Pub date
2007-02-16
On This Video Set, Seniors Run the Show
Source:Washington Post Editor:By Meghan Collins Sullivan Read:
It's nearly showtime, the set is ready, and the crew and host of "Village in Motion" are going through their morning drill. As they prepare for the taping, the director asks for a few last-minute changes.
"Before you go to [Camera] 3, can you move the candle by Eck's head?" asks Diane Gatis Havinga, speaking from the control room through her headset. "Not the one up above, the one by the shelf where the books are."
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The studio sounds and looks much like any other; what's unusual is that it's located at the Greenspring retirement community in Springfield, and the show's host, camera operators and production engineers -- the Digital Maniacs, as they call themselves -- are all in their 70s and 80s. With topics as varied as local history, politics, travel and fine wine, the show is part of a growing effort to attract retirees to the properties run by Erickson Retirement Communities.
Each of the company's locations across the country will eventually house a TV studio, says John Erickson, 63, founder and CEO of Baltimore-based Erickson Retirement Communities and Retirement Living TV. As of late 2006, full studios were operating in nine of Erickson's 18 communities, which offer their 19,000 residents everything from assisted living to nursing-home-type services.
Erickson is basing his business model on the conviction that the growing market of aging baby boomers expects to remain engaged in their communities long after they retire. And that conviction is resonating among current residents. "Us old folks have to have something else to do besides reading," says Eck Muessig, 82, a host of "Village in Motion."
Like all the resident contributors to Erickson's community TV project, Muessig is a volunteer, and he had had no TV-related experience when he moved to Greenspring three years ago. Before he retired, he was a labor arbitrator for cases involving railroads and airlines.
The guest for the day's show is another resident and frequent contributor, history buff Jasper Vink. While last-minute preparations are underway, the station runs a pre-taped Jazzercise session for retirees looking to stay in shape.
The shows offer opportunities to hone old skills or to learn new, often technical ones -- or even to become critics. Aldon Nielsen, 85, who runs Camera 1, spent much of his life working for the federal government; he discovered an interest in video and photography after he retired.
"John Erickson's whole idea was to have seniors doing this, the way I understand it," Nielsen says. "He believes in this stuff."
Nielsen is among several Erickson seniors who have paid a small fee to take digital training courses, including lessons on shooting and editing videotape. Some will move on to work on a digital storytelling project linking Erickson with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
How is the programming received? "They get immediate feedback, and [other residents] will tell them if they don't like it," said Havinga, a former professor in the electronic media program at George Washington University and one of three paid staffers at the Green-spring station. "At this age, they aren't afraid to tell you it stunk."
The in-house stations operate independently now. But Erickson hopes that eventually some of the content will end up on Retirement Living TV, a national venture he launched last year that now has about 130 employees. Erickson says he envisions the community stations producing content for one another as well as for the national network.
Based in Columbia, Retirement Living TV started appearing on some Comcast cable systems in September. It has since been picked up by DirecTV, a satellite service, and expanded its hours to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and its reach to 25 million homes. Its mission, as Erickson sees it, is to bring useful information about health, travel and politics, among other topics, to the exploding demographic of people 55 and older.
One of its key programs, "Healthline," is taped at Charlestown, the Erickson community in Catonsville, outside Baltimore. "It's a weird place to have a TV studio," says Ray Farkus, a "Healthline" guest. Farkus, a freelance television producer who once worked for "America's Most Wanted," is preparing to discuss on air the brain surgery he underwent as part of his treatment for Parkinson's disease.
As the crew prepares to tape the show, some Charlestown residents peer in from the other side of a pane of glass.
Mary Frances Bell, 89, claims she used to live in the room where "Healthline" guests now await their turn on camera. "It's wonderful," Bell says of the station. "I think other people should know how we're living."
"This fills in the whole scene of things to show the older people as they get older," adds Gilbert Rhodes, 84, leaning on his walker.
"Healthline," one of six shows regularly running on Retirement Living TV, is the only one produced at a retirement community. "It's exciting to be involved in this," Erickson says. "A real deficit [Americans] have is that we don't have a real communication system for people this age. I see them as a group that wants more information."
According to Erickson, 17 million people watch TV between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day. And 15 million of those viewers are seniors. "For advertisers, 90 percent of the audience are the people you want to talk to," says Erickson, who invested $50 million to start the network.
In the first quarter of 2007, the network plans to launch six more shows. One will be a travel program and another a talk show with older celebrities familiar to the target audience who will weigh in about their own life choices. By 2009, Erickson plans to expand to round-the-clock programming.
Despite the connections that Charlestown has to Erickson's national TV network, for most of the retirees there, the biggest draw remains the community's closed-circuit TV channel, which runs 24 hours a day. Many residents use it to make plans as announcements scroll through the day's menus, prayer service times and other events.
For Rhodes and his wife, who have lived at Charlestown for 12 years, the internal community channel also provides an outlet for their interests and creativity.
"We've been on the local station demonstrating origami and building a bonfire," Rhodes says. "We talked about camping for seniors." ? Comments:health@washpost.com.