Bringing Cochise County together... and taking it to the world!
About Us
Gary and Margaret Dillard
For about a decade, Margaret had managed Channel 2, the local origination channel that ran on the local cable network. For the most part during that time, it had been dedicated purely to advertising. (For the historians out there, the Bisbee cable system is the second-oldest in the nation, dating to the late-'40s, needed by the community because the Mule Mountains completely block the signal between Tucson and local antennas.)
But at the turn of the new century, Margaret decided that since the channel ran picture-only ads, with a digital music channel as audio, it would be possible to run a local-origin audio stream on top of that. So they went to a local restaurant, ran a phone cable from microphones sitting at a table, and each Saturday morning did a three-hour interview show, with Gary as the host, on local topics.
The show was an instant hit. I wasn't long until she also discovered that it was simply to hook in an inexpensive video camera and do it as a TV show instead of "radio." To accommodate video, the show moved back to the studio on Bisbee Road and Focus on Bisbee took off, again hosted by Gary (who says he has a "face made for radio.") The show was broadcast live on Fridays and replayed throughout Friday and Saturday. Thomas, who was being home-schooled, was able to serve as cameraman while Margaret ran the editing equipment.
The subsequent acquisition of higher-end video equipment, and learning how to edit video via Adobe Premier, let Gary look for more complex video jobs and was able to produce a variety of projects, including videos for the Mining Museum and the Queen Mine Tour.
Then in late 2009, Margaret decided to follow up on something that they had been discussing for several years -- creation of a county-wide television show. New technologies and the availability of access, at a price, to much of the county through local cable providers, made this possible. Cochise County TV thus saw the light of day in January 2010. Gary serves as a host and as a "consultant" for that show.