WCA-TV, Belmont Media, Arlington they have a pretty big operation, I think, in Arlington but there's all these community access stations all around Massachusetts and around the country. And I think the way that things work here at WCA-TV are different than what you'd see in a traditional news station. And we have a small staff. We have a staff of about eight or nine now. You know we're very dedicated, I think, to shining a light on the community and giving the community a voice. I really want to encourage people to come in to make their own programming. We are here to work with you and, if I could, you know, wave a magic wand and tomorrow we'd have a dozen different shows produced by a dozen different people with varying topics and varying subjects, I think that would be awesome.

Dan: 29:03

There's always room for improvement in the future, similar to how I operate with my newscast. We're always looking to make improvements, do more things, do different things. We recently started doing events here. We've had the Business Coalition come in for a meeting, I think Watertown Citizens for Peace came in to do a meeting. So we're really trying to weave ourselves more into the fabric of the community, which wasn't really the case for many years. We were the people that would come and film your event and then you'd never see us again. But we're really trying to be a part of the community and I think that's going really well. We have some great volunteers that come and do shows here, some great members that come and do shows here, and I think the more of that that we can continue to just to get involvement going forward I think that's the biggest thing is we have all this studio space.

Dan: 29:47

We have all of these assets that are just available for the community to use. We just have to show you how to use them. Because we have people that come in and they take a workshop and they have an idea, but then it kind of just fizzles out and they don't either pursue it because of the time it takes, or they're just intimidated by the work it takes. And you know we're here to help you along in the process, and that's, I think, something that some people maybe don't understand is like we don't want to do the work for you. That's not what community media is all about, but we'll help you get there.

Matt: 30:16

Right. We'll help give you the tools and the frameworks and all that good stuff. Cool, well before I let you get out of here though I need to make sure that we ask what are some of the biggest stories that you’ve covered or your favorite stories over the years? You know, when I mentioned to somebody I was going to be interviewing you, it was like oh, what’s the biggest dirt? I’m not going to get the biggest dirt that he’s gotten in stories. Like what’s the most impactful story or you know what's the most fun story that you've covered? And I know these questions can be tough to answer, but if you can reach back and pull a couple out, that'd be fun.

Dan: 30:44

Yeah, there's a few that come to mind. I mean the very first day at this job, day one, I came in here, I signed my paperwork and my boss was like oh hey, do you want to go interview a couple of Celtics players at Perkins School for the Blind? Yeah, I'll go interview the Celtics, yeah. So, like day one, I went and I interviewed Kelly Olynyk and Joelle Anthony of the Boston Celtics, because they were at Perkins playing goalball. Which the Bruins still do, and it's happened a few times since then. I know the Bruins just did it a couple weeks ago, so that was like that's memorable just because it was day one.

Matt: 31:12

And you're like, oh, this gonna happen every day.

Dan: 31:14

Yeah, yeah, it's like oh I'm gonna be interviewing pro athletes every day for this job. All right, that's pretty sweet. I bet it didn't happen again for a little bit. I interviewed Eliza Dushku, I think in my first year, because I found out she was from Watertown. I was like, oh, I loved Wrong Turn. That was a great movie. Those are a couple that stuck out from in the early years. When people ask me this question, though, there's really one thing now that comes to mind, like 1A, it's like immediate comes to mind, and it's not even a story, it's more of an experience, I guess. 

Dan: 31:48

So for many years during this job, I would often go and film the Unity Breakfast on Martin Luther King Day and that was always a great time. Those were memorable experiences in and of themselves. The Unity Breakfast was a tremendous event. 400 people, great keynote speakers, just awesome event. But at the time it was just another event that I filmed throughout the course of the year. But after the pandemic I was approached by Chuck Dickinson, who was a member of World in Watertown and organized the Unity Breakfast for many years, and he basically told me that they were trying to figure out a way they could continue doing the Unity Breakfast, which was this massive community event that had people packed into a room, you couldn't really do in person after the pandemic hit. They were trying to figure out a way to do it going forward and they had the idea of making it like a virtual broadcasted event. At the time everything was on Zoom, but I was like they didn't want to have like a Zoom meeting of Unity Breakfast. It didn't make any sense. So they basically hired me, kind of on the side, in conjunction with this job, to help them produce a broadcasted version of the Unity Breakfast. And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are probably going to know a lot of this, but I think it is the most memorable thing I've done, because so that year one I filmed all of like the student essays that would usually appear in the in-person program, the honorary host remarks. There was this thing called story share that they added, where it was people just reading stories, just saying things that happened in their lives, the keynote speaker, the unity award. So I had to film dozens of individual segments and then edit them all together to create a one hour long broadcast of the Unity Breakfast, and this was back in 2021. And the first one went pretty well. Looking back on it, there were definitely some decisions that were made where I was like, why did I do that at the time? I had never done anything like that before. I never put together anything like this. It was the most complicated editing, filming, production endeavor of my career at the time. But the organizers liked it. They had me back for a second year, made some improvements, did it again in 2022, did it again in 2023, and then did it again in 2024.

