From the judges: This is a brilliant use of a public institution's network to benefit the community. We were impressed with the quality of the production, and the innovative approach to communicating with the greater community, while positioning the institution as a leader.
Corona Montgomery
Category
Communications > Communications Pivot
Description
Award: Gold
Institution: Montgomery College
Title of Entry: Corona Montgomery
About this Entry: At the start of the global pandemic in mid-March, 2020, information on available County resources was highly fragmented and predominantly in English. As part of the larger DC-metro area, local commercial broadcast news and the Washington Post only give partial coverage to our County of one million residents. The County government and Montgomery College recognized a need to consolidate the various COVID-19 information sources into a single, trusted source. MCTV developed a two-prong strategy. Montgomery College Television launched a second cable channel along with companion website, https://coronamontgomery.info dedicated to hyper-local COVID-19 coverage for Montgomery County. MCTV led the technical and creative development, providing the channel itself, as well as production and engineering resources to the County government. MCTV collaborated with over a dozen entities and aggregated content from several County departments, State, CDC, and six PEG (Public Education and Government) channels in Montgomery County. The website, https://coronamontgomery.info is an essential hub to curate, disseminate and link to critical information and resources in English, Spanish and Amharic, available for County residents and businesses. The cable channel provides an outlet to the aging population who tend to rely on television for news, much more so than Internet. As a result, a new website, and a new, branded cable channel were launched on April 17, 2020, just a few weeks into the pandemic.