PhillyCAM's 2018 Cammy Awards

PhillyCAM is the result of nearly three decades of advocacy that finally resulted in the country’s fifth largest metropolitan region finally getting its own public-access station. The October 20, 2018, awards show occurred nearly 10 years to the date after PhillyCAM began cablecasting on October 23, 2009.

Operating under an annual membership model, PhillyCAM offers all-ages media-literacy education, technical-production workshops, and youth after-school programs in addition to its daily television broadcasts. Its facilities at 699 Ranstead Street include two full television-production studios, video-editing suites, and an equipment-rental service. Since 2016 it has also operated radio studio WPPM, which broadcasts locally on 106.5 FM.

Power to the people

Touting the slogan “People-Powered Media,” the Cammy Awards attracted an incredibly diverse crowd, demonstrating the dynamic range of the content producers and audience members of PhillyCAM’s TV and radio programs. The awards focused on three areas: creative expression, democratic values, and civic participation. Twelve awards were presented.

Like a typical awards show, presenters read a list of nominees followed by a series of clips from each. What struck me was the professionalism of all the content but also, more importantly, how many of these locally produced programs I didn’t know. Among the evening’s highlights, a few awardees stood out for the quality of material they presented and the diversity of content.

The Trudy Haynes Show received the Presence Award for TV, given to the program’s namesake presenter. Now in her 90s, Haynes became the country’s first black female TV reporter in 1963 in Detroit and later joined Philadelphia’s KYW-3 network in 1965. Haynes’s talk show focuses on local issues, and she recently completed her 50th episode for PhillyCAM.

In the democratic-values category, documentary filmmaker David Block won the Inclusion Award for commitment to diverse storytelling through his series Blind Filmmaker Presents. As a legally blind man, Block’s works often focus on overcoming adversity, which is the case in his latest documentary, Gift Horses. The work examines how caring for and riding horses can be a form of physical and emotional therapy.

The radio broadcasting awards also demonstrated PhillyCAM’s commitment to providing a platform for diverse voices. The winner of the Innovation Award for Radio, Atrévete, is a bilingual Spanish/English program exploring social commentary, art, and healing through multiple perspectives in Philadelphia’s Latinx community. The winning episode was produced by Elizabeth Estrada, a first-generation Cuban American who is also a filmmaker and worked at Firelight Media in New York City before relocating to Philadelphia last year.

The future of broadcasting

Perhaps what made the greatest impact on me at the Cammy Awards was watching the next generation of filmmakers from PhillyCAM’s youth-media workshop accept the Community Responder Award. Coinciding with the nationwide movement to stop gun violence in schools, Youth Powered Media Vol. 12 covered the “March for Our Lives” student walkout on March 14, 2018. The clarity of their reporting and understanding of the historic significance of that event was an inspiring reminder of why media education is so important for our youth.

Because it's a public-access station, some viewers might expect the quality of the work broadcast by PhillyCam to be poor. That’s not the case, and this awards show demonstrates just how powerful locally produced content can be.

As Philadelphia’s independent media continues to grow, I hope more people will give their content a chance. A great place to start is the full list of 2018 Cammy Award recipients, available on PhillyCAM’s website.