Hello, my name is Judy Martinez, and I work for locally produced independent media Cool-out Television and Hip-hop 101. Both programs are produced for SCAN-TV, Seattle’s community access network. We put local artists on TV, where BET or MTV will not do that. Both of our program producers have won Mayor Nickels’s award for ‘excellence in hip-hop’ (just to give you some background). One has produced for 15 years, the other for 10 years.

Two points… we should never, ever have to be worried about losing our community access channel ever again. That’s something that just almost chokes me up because we almost lost our channel this year and that would mean no Cool-Out, no Hip-hop 101, and no more of all the other programs that are on there. The second point is we need more public television channels to give ways to all of the voices in our community… not just, you know, a handful. Thank you.