CATN News and Information

170708 - Trish Salmons Fork In Fork out Buffet lunch

One of our major fund raisers organised by Trish Salmon at her home in Wittering. Normally fabulous weather, this year, the worst day ever, but Trish managed to cram over 90 people in her house for the Fork In Fork Out Buffet. Super food, great organisation and despite the rain, raised over £1700. Superb.

Pictures to follow...

010808 - Jan Penn Garden party

Jan Penn with the help of a. Super weather, lots of stalls , cakes, plants, brick-a-brak, books tombola, bar-b-q, raffle plus a jazz band. The event which was organised by Chris Mustchin ensured a great afternoon. Over 144 people through the gates, over £1000 raised. Marvelous.

170708 - Jan Penn, on her epic Southdown's Way walk with her dog, Mary, has raised £500. A superb effort by both of them.

Chichester Gala Day - Saturday 14th June

CATN volunteers will be walking in this years Chichester Gala procession on Saturday 14th June which starts from New Park Road recreation ground at 11 o'clock. Chichester Area Talking News are hoping that as many members as possible will support this event wearing their CATN T-shirts and straw boaters, collecting money on the way.

Diary

Listeners Lunch - 17th August 2008 at 12.30pm

CATN AGM - Wednesday 15th October 2008 at 7.30pm, Oving Village Hall.

Further event details and venue information can be found in the membership newsletter and from the CATN office.

Talking News goes HI-Fi

We hear a lot about high definition TV, Digital radio and other electronic advances. Even our own Talking News is now offering our recordings on Compact Disk as well as the tried and tested cassette tape.

A couple of years ago we invested in computer hardware and software which enabled us to digitally record and send the signal straight to the high speed copiers without first producing a master cassette. We have now taken a further step in purchasing a bank of CD copying machines which produce our one hour News in just three minutes.

So why go to all this trouble and expense when most of our listeners seemed happy with cassettes? Our recent survey of listeners indicated that a least 100 would prefer CD's whilst a further 100 had CD players so would be able to hear the News on CD if they so desired. Another factor was that visually impaired people joining CATN are more likely to be familiar with CDs.

An equally important consideration was that digital recordings don't lose any quality so our listeners will now get crystal clear reception.

The downside is that the CDs can only be used once and then discarded. But some nursery schools in the area have taken our old CD's and used them in various art projects and we have found a local youth group who will use them to decorate their coffee bar area! There is a cost implication and CATN needs to find an additional £1.500 per year to provide this service.

The technical team have recently introduced the indexing of sections of each news edition to help listeners navigate through the various items on the CD just as you would if you were looking through the actual newspaper.

Mike Austin

The CATN news programme in production

New Length

One major change following the move to CD and tape production involves the quarterly magazine Insight.

Since the magazine was launched 25 years ago this June, it has always been produced on a C90 tape - in other words it is a 90 minute programme of articles, features and interviews. With CD's the capacity is 80 minutes and for recording purposes it is better to rely on a safe 75 minutes. So, since the issue of the Summer 2007 Insight magazine the lengh has been reduced by 15 minutes. For those listeners still receiving tapes it will mean that each side is now 37½ minutes long and new cassettes of this length have been purchased. No extra cost is involved as all the magazine tapes were due to be replaced this year anyway.

From a content point this will mean about two fewer articles and it is unlikely that this will be noticed by our listeners.

For further information please write to:

Chichester Area Talking News Studio, St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 4SE

Telephone 01243 775050

E-mail: studio@catn.org.uk

Chichester Area Talking News Association ...local news for the visually impaired... Registered Charity: Number 273279

Chichester Gala Day 2008
	On Saturday 14th June CATN took part in the Chichester City Council Gala procession. A large contingent of members took part on foot wearing their talking news tea shirts and boaters.