Celebrate Community Media Content!

You have a message you’d like to share with your community. You have a particular passion, interest, hobby you’d like others to know about. You’d like to spread the news about some agency or individual and the help/services they provide. These are the types of things given voice to and shared via community media. Much of this content is produced by do-it-yourself community producers who, with the support of community media resources like PEG (Public Education Government) Cable Access centers (check out this Wikipedia List of PEG Access Centers) that can provide equipment, training and distribution avenues, share their message with the community at large. This community produced content—produced by and for members of the local community—is the currency that keeps community media alive and relevant. Without community produced content there is no community media.
It is important to encourage and celebrate this content, and one such opportunity is coming up now. Every year, some of the nation’s best community media content is recognized at the Alliance for Community Media’s Hometown Media Awards. As the ACM Website states, “The Hometown Media Awards honors and promotes community media and local cable programs that are distributed on Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) access cable television channels. Awards are presented to creative programs that address community needs, develop diverse community involvement, challenge conventional commercial television formats and move viewers to experiences television in a different way.”
If you are a community media producer, and you’re proud of your message, submit one of your programs Deadline for Submissions: April 2, 2012. For a downloadable (PDF) list of sections, categories and prices, click here. Winning entries will be recognized at the 2012 Hometown Media Awards, August 1, 2012 in Chicago, IL!