George Delisle will once again serve as co-anchor for the Westfield Kiwanis TV Auction on March 1. (Submitted photo)
WESTFIELD- The Kiwanis Club of Westfield is seeking businesses to sponsor its 51st annual auction. The auction is March 1 at noon at Westfield State University.
The annual live TV auction raises money for the Kiwanis Club to donate to local charities and groups that they have been involved with over the years. This includes the Westfield Little League clubs, the Greater Westfield Boys and Girls Club, Girl Scouts, Westfield on Weekends, the annual Strawberry Festival, Our Community Table soup kitchen, youth programs in the local schools, the Kiwanis Children’s Fund, and the Kiwanis Foundation of New England, among many charities that benefit each year from auction funds.
The Boys and Girls Club in Westfield was originally established by members of the Westfield Kiwanis Club in the 1960s.
“We do a lot within the community,” said Kiwanis Club President Frank Sposito.
Sposito said that they are looking for new businesses and groups in the area to sponsor items to be auctioned during the event. Last year, the auction raised more than $64,000 for the community charities and groups.
“We usually look for new businesses, but sometimes new ones call us because they can see the worthiness of donation to the club for the community,” said Sposito.
The items and packages to be auctioned off have not yet been determined, according to Sposito, who said that they will do so after Feb. 6.
Each item and group of items to be auctioned will be presented in timed blocks during which viewers call in to place their bid. After the time runs out for a particular block, the highest bidder is awarded the item. There will be 30 smaller item blocks that last 13 minutes each. There will also be two “big blocks” that will have to be announced before regular blocks two and 12. There will also be a single “Super Block” which will have a bidding period for the duration of the auction for the premier item.
“Our super block is announced at the start and periodically recapped throughout the entire auction and sold off at the end. Bids are taken throughout the entire auction,” said Sposito, “Big Block A is announced just before block two is announced, bids are taken up to the sold off time (closed) around block 10. This block is also recapped throughout the time it is open. Big Block B is announced just before block 12 is announced, bids are also taken up to the sold off time (closed) around block 20.”
The entire auction will be broadcast live on Channel 15 and will also be livestreamed online.
For many years after the inception of the Kiwanis Auction, it was broadcast live over radio but not on television. It was not until the early 1990s that the auction was broadcast over video, although at that time it was simply a camera pointed at an auction board with no visible host on the screen.
In 1992, under the logistical leadership of the WSU Communication Department’s Dr. Edwin J. Abard, the auction began to resemble what it looks like today.
Sposito said that he likes that the auction gives the communications students at WSU a chance to learn how to conduct a live production. It also gave some of the computer science students at WSU a chance to work on their programming skills, as the bidding software used during the auction was upgraded for this year.
This will be the first Kiwanis Auction since the WSU TV studio and control room received several upgrades over the summer.
