August 20, 2013

On August 24, the city will decide on whether or not they will include Columbia Access Television in the 2014 budget. I personally have experienced the way that Columbia Access Television makes a difference in the Columbia community. I learned so much from only the short couple months I spent there as a summer intern, and I would not have gained these skills in such an amount of time anywhere else.

Being an international studies major at MU, I really had no previous exposure to camera equipment or video production and never had the opportunity to learn it through my required college courses, although I had a passion to do so. My time as an intern at Columbia Access Television has changed the way I look at learning experiences, and I truly prefer the hands-on training with classes, such as camera classes and studio production training, that I had while at my internship site.

My experiences as an intern this past summer have given me an edge to almost any job I apply to due to my new skills of video production, media, marketing and business that I learned while at CAT. It was the best experience I ever had working in Columbia, and I received another internship offer in Chicago with the arts due to my training at CAT.

Columbia Access Television is an integral part of Boone County and it really fills a gap that is created in the community in regards to media and arts education that otherwise could not be filled.

In addition, according to (its website)[http://www.columbiaaccess.tv], public access funding comes from cable television providers in exchange for their use of public property anyway. It would be a tragedy to cut the funding to Columbia Access Television, especially because CAT offers services to a variety of other nonprofits in the community in order to help them express their missions and messages through video production on incredible platforms, which is integral to our technology-driven world today.

By cutting CAT’s funding, the community is actually affecting the functionality of many other non-profit organizations in Boone County as well.

— Kelsey White, student,  
kmwdk7@mail.missouri.edu

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