Public Media Network (PMN), based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is a community media organization with a mission to connect residents and strengthen civic life through media. From covering government meetings to sharing neighborhood stories, PMN ensures people have access to local information to understand what’s happening locally and how they can be a part of it.
In 2022, PMN implemented TelVue SmartCaption™ Live across its five television channels. While the primary goal was to improve accessibility through automated closed captioning, closed captions ensure that residents with hearing disabilities can access and engage with government proceedings.
By adopting SmartCaption™ Live, PMN provided real-time captioning for all government meetings it covered. The captions are now the foundation for one more additional benefit: AI (artificial intelligence) indexing. TelVue’s SmartCaption AI service automatically creates meeting summaries and agenda chapter points directly from the generated captions.
“TelVue has been an instrumental partner in Public Media Network’s efforts to make local government more accessible to residents.” – Matt Schuster, Executive Director, Public Media Network
TelVue’s affordable SmartCaption quickly and accurately converts spoken words to text, eliminating the need for manual note-taking or transcription, and generates concise agenda chapter points and meeting summaries in seconds, reducing time spent reviewing long conversations and recordings and manually transcribing them. The summaries and agendas are presented alongside meeting videos on PMN’s website, mobile, and OTT apps. Additionally, the summaries, chapters, and transcripts are searchable as well, so viewers can quickly find topics of interest in a given meeting or across the entire library. TelVue’s SmartCaption also supports optional live caption translation, and translation to over 100 languages for non-native speakers.
SmartCaption AI Automatically Generates Captions, Summaries, and Agenda Chapters for Greater Kalamazoo Government Meetings
While accessibility was the initial goal, PMN realized that the AI indexing delivered another value. Local clerks, tasked with preparing official meeting minutes, began using the summaries and chapter points to locate discussions quickly and reduce the time needed to review lengthy recordings.
“The indexing saves time and increases productivity when preparing public record documentation. It allows us to quickly locate specific sections of a meeting to support accurate minutes.” – Local Clerk
The AI indexing feature is also having a larger community impact. Local journalists covering government issues use PMN’s searchable meeting chapters and summaries as background resources. The indexed material provided quick access to content, making reporting more accurate and efficient.
“The meeting chapters and summaries provide a valuable resource for background information and context in covering local government.” – Local Reporter
For community members, AI indexing changes how they interact with meeting recordings. Instead of sitting through hours of proceedings, residents can now jump directly to parts of the meeting most relevant to them.
“People no longer have to sit through a multiple hour hearing or meeting. They can quickly find the part that matters to them.” – Local Elected Official
Viewers Can Easily Search Transcripts, Summaries, and Chapters Across All Meetings and Quickly Find Topics of Interest
Elected officials noted that the improved transparency and accessibility strengthened community engagement, with more residents able to follow the issues and decisions that affect them.
PMN’s experience demonstrates how TelVue’s SmartCaption™ Live with AI Summaries & Agendas delivers value beyond its original purpose. What began as a move to improve accessibility also resulted in increased efficiency for clerks, better resources for journalists, and more transparency for residents.
TelVue is excited to partner with PMN to continue its core mission of bringing media and community together, by enabling the organization to leverage modern technology tools to save time, improve efficiency, and increase accessibility and outreach to underserved residents.
“Public Media Network has long been a leader in accessibility, as one of the first community media stations to caption government meetings across cable, web, mobile, and OTT platforms. While running five channels, with a mix of live and pre-recorded programming, automation is essential to making it all possible. We’re excited to see PMN leverage the full range of automation and AI features in the TelVue platform, including SmartCaption, to make their programming easier to produce and manage, while also ensuring it remains accessible and engaging for every member of their community. With new Department of Justice accessibility requirements for government programming on the horizon, PMN is clearly ahead of the curve. It’s a pleasure working with such an innovative organization that not only leads by example, but also contributes valuable ideas that help shape our products.” – Jesse Lerman, TelVue President & CEO