Alliance for Community Media presents WAVE awards to TV Santa Barbara and others
Producers from California, Nevada, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico and Arizona gathered Thursday to recognize excellence in community media programming.
Rory O’Farrell, manager of Tahoe Truckee Media, hosted the awards ceremony at the Mar Monte Hotel in Santa Barbara, saying, “(The programs] were inspiring to watch … really keeping with the values of our organization.”
According to Mr. O’Farrell, Alliance for Community Media values free speech, seeks to represent underserved voices and does not prioritize competition. In doing so, ACM hopes to promote greater civic engagement through its community media.
The awards were part of the ACM’s multi-day conference and trade show in Santa Barbara, and one of the event’s hosts was TV Santa Barbara, which picked up some awards of its own at Thursday’s ceremony.
There were 17 award categories, such as Best Documentary and Best Narrative Film, and two final Best of Show awards. In each of the award categories, an award was presented to the best community producer, professional producer and student producer.
The first Best of Show award (community or student producer) went to Jabreel Green for his experimental production, “EMME YA: The final Expedition,” winning the community producer award for Best Experimental production as well. It was produced by Berkeley Community Media and is a lyrical piece of work with original music and original choreography.
The second Best of Show Award went to the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus for its show “Holiday Hits with a Splash of Class,” which aired on Access Sacramento. The Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus also won the professional producer award for the Best Arts, Entertainment, and Performance category. It was described as having both beautiful sound and picture.
TV Santa Barbara won these awards:
— Arts, Entertainment, and Performance:
Community Producer: “La Boheme Fiesta Special.”
— Community Event:
Student Producer: “Juneteenth Event Coverage.”
— Magazine Show:
Community Producer: Wade and Debbie Nomura: “Carpenteria Living.”
— Program/Channel Promotion:
Student Producer: Rebecca Brand: “Flags on State Street”
In other awards, the city of Lompoc won the Community Producer award in the Public Service Announcement category for “Be Part of our Lompoc Lifeguard Team.”
Santa Barbara resident Lisa Lang, founder of Spread Goodness, and Jake Potts won the Community Producer award in the Community Issues category for “Keep the Funk: Part 1.”
ECTV CAPS Media Center, based at El Camino High School in Ventura, won Student Producer awards in separate categories for “Arts About Agriculture” and “Chumash Elder Julie Tumamait-Stensile.”
Ranjana Mehra won the Community Producer award in the Educational Access category for “Cleaning Up the Guadalupe Watershed”(KMVT-15).
Other awards went to entities throughout California and other western states.
email: cbeeghly@newspress.com