Dan: 33:39

So for four years, I was basically the person that filmed and edited and produced all of these different aspects of the Unity Breakfast, and it was all in conjunction with the Unity Breakfast Planning Committee. So they would do the legwork of setting up like, okay, who's gonna be the keynote speaker, who are the students that are gonna read the essays, who's gonna be the honorary host? They would set all that up and then I would just coordinate individually and film it and then edit it together and tell the story as best I could. And it was just so incredibly moving, powerful, there's too many words to describe it because I interacted with and met just some of the most incredible people, doing these dozens and dozens of interviews and filming sessions and even just collaborating on getting advice on, like, hey, should I edit something that looks like this or should it look like this? Because the people that are involved in World in Watertown and the Unity Breakfast Planning Committee are just these incredible people.

Dan: 34:35

And then this year for 2025, in January of this year, on Martin Luther King Day, they decided to bring the breakfast back to in-person. Which, based on the turnout, was absolutely the right decision because I think it was more packed than it had ever been before we started doing these virtual broadcasts. It was a great event, awesome event. We filmed it, covered it. They asked me to do a 25th anniversary video, kind of looking back through the years because I had so much footage and information built up from all these years of working on the Unity Breakfast.

Dan: 35:02

I had this whole library of content, so I did that. It played at the breakfast and then the whole room gave me a standing ovation, which was like just the peak of my time here at WCATV. It was almost too much, I don't feel like I deserved it, but it was really moving, really touching, and it's like the kind of thing that's like going to stick with me forever. So it's not a story, it's more of an experience. It's a long-winded answer because it was really an incredible journey and I'm happy to still be involved in it in whatever capacity I can, moving forward.

Matt: 35:34

Yeah, that's also indicative that the community appreciates what you do, Dan.

Dan: 35:37

Yeah, and the thing that I love, I think, most or I've come to love most about this job, is telling people's stories. I almost enjoy producing a video where I film somebody just talking. I don't insert my voice or anything of my own into it. Somebody else says what they want to say, I film it and then I put it together and broadcast it in as meaningful and impactful a way as possible. So that's kind of become my favorite part of this job is telling other people's stories. 

Matt: 36:05

Yeah. I mean I feel that way. For people listening, we kind of had a double deal today where Dan interviewed me for something for cable access. And yeah, it was weird being on the other side, as I'm sure this is different for you being on the other side too, but it's good to give people the glimpse.

Dan: 36:23

Yeah, it is so weird being on this side of the microphone because I am just so bad at talking. It takes me forever to form a thought, and that's why, over time, I'm like I'll spend as much time behind the camera as I possibly can, because I think that's just where I'm better suited.

Matt: 36:35

It's also interesting because when you're listening, it's sometimes then like, oh, I have to come up with my own thought here, I'm just listening yeah.

Dan: 36:41

It's almost like the brainpower it takes to form an opinion is more than it takes to figure out how a shot should be framed in this video. Like it's a weird phenomenon. One thing I do want to mention. I just want to give a shout out to my news anchors. I mentioned Rob Scudder, been with us over 15 years now, over 16 years now actually, as one of our volunteer news anchors.

Dan: 37:07

Jim Vershbow, who I think everybody in town probably knows at this point because he will be at every sporting event under the sun doing play-by-play for us as well as anchoring Watertown Cable News each and every week.

