SB Channels Wins Two National Awards

Two programs produced by The Santa Barbara Channels staff recently won First Place awards in the annual Hometown Video Festival, the largest competition among Public, Educational and Governmental Access TV stations. The award ceremony was held at a dinner in Portland, Oregon at the annual conference of the Alliance for Community Media, the umbrella organization for other stations like The Santa Barbara Channels across the country.

Rock The Reagan won first prize for the best Local Performance Video. The Navy League-Santa Barbara Council hosted the two-hour concert at the Arlington Theatre in honor of the USS Ronald Reagan being in port in 2008. The Santa Barbara Channels staff worked with the Santa Barbara Navy League to record the concert, which featured the music of Blues Traveler and also Sean Wiggins and Lone Goat. The sailors of the USS Reagan enjoyed the performance wihile in port. The video also incorporated footage shot by SB Channels staff on the USS Reagan, including a video tour of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and interviews and “shout outs” from the crew. Hap Freund, Executive Director of the nonprofit local TV station, said, “it was great for us to partner with the Santa Barbara Navy League on this concert. Not only did we get to make a small contribution to making the sailors visit to Santa Barbara a success, but the concert video now plays on the USS Reagan for the sailors and local citizens got to enjoy the concert, too, because we were able to record it. We have a great partnership with our local Navy League who regularly submit programs to us, so it was particularly rewarding to have this joint effort receive national recognition.”

A fifteen-minute documentary on Santa Barbara’s I Madonnari Italian street painting festival won first prize in the Visual Arts category. “Access stations across the country submit their best content for this competition,” commented Freund, “so it’s a terrific honor to have them recognized for excellence by our peers. When they showed a short clip of our I Madonnari video at the awards ceremony, many expressed interest in the event.”

These two latest awards bring the total national awards that the station has won over the past five years to an even dozen. As Freund noted, “the national recognition and awards are great, but what we are most proud of is the daily contributions of our many local producers and our staff to our own community.”