At last spring has arrived! With the new season also comes a feeling of renewal and an opportunity to grow and broaden our mission here at KCPT. Our staff and board have taken a look at our areas of focus and applied a “new season” of thought to where we are going and the things we need to accomplish to serve our community. KCPT’s Vision reads – A great city deserves a great public television station…one that is capable of delivering community-building television programs and services and is the voice and the platform for its community. And we are doing just that with our new focus on localism by:
- telling diverse stories of Kansas City metro and the Midwest
- leveraging social media to better connect communities of interest to our local and national content
- leveraging KCPT’s new mobile capacities to bring more of the Kansas City region to our viewers
We have a new mobile studio to help us accomplish many of these areas of focus. This studio has been talked about for years and I am proud and excited to say that the unit is up and running. The unit will bring the arts, culture, public affairs, and just plain entertainment into the homes of our viewers – many who would have no other means to see what our great city has to offer.
KCPT is also a source of education and I am pleased to report that we have received three new grants – one from a collaboration of Blue Springs, Center, and Hickman Mills School Districts and two from the Kansas City Missouri School District. These grants will help us capture the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom in the areas of math and science and will be turned into features and aired on The Local Show. Come to think of it, this sounds like a job for our new mobile studio! As part of this endeavor, we will utilize 20 interns from the Paseo High School Broadcast Journalism class to help create these features, allowing them to learn in a real broadcast environment. So, we’re not only showing how teachers teach, we’re also adding an element of learning to the project itself!
Our many years of covering Bank of America Celebration at the Station will hold extra meaning this year. The Armed Forces has designated 2011 as the 50th anniversary of Vietnam and the Symphony is building a special program to honor its veterans. Tune in to watch our live broadcast of Bank of America Celebration at the Station on Sunday, May 29 from 7:30 -10:00 pm. It is certain to be a spectacular event.
I want to thank our viewers for their support during our spring pledge drive. As many of you know we are at risk of losing our federal funding and have already all but lost our state funding. Your support is more important now than ever and we greatly appreciate your continued support.
Kliff Kuehl
KCPT President and CEO
