Do you like watching high school football?
How about cooking shows?
Maybe instead of learning about cooking, you enjoy finding out about the local eateries?
Would you like to be able to watch your church’s service from the past week that you missed while on vacation?
Or the local festival you’ve been interested in?
And the list goes on and on.
If you are an FTC TV subscriber, you know that we are just scratching the surface of what can be found on FTC Now, Channel 26, FTC’s all-local TV station.
Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, FTC Now features events and shows from FTC’s five-county area of Clarendon, lower Florence, Lee, Sumter and Williamsburg counties. A camera crew goes out and sometimes a host accompanies them to a venue for the shoot. It takes a lot to produce non-stop programming, but finding things to cover in this part of the world is not a challenge because there is so much going on.
For the high school FTC Now Games of the Week, there are 16 schools in the territory and getting them all covered in a 12-week season can be a challenge. Many of the matchups include two teams from the area. The games are recorded on a Friday and played back on Thursday at 7 p.m. and then aired again the following Tuesday at 7 p.m.. Complete with commentators, they are also shown at other times and eventually make their way to VOD, Video On Demand. There is also the Coach’s Kickoffs, which features the 16 local coaches and one or two of their players. The Coach’s Kickoffs, like the games, are shown on a similar rotation. If a team is featured in the FTC Now Game of the Week, the Coach’s Kickoff for the team will be shown just before it. FTC Now also shows the Sumter Touchdown Club presented by FTC. It is a weekly meeting held, like the name indicates, in Sumter. It features four players of the week from the area schools. The previous week’s meeting is shown on Thursday a week later at 5:30 p.m., just before the games of the week and Coach’s Kick Off. These are all part of the category we refer to as “Sports Specials.”
Several cooking shows are featured. The most recent show added to the list is “Cooking on the Fun Side” with Addie Lowe and Fran Clowney. Then there’s “Cooking on The Wild Side,” hosted by the late Eddie Clowney. There’s “Red Dog Bites” featuring David Evans. “Entertain with Jane” is the longest running cooking show and one of the oldest ever on FTC Now. The late Jane Sterling shows how to prepare meals and always reminds viewers at the end that “every day is a party when you Entertain with Jane.”
As the names suggest, the cuisine from every show is a little different.
“The Local Flavor” features restaurants, diners and just about any kind of place you can visit to fill your belly. Chefs, cooks and owners talk about their favorite dishes and those that are the favorites among their customers. There’s fine dining down to some of the best places to get a burger.
Nine churches from around the FTC territory are shown on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. The services are cut down to an hour to fit in the time slots. Like many of the shows on the channel, these are especially important to our senior citizens who cannot always get to church on Sunday mornings.
The list of the other featured episodes on the channel is long. The largest category called “FTC Highlights,” includes numerous events and festivals. Some running on the channel right now are The Lizard Man Stomp Festival, Bird Fest, the Taste of the Iris Festival and the Williamsburg Hometown Chamber banquet.
There is “The Beat,” which showcases bands and orchestras performing locally.
For those of you who like to get your day started off with a workout but do not have time to get to the gym, flip over to channel 26 at about 7 a.m. and let some local workout gurus show you how to get in shape with “Fitness Focus.”
Regardless of what you like to watch, FTC Now should have programming to pique your interest. But you can only watch this 24/7 by being an FTC TV customer.
Interested in getting FTC Now and FTC TV, call 888-218-5050, go online to ftc.net or stop by one of FTC’s seven stores.
