Community cable Channel 19 is back on the air, and that's a good thing for the community of Arviat.

Gord Billard of the Arviat Film Society (AFS) said it was a media player donated to the AFS by Isuma Productions, which gave the society access to their total video library, including all their feature-length movies, that crashed.

He said the AFS was broadcasting all that content on Channel 19, as well as things produced by the AFS.

鈥淭he media player crashed and our screens went blank several months ago, and we've been trying to get another media player brought in and hooked up for quite awhile now,鈥� said Billard.

鈥淛ust recently, we had a woman come into town to teach a 12-week pre-employment training program with a group called Performance Management Consultants.

鈥淗er partner just happened to be Andre Vanes of Isuma Productions out of Montreal, and he had a new media player he was trying to hook up in Arviat and ran into all kinds of problems.

鈥� Then about a week ago they figured out it was a coding problem and managed to work it out, and once he plugged in an adapter to it, we had a beautiful, crisp picture come onto everyone's screen and Channel 19 has been running great ever since.鈥�

Billard said Vanes met with the AFS members last night, Dec. 5, to deliver a tutorial on how to modify a play list for Channel 19, and run them through the operation of a TV station.

He said the community really missed having Channel 19 when it was down for a few months.

鈥淭here were, definitely lots of people asking society members when the Chanel would be back on the air.

鈥淎s soon as I put a notice up on facebook that the channel was back on the air, we received all sorts of positive comments.

鈥淭he elders really enjoy all the historical programming that's on the channel, and you can see why: some of them see friends that died long ago and even see themselves in Arviat years ago.

鈥淚t's all local content and the community really seems to love it.鈥