Channeling The World

• Tweet
• Email

ABOVE PHOTO: Chris Hastings

Thanks to a $600,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, Chester native Chris Hastings, executive producer of the WORLD Channel, is hoping to help artists spotlighting people of color find a home for their content.

By Denise Clay

When he came to the Black Star Film Festival held here in Philadelphia earlier this month, Chris Hastings, executive producer of the WORLD Channel, was thinking about his family.

Not only because he’s a native of Chester and got the chance to  visit them while he was in town, but also because they’re who he thinks of when he selects the content that goes on the network, which focuses on the stories of people of color. 

The diversity contained within his family helps him when it comes to making programming decisions for the WORLD Channel, Hastings said.

“I come from a very large family,” he said. “So, when I’m selecting content I try really hard to think about Chester and what’s on the screen when all my cousins are at my grandmother’s house and there’s nothing to watch. And so, the one thing that’s pretty safe within our family is that we really enjoy seeing ourselves on screen; people who look like us, stories that are similar to ours, the issues of the day.”

“And so,” Hastings continued, “I try to keep that in mind when I’m selecting films. What it is in this story that’s going to make a family like mine want to sit together and watch it together, and what’s going to be informative, but also entertaining to a family that is diverse economically, that is diverse gender-wise, that is going through lots of changes as our families age and young people are coming in, and so, when you think about the Black community, we’re not a monolith, but the one thing is that we do enjoy is seeing ourselves in our media. So I try to make sure that WORLD Channel is reflective of the diversity that we want to see on television. ” 

Chances are good that when you tune into the WORLD Channel, which can be found on WLVT-TV in Bethlehem (Digital Channel 35.2, 39.2 on Comcast, the PBS app, and on worldchannel.org), you might see some of the independent films that Hastings had pitched to him during his time at Black Star. He also came armed with a three-year, $600,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur foundation designed to possibly help filmmakers finish what they’ve started.

Hastings sat down with the SUN to talk about the WORLD Channel, the stories told there, and how sometimes all that stands between a good film and a willing audience is a good distribution network.

SUN: Thank you for your time, Mr. Hastings. Can you tell me a little bit about the WORLD Channel?

CH: The WORLD Channel started in 2007 as a multicast channel. Just to give some context on what multicast is, it’s broadcast TV on the multicast spectrum. In 2007, the federal government, the FCC, changed the standards from analogue to digital, and what that did was make it possible for broadcasters to share out more than one channel over the air. WORLD Channel is one of those multicast channels. 

SUN: How do you select what you put on in terms of programming? Do you do most of the selection yourself? Do you have people you contract with?

CH:We’re based out of the public television station in Boston, WGBH. And so, working with a collection of organizations who fund independent film, we acquire our content directly from the independent makers who are making it. We also work with PBS, who puts money into content. And we pull content from them. We work with international public media broadcasters who aren’t based in the U.S., to acquire content and distribute it on WORLD. Think of WORLD Channel in its purest form as a platform for diversity within public media. So what we do is we look at all the content that’s out there in the world, and we essentially put together this group of content that targeting diverse audiences.

The great thing about 2019 is that everybody is making documentaries,[and] there is a lot of news programming around the world that you wouldn’t get to see if there wasn’t a WORLD Channel, and it’s available for free. And so we’re able to stitch it together and make a channel that serves all the PBS system.

SUN: So other PBS Channels can access your content and use it on their stations?

CH:Well, what they’re able to do is access the channel, and use it as an additional channel in their community. They don’t take our content, they take our whole channel.

SUN: Does WORLD Channel also have a website? Some of our readers don’t have cable.

CH:I’m going to tell you the most unpopular way to access our content: free, over the air. Your readers don’t have to pay for this. In this age of cable and streamers where we pay a subscription fee ever month, we forget that. If they have rabbit ears, they can get WORLD Channel for free over the air. 

SUN: In terms of the content that you provide, where do you find what you provide? Do you call for participation? Do you go to film festivals like this? Are there things that you’ve seen [at Black Star]?

CH: Black Star is probably a typical sort of outreach trip for me. I go to a lot of film festivals. I sit on a lot of panels and the filmmakers pitch me, because they are looking for distribution. The great thing about independent filmmakers, they’re doing it because they love to make content. But the one thing that’s so hard for content creators sometimes and independent journalists is where does that work go once it’s completed? There’s so many media outlets. They don’t want all the reporting. So what we’ve done with platforms is it’s a two-way street. While we’re putting out all of this content, we’re always opening the door for folks to submit their content. And you can do that at worldchannel.org/submit. And I come to Philly like every couple of weeks because I also live here. So what we do is build really good relationships with the independent film communities around the country and around the world. We try to keep the door pretty open to folks that submit content with us. We may be slow getting back to you, but we try to keep our ear to what’s being created, what’s screening in the festivals. 

We don’t take everything because, unfortunately, everything isn’t right for us. Sometimes, the timing is not right. But we do try to keep our ears out for things that are unique, have quality, and have interest to the audience we’re trying to cater to.

SUN: Now, you’ve gotten this grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. What are you hoping to use this for and how can the community get involved?

CH: What’s great about the MacArthur Foundation is, you know, when they trust you, that you are doing something for the mission, they trust you. So they’ve given me a great deal of flexibility with this grant. The goal of this grant is to really build up our capacity to work with independent makers. Particularly, independent makers who are coming from multicultural communities. The context for even trying to get this grant is that there’s so many makers out there, that there’s no opportunities for distribution. And when you get to that distribution point, there’s also a gap, quite a big gap between those who are able to leverage these new platforms like Netflix and Hulu. And so we want to help those filmmakers who have been working on projects. Maybe, they’ve gotten it pretty much funded, but it’s that last step. We want to come in and work with them to get that content to WORLD Channel. 

Sometimes, there’s a significant hump to get it ready for broadcast TV when you don’t even know where it’s going. And so, we want to use this money as an opportunity to bridge a little bit of the gap that we have seen over the years of curating that does effect filmmakers of color. And we want to be a platform where if this is something we think is good for WORLD Channel, and the filmmaker needs a little more to get it to us, and they need help build relationships for distribution because there are a lot more distributors than us in broadcast television, we want to help figure that out with them.

SUN: How do they connect with you?

CH:It’s going to happen through festivals like Black Star, I hope. It’s going to happen through our ongoing open call at worldchannel.org where they send them via a screener. It’s going to happen because we commission it. Sometimes we might have an idea for something and we might commission something. But it’s going to be a pretty diverse way of getting it to us. I’m going to do some traveling over the next couple of months to look for content. I’m hoping that press will write about it and someone will read it in the paper. But the goal is to really use that money not so much to build up the service, but to really help the makers.

SUN: Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Hastings. I hope you get a lot of local filmmakers responding to this.

CH: You’re welcome.

• Tweet
• Email