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Happy New Year!

Everyone loves a good New Year’s Eve countdown, whether you’re braving the Maine cold to revel in the streets or sitting at home in your jammies, snuggled up with the one you want to spend the next year with. For Mainers with an eye toward the clock, it usually means watching some other big city’s lavish, celebrity-studded live TV broadcast while perhaps wondering why we can’t have our own.

Well, we do, as it turns out, with Portland’s own cable Channel 5/The Portland Media Center busy planning its third annual live New Year’s Eve spectacular. Combining live and pre-taped local music and stand-up comedians, special Maine guests, and on-the-street messages from Portland’s heartiest partiers, this year’s special looks to be just the all-Maine goodbye to 2024 we’ve been waiting for.

From-away inspirations, down-home fun. 

“It’d be really cool if we could do that in Portland” might just be the Channel 5 motto. Portland filmmaker and Channel 5 producer Luigi Scarcelli says he was inspired by his time in Chicago, where local independent “superstation” WGN ditched the national networks’ New Year’s coverage in favor of a home-grown special that celebrated everything that city had to offer.

“They did their own thing,” Scarcell said. “They embedded people in different places around town, featured local music and basically celebrated everything Chicago.” Well, the Portland Media Center might not have WGN money (we don’t broadcast Cubs games, for one), but Scarcelli noted that he and his Channel 5’s Portland studio team have more than enough technical knowhow and enthusiasm to give Mainers a similarly loud and proud New Year’s Eve.

In a “Downeast Christmas,” director Luigi Scarcelli had fun with a Hallmark-style movie. Now he’s part of the team at Channel 5, planning the third annual live New Year’s Eve spectacular. Photos by David Bedell

PMC loves the holidays. 

But it’s the holidays that really seem to inspire Scarcelli and the gang to creative greatness. The Scarcelli-directed Maine 2022 Christmas movie “A Downeast Christmas” had fun with the conventions of the ubiquitous Hallmark holiday movie genre, while the channel’s recent Christmas special is airing on Channel 5 all this holiday week. (There are also hints of a big Valentine’s Day event coming up, so stay tuned.)

Channel 5’s New Year’s is gonna rock.

Maine music will be a big part of this year’s year-end special, with a remote from the Maine Irish Heritage Center’s concert from Slane, Maine’s premiere U2 cover band, and performances from fellow Maine tribute acts The Masterstroke Queen Experience (who’ll be doing the big midnight countdown live) and Doors cover outfit The Lords, among others.

You can get in on the New Year’s fun. 

Scarcelli, Badell and Edgar all note that this year’s live celebration isn’t yet locked down, as befits such a dynamic local event.

“We’re still open to both music performances and people’s New Year’s messages,” said New Year’s special director Warren Edgar, who noted how last-minute musical acts willing to spend their New Year’s at Channel 5 have produced some of past celebrations’ highlights.

As host Scarcelli noted, simply passing by Channel 5’s Congress Street studios might see you becoming part of the action.

“We’ll have a wrangler outside looking to get people to come inside and talk. It’s all about New Year’s and bringing Channel 5 to the people of Portland.”

Added Edgar, happily, “Whether you want to share your New Year’s resolution or just have some other great creative idea, we want to hear from you. Hey, it’s public access! There’s a high likelihood you’ll get on TV.”

Those wishing to get in on this year’s fun should email luigi@portlandmedia.org pretty much as soon as you read this.

PMC is all about celebrating Maine filmmaking. 

“The Portland Media Center has the capability and the equipment to be the premiere hub for public access broadcasting in Maine,” producer Dave Badell said, “and that’s exactly what we’re pushing for.” Badell, who’s co-producing Channel 5’s New Year’s Eve special alongside host Scarcelli, music/audio supervisor Melvin Gradiz and broadcast director Edgar, while conceding the station’s perpetually underfunded state (and urging the City Council to rectify that) has nothing but praise — and plans — for the scrappy local outlet going forward.

“Currently, we broadcast about 35 percent home-grown programming. We want to get that up to 50 percent,” Badell said. “We want to involve more people, service more people. There are a huge amount of creative people out there and we want to increase local production to show off Maine’s talent.”

Anybody who’s checked out Channel 5, either live or its archives, knows how much the dedicated staff there have accomplished on the typical public access shoestring. Local current affairs talk shows, game shows, local wrestling, local music showcases, original movies and sitcoms and more dot the channel, with the New Year’s Eve crew’s names popping up in almost every conceivable role. A big, ambitious and guaranteed fun year-end celebration is just the capper for another great year.

Check out the third annual Portland New Year’s Live show on the PMC website, cable channel 5, or at Luigi Scarcelli’s YouTube channel. The broadcast starts at 8 p.m. on December 31st and goes until after midnight, when the dedicated crew finally puts 2024 to bed.

Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and cat.