It was one-two-three for SCVTV on Thursday, as the City of Santa Clarita's public television operator captured three awards at a major industry conference.
    SCVTV took the top prize for its SCVTV.com website in the 2009 STAR Awards competition. The contest is hosted annually by SCAN NATOA, the association of city and county government television operators across California and Nevada.
    The website category pitted SCVTV against all city and county television channels regardless of budget, including several with budgets exceeding $1 million.
    "It's a tremendous honor to be recognized as the best among our peers, especially considering we do it on a shoestring and it was our debut performance," said SCVTV President Leon Worden, who was a featured speaker at the conference.
    It was the first time SCVTV had entered the STAR Awards competition.
    The City of Long Beach won second prize for its website, while the City and County of San Francisco took third.
    But wait, there's more...
    Among channels with operating budgets under $400,000, SCVTV took second place behind the City of Lakewood in the "documentary profile" category for an episode of "SCV Newsmaker of the Week."
    Shot on location at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the episode featured many of the Santa Clarita Valley residents who were responsible for flying and navigating the Phoenix lander to the surface of Mars last year.
    Finally, SCVTV took third place in the "community event coverage" category for its production of the 2008 Santa Clarita Fourth of July Parade.

ABOUT SCVTV:
    SCVTV is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that operates the City of Santa Clarita's cable television channel and studio facility under contract with the city. In addition to producing its own shows, SCVTV collaborates with and distributes programming for the City of Santa Clarita, College of the Canyons, the William S. Hart Union High School District, local nonprofit groups and individual community members. Programming can be seen on Time Warner Cable Channel 20, AT&T U-verse 99 and on SCVTV.com, where all locally produced TV shows are permanently archived for on-demand viewing.

ABOUT SCAN NATOA:
    SCAN NATOA is the States of California and Nevada Chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers.