LMCC earns national children’s program award
The Lake Minnetonka wide public programming agency earns a national award for Safety Expert program
Chris Vogt (left) and Tyler Rabe (right) hold their award for Best of Children’s Programming from the Alliance for Community Media. The nation wide award was earned by their Safety Expert program. (Photo submitted by Chris Vogt)
The Lake Minnetonka Communications Commission has earned a national award in a children’s programming category for a segment of the LMCC Safety Expert series on bicycle safety.
The series earned the Best of Children’s Programming award from the Alliance for Community Media’s Hometown Media Awards. The program features the safety expert as played by Chris Vogt, the productions manager at the LMCC. Tyler Rabe, the Television Production Specialist for the LMCC, produced the program.
Vogt said that the segment is designed to help children in the Lake Minnetonka area learn something about safety by drawing in their attention with humor.
“We are tailoring them towards children,” said Vogt about the series. “The idea is that if you can make them laugh, you can hook them.”
The bike safety video features various jokes involving the safety expert, and mixes in tips about how to stay safe while biking. Tips include what equipment to use to be safe while biking, how to operate the bike safely, proper bike etiquette and how to use bike signals. The video also features a cameo from two local children. The clip of “LMCC Safety Expert: Bike Safety” can be viewed from a link on the LMCC website.
The safety expert series follows the same idea for the rest of the videos in the series — making kids laugh to draw their attention to education.
“The idea is to get the safety expert in there to make them laugh, and hopefully make it memorable,” said Rabe.
Vogt added that the idea to bring the children’s attention in with humor was developed after thinking about the safety programming he saw as a child.
“I would fall asleep, or lose interest,” he said. “ We are using humor to educate area youth.”
So far the video has had nearly 300 views online, and views are from places as far as Alaska, England and Iran.
Both Vogt and Rabe said winning the award was a nice way to be recognized nationally for a program they were involved in.
“It is nice when a national organization agrees with your program,” said Vogt. “We didn’t create that program to win an award, but it was nice to see what other people think.”
The safety expert series has led to another, longer television series for the LMCC titled First Responder T.V. This monthly program includes safety tips from area public safety organizations, and clips with the Safety Expert are mixed in as well.
“We’re really taking on the public safety theme,” said Vogt.
Both shows involve the behind the scenes work of Rabe, who does editing as the production specialist. Vogt said that a lot of the credit for the success of the show is owed to the program’s editing.
“All the credit should to Tyler,” he said. “I think our programming over the past year has really improved.”
Vogt added that when he needs to have something edited into the work — using a storm cloud chasing the safety expert around as an example — it is up to Rabe to get it done.
The LMCC was also nominated this summer for an award from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) in their Government Programming Awards. The category of the award is Excellence in Public Access Programming. The winning public access group for that award will be announced at a ceremony this fall.
