NORTHAMPTON – Northampton Community Television has been named one of the best in the country at what it does.
The media organization received four of the Alliance for Community Media’s Hometown Media Awards, including the top overall prize in its division – access centers with budgets of between $300,000 and $600,000 that provide a combination of public, education and government access.
P. Al Williams, executive director of NCTV, said the award validates the efforts that it has put into working with the community, and is especially exciting considering the organization barely made the bottom end of its budget category. The award honors years of hard work, he said.
“I think it’s something we’ve been building process-by-process over the years, and looking for more ways to serve the community and provide them with opportunities,” he said.
The Alliance for Community Media represents more than 3,000 access organizations and media centers across the country, according to its website. In addition to its overall awards, it distributes Hometown Media Awards in 33 categories. NCTV won three of those categories this year – public service announcement, web series and music video.
Those awards reflect the diversity of programs that NCTV creates, Williams said. “We are TV, but we’re more than that,” he said. “It’s web, it’s all kinds of media.”
Williams said the awards have pointed to the station’s success in another of its goals: developing a model for community media relevant in the 21st century. “It seems like an idea for some people that’s past its time, and we’re trying to prove it’s not,” he said.
He said some people associate public access television with low-quality broadcasts of government meetings. Providing coverage of those events is important, despite how boring some viewers may find them, but community media can cast a wider net, Williams added.
That means coming up with ideas like the award-winning web series “Pamper the Band,” in which touring bands are interviewed while being treated to a spa day.
Williams cited some of the organization’s other ongoing projects which get community members involved: Paradise City Press, a platform for community journalism and storytelling; Minecraft Northampton, which seeks to replicate the city in the world-building video game “Minecraft”; and Crowdsourced Cinema, an art project in which community members collaborate to remake famous films. This summer, it’s “The Princess Bride.”
“It also speaks a lot about the community that we have here,” Williams said. “All these awards … it’s a great board of directors that’s allowed that, it’s a great staff that’s allowed that, and it’s also a great community.”
The confidence boost provided by the awards is an impetus to keep innovating, he said, and a newly renegotiated contract between the city and Comcast will boost the organization’s budget.
Works in progress include the Public VR Lab, which focuses on virtual reality. The project, a collaboration between NCTV and Brookline Interactive Group, is characteristic of the community television’s mission, Williams said. It will provide discussion, equipment access and education on the topic.
“We don’t look at this (award) as resting on our laurels,” Williams said. “We look at it as inspiration to continue to give and innovate.”
Jack Evans can be reached at jackevan@indiana.edu.