Seattle is a vibrant and dynamic city, and the Seattle Channel is the award-winning local TV station that aims to reflect, inform, and inspire the community it serves. The Channel presents programs on cable television (channel 21 on Comcast and Millennium) and via the Internet to help citizens connect with their city.
Recently, the Northwest Emmys, put on by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Northwest Chapter, honored the Seattle Channel with four Emmy awards:
Informational/Instructional –Program/Special for City Stream: Harry Potter Exhibit
Public/Current/Community Affairs – Program/Special for Community Stories: Hat n’ Boots
Writer – Program for Community Stories: Hat n’ Boots
Interactivity for Seattle Speaks: Income Tax in Washington State?
All three highlight elements undoubtedly relevant to the Seattle public, but both the Hat n’ Boots story and the Income Tax in Washington State story pose particularly important, relevant things for business people in Seattle to think about.
Seattle Speaks: Income Tax in Washington State is a 90-minute video focusing on the previously impending vote for Initiative 1098, which would have imposed an income tax on the wealthiest 1.2% of the state. The initiative did not pass in the November 2010 election. Funds would have been dedicated to health and education. Supporters said it was needed for vital services, while opponents said it would have hurt small business and could have led to more taxes.
Whether you were for or against the initiative, viewers must recognize the amazing representation in the video of the Seattle community. The video is a taped discussion among community members in Town Hall in downtown Seattle, as both sides were able to speak up to voice their opinions. The video highlights senators, the executive director of the Greater Seattle Business Association Louise Chernin, Bill Gates Sr., and other business and city officials. The video also aimed to focus on small businesses and the effect 1098 would have had on them.
Community Stories: Hat n’ Boots presents a lighter side of Seattle in a moving, fun video centered on community involvement and restoration of loved monuments.
Seattle has always been filled with quirky, unique landmarks, from the Toe Truck to the more recent Experience Music Project—but many more important community monuments fly under the radar in hidden corners of the city. The Georgetown community nearly lost one of theirs, the old Hat n’ Boots gas station, and they pulled together to save the cherished icon of times past.
The Seattle Channel’s short 12-minute clip centered on the community’s efforts to pull together to save the Hat n’ Boots. The video featured a number of people, including the original designer himself, and showed how moving and effective a group of people can be when they work together. Although the Hat n’ Boots function as a landmark now, they represent the community’s refusal to give up their “soul”—to give up the quirks that make them uniquely Georgetown.
Each neighborhood holds its own special features, and these features are inarguably part of drawing more people to walk the streets, to explore, and to do business in Seattle. The people in the city must rally together, as the Georgetown community did, to always preserve these “hidden gems” that make the different areas so vibrant and important.
For more hidden gems in Seattle neighborhoods, particularly Georgetown, visit Only in Seattle, a site dedicated to publicizing and growing such important features. Here’s more information on Georgetown, too.
