The City of Urbana is pleased to announce that Urbana Public Television (UPTV) has won two national awards at the Alliance for Community Media’s annual conference in Philadelphia, PA. Each year the Alliance’s Hometown Media Awards competition recognizes and honors the best community-access television programs in the United States.
UPTV won Best in Radio Programming for their partnership with community radio station WEFT (90.1FM) in producing a television version of the weekly radio show WEFT Sessions. UPTV volunteer Diamond Robinson was recognized for her camera work on this project, and UPTV intern Caleb Seripinas for his video post-production work. Each week, a local musician or group is featured in live performance on WEFT Sessions, which airs as a radio program on WEFT Monday evenings at 10 p.m. The video edition of the show airs Saturdays at 9pm on UPTV, and is repeated the following Thursday evening at 11 p.m. The winning program can also be seen on UPTV’s YouTube channel.
UPTV member Raymond Morales also won the award for Best Music Video for his ILL Poets Society: Chi City Youth. This project was also partially funded the Urbana Public Arts Program.
“We are delighted that the outstanding work of UPTV’s volunteers and staff has been recognized on a national level by the Alliance for Community Media,” said UPTV Station Manager Jake Schumacher. “As our area’s only public-access television facility, UPTV provides a remarkable outlet for the local community to document itself, and for citizens to express themselves in a creative and artistically significant way — we are, in fact, constantly engaged with the community on a daily basis in producing what is essentially public art. The talent and tireless dedication of our Production Coordinator Jason Liggett, and the support of the City of Urbana staff, have played a huge role in making UPTV a nationally-known center for community-access video production.”
UPTV is the City of Urbana’s Public, Education and Government access television station. It is available locally on Comcast Channel 6 and AT&T U-Verse Channel 99, and streams live worldwide at urbanapublictelevison.org.
For more information please contact UPTV at 217/384-2452 or [email protected].