Dan: 37:14

And then Maya Shwayder she's been with us for about four years now probably. I remember we first met at one of the first Watertown Arts Markets, so it's probably been about like four years and she's been volunteering with us almost every week and they're very dedicated and they make my job infinitely easier. Because if I didn't have them to anchor the news I don't really know what I would do. So you know, just a quick shout out to them for kind of all the work they do and all the effort they put in each and every week to make my show look as good as it possibly can, because it is my baby after all, even though I didn't actually kickstart it, but I feel like I've really formed it into something that is my own and it means a lot to me. So the people that are on the camera that you see every Thursday night when you tune in, very grateful to them. 

Matt: 37:58

Yeah, thank you to them. Thank you to you. Is there anything else that you wanted to make sure we hit on before we wrapped up here?

Dan: 38:03

Yeah, I mean, like I said, we're here for the community. If you have anything that you think is even newsworthy, that you think just deserves coverage, like please, let me know. Like a lot of times something will happen and I'll be like, oh, I wish someone kind of knew that we were an option to ask to cover it. I know the appeal of it appearing on channel nine on Comcast, you know the audience there isn't going to be huge, but I do put stuff on Instagram that'll get a few thousand views. We put stuff online that'll get a few thousand views.

Dan: 38:29

I did a video with Raider the therapy dog last summer and that has like 41,000 views. So people will see the stuff that we produce outside of normal cable channels. So, you know, I'd really just encourage, if anybody has an idea for a news story or something that deserves some coverage, please reach out. You can find all my contact info on WCATV.org. And, lastly, just shout out to the whole staff at WCA-TV we all work incredibly hard, week in, week out, to bring all the coverage of all the meetings, all the sports. There's not a lot that we miss these days and it takes a real team effort to make it all happen. So I can be hard on some of the staff at times, but they really do really good work and it's really appreciated, so shout out to everyone at WCA-TV as well.

Matt: 39:15

Well, you hit my usual ending points there, so all I have left to say is thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and stories.

Dan: 39:21

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, Matt. I really appreciate what you do as well, coming from someone in kind of the same field as you. You know we like to tell people stories and I rarely, if ever, get a chance to really tell mine, so I hope you're able to condense this down into 30 minutes? I don't know.

Matt: 39:38

See, the nice thing about me is I don't need to hit exactly 30 minutes. I have leeway.

Dan: 39:43

It's true, it's true. So, yeah, I appreciate what you do and I think you know the program that you have going is awesome and, yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's been great to kind of share a bit about my story.

Matt: 39:55

So that's it for my conversation with Dan. You can reach out to him where he mentioned. I'll put a link in the show notes. Head on over to littlelocalconversations.com if you like the podcast and you want to find more episodes, all the events coming up. Got a couple coming up in March. The big thing coming up is on March 18th from 5.30 to 7.30 pm. I have a podcast anniversary event to celebrate one year of doing this podcast, over 50 conversations. I want to make it a community event so I'm inviting past guests back and the main panel is going to be with, actually, Dan, and Tyler Cote, Community Engagement Specialist for the City, Charlie Breitrose of Watertown News, and Steve Owens, Mass State Rep, and it's going to be on the topic of the local news and information ecosystem. So I thought that would be an appropriate panel to be having and also they'll just be storytelling and mingling and hopefully bringing the community together.

Matt: 40:40

I also do want to point out that on that same night at 7 pm the Watertown Library is having their big One Book, One Watertown event. So if you want to come for the first half of my event, go to that. I understand that as well. I am new to planning these type of big events and I'm learning all these things and definitely don't want to step on their toes. I've had a few of the library people on the podcast, really love the library. So if both of those events interest you, do both. I should also mention that for the podcast anniversary event, it's going to be a $20 suggested donation at the door. It's going to be at the Mosesian Center for the Arts and the proceeds will all benefit them, the Mosesian Center for the Arts, and the Watertown Community Foundation. So I hope to raise a little bit of money to help them out as well.

Matt: 41:21

So again, that's March 18th. It's a Tuesday night, 530 to 730 PM. Then later on that week, if you're interested in coming out on a morning, I'm going to do the next creative chats on that Friday, March 21st, 830 AM at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. It's going to be with Kristen Kenny, who is the chair of the Watertown Cultural District, while being an artist and arts organizer in other ways too. So yeah, I hope you can come out and join me for some of those events. All right, and a couple things to wrap up here. I do want to give a shout out to the Watertown Cultural Council, who has given me a grant this year to help support the podcast, so I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and massculturalcouncil.org. I also want to give a shoutout to a promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, they’re a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that’s bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Find out more about them at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.