By Meghan Streit
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Retirement is ideally a time to pursue leisure activities—brush up on your golf game, perfect your poker face, or maybe even pick up a new hobby.

At the Monarch Landing community in Naperville, residents not only have access to the typical pastimes, they can also get involved in truly unique activities like running the community’s in-house television station—MLTV.

A group of about 15 residents work on the crew of MLTV, which features announcements, programs from Erickson’s national Retirement Living TV channel, and videos of campus events and meetings.

Open to all skill levels
Community members do everything from filming events using state-of-the-art video equipment to editing footage using editing software to planning the programming line-up for the station. The group includes people who have some  expertise in television technology as well as those who have never tried something like this before but wanted to learn a new skill.

Keith Nicodemus, who spent his career working as a consultant for AT&T, is a valuable asset to the MLTV crew. He does a lot of the filming and teaches other people how to use the editing software.

“Part of my job is to make it easier for other people to do their jobs,” Nicodemus says. 

Station chairman Bill Kopperud, on the other hand, has no previous TV experience but decided to get involved to lend his organization skills to the crew.

Technology—and camaraderie
“The crew works really well together,” Kopperud says. “We discuss the nuts and bolts of how to make things like the background [for announcements] look better.”

Working on the TV station crew is just one example of the many opportunities Monarch Landing residents say they have to learn new skills. This group of hightech residents not only knows how to use hardware and software that most of their grandchildren aren’t even familiar with—they also have a great time doing it.