Maplewood finds powerful, affordable city channel solution in MX1

Mayor Mark Langston personally uses the Keywest Technology MediaXtreme MX1 to create pages played back on the suburban St. Louis community’s newly launched city channel.

Since the beginning of the year, residents of Maplewood, MO, have been tuning into a city channel for the latest information on community activities, civic events and even time and temperature thanks to city mayor Mark Langston, Charter Communications and the Keywest Technology MediaXtreme MX1.

Like many towns around the country, Maplewood must balance the need to keep its citizens up to date on important community affairs with real-world budget demands that stretch resources thin. Fortunately for the St. Louis suburb, cable franchise holder Charter Communications had a solution.

“We are a city that’s really strapped for funds now, and we don’t have a lot of income” explained Langston. “We were excited to hear that Charter had a matching grant fund (to acquire the hardware required for a city channel). We managed to find a lit bit of money in our coffers and with that and the grant were able to buy the Keywest Technology MediaXtreme MX1.”

Deciding that Maplewood needed a city channel wasn’t difficult. Neighboring Brentwood, MO, got Langston’s attention when the city brought its own channel on line. “Brentwood was using the system and having a lot of success, so we started to investigate our hardware and software options, including the Keywest system,” said Langston.

“We found that the MX1 was the most versatile of the systems we studied and one that we could add to as our budget grows.”

MediaXtreme MX1
The Keywest Technology MediaXtreme is a multimedia messaging system that let’s users display text, graphics, crawls and MPEG video clips with sound.

Built around a powerful CG (character generator) program called MediaCreator, the MX1 is easy-to-learn and use. In fact, Langston a self-proclaimed computer novice, found the system “very easy to learn.”

“You go into this pretty scared,” he said. “Being in my mid 50s, I have limited knowledge of computers, and it was very intimidating to take this leap, but even to this day the staff at Keywest has been very helpful and courteous and patient. They’ve walk me through this from the first click of the mouse.”

MediaCreator, the creative heart of the MX1, runs on any Windows™-based computer (Windows 2000 or XP). It lets users create text, import graphics or select graphic elements and backgrounds from the Digital Juice™ library to create pages that look every bit as good as network TV.

Once created, pages can be previewed for accuracy and scheduled for automated playback 24/7 along with MPEG video, sound, text crawls and video picture-in-picture insertion. AP Top Headline News™ crawls, a weather station and synchronized A/V switcher for inserting multiple video feeds are available as options.

After the playback schedule is downloaded to the MX1, the process is complete. If scheduling or content changes are necessary, they can be loaded onto the MX1 even when it is playing back previously scheduled information, assuring an uninterrupted flow of pages.

MediaXtreme turns heads
It wasn’t long after taking delivery of the MX1 that Langston got to work creating pages. Spending a few hours each week, the mayor created the content in no time. Public feedback came just as quickly.

“We took photos of the city and interwove those with the information pages,” he recalled. “Response from the citizens of Maplewood was immediate. Many people were excited to see something on television that was personalized towards our city.”

Langston, who was an on-air radio personality in the St. Louis market before entering politics, brought a special understanding of why people tune in to media when he launched Maplewood’s city channel.

“From my days in radio, I knew that people tune in for time and weather, and my thought was to take advantage of that here,” he said. Using the MX1’s crawl feature, Langston set up his pages to display the time and date as well as crawl weather conditions across the screen.

“Sure, there are other channels available to cable viewers with that information, but it’s constantly on our channel so viewers can know in 30 seconds what’s going on outside.”

Another helpful function that keeps information fresh is the page attributes feature, according to Langston. “We hate to see outdated material on the channel. But with page attributes, when an event is over it will automatically be taken off the system,” he explained. “That is a vital feature of the MX1, and we will also be using attributes to turn things on over the holidays and when school opens.”

MX1 Video
Within the next six months, the city plans to add the MPEG video playback option to its MX1. Langston sees it as a natural progression of keeping the citizens of Maplewood informed about their community.

Cash-strapped as the city is, Maplewood is exploring some novel approaches to paying for the added feature and production of the footage that will be shown.

The mayor has approached the city’s chamber of commerce about enlisting the support of local business owners in the video endeavor. As Langston sees it, having MPEG playback from the MX1 will give the city an opportunity to playback infomercial-like segments on local bars, restaurants and businesses. “We could go around to different businesses in the community and use video to explain what they do,” he said.

“We could go into the kitchen of a restaurant or to the back of the hardware store and show our citizens what these local businesses are all about.”

The city would ask for a small donation from the businesses featured in the segments. That should cover the cost of adding the MPEG playback option. “You’d be surprised how little it would take when you spread the cost out over several businesses,” he said.

“If you have 100 businesses, you can play them at different times of the day,” said Langston. “We could play one 15-minute segment on a business and then run 45 minute of still pages.”

Enlisting the support of local students to shoot and edit the footage at Maplewood schools rounds out the plan for holding down the cost of adding video to the city channel.

Fade to black
After eight months of operation, Maplewood’s city channel is becoming a regular companion to many of the city’s 4,000 cable television subscribers. While the channel provides a focal point of community awareness and promotes civic pride, Langston also sees it as a valued resource in the lives of many citizens.

“We have regular viewers,” he said, “and they call on a regular basis in response to what we’ve put up from the first day we went on the cable system. It’s been very gratifying.”

It’s also been easy thanks to the MediaXtreme MX1. “Keywest Technology has been extremely helpful,” said Langston. “Service after the sale is a lot more than a slogan when it comes to Keywest.

“I have called five or even seven months after the sale, and they have always been very gracious when answering my questions.

“We could not be happier with the MX1 and Keywest Technology.”