What a great year! We thank our members, partners, funders—especially Comcast, RCN and Verizon—supporters and our many stakeholders for all you have done to build DCTV!

As you can see from this report and the letter from our Board Chair, DCTV is on its way to setting the standard for the new public square!

Discovering the many layers of local conversations and creatively engaging our communities continues to be a dynamic feature of DCTV’s channels — the only channels devoted entirely to local programming.

DCTV and our members are the new rhythm and pulse of media. Rather than limiting the role of our “audience” to a primarily reactive “market”, DCTV is an elemental connector in an organic, expanding multi-dimensional matrix of relationships. Expressions of DC’s community identities, interests and issues ripple out from sources deep within our neighborhoods. People of all ages, from many different backgrounds and perspectives, who work every day in a wide range of professions, and are of the many different communities that make up the city, create and air the television programs on DCTV that charge, invigorate and expand the extent of how these communities Connect to inspire, inform and create positive change.

Over the years, a strong foundation has been built to support the public’s use of DCTV as this contemporary public square. But just as the gathering place for community-wide public discourse moved from an actual town square to the airwaves, electronic media platforms have continued to expand. Television channels are now a hub for programming, with many spokes for further engaging people—through cell phones over the airwaves, and through iPads, computers and laptops over the wired and wireless Internet. Beginning in 2012, and in the coming years, DCTV will continue to branch out along these spokes, providing our members a full range of means to increasingly engage and involve all communities in the important conversations that strengthen and resource our communities — and to create even more ways for all members of our communities to meaningfully Participate in imagining, visioning and building our city’s future.

The Board of Directors and DCTV members invite you to explore with us the new ways you can Discover, Connect, and Participate through the tools and platforms available through DCTV, and to join us as we continue to imagine and set the standard for the new public square!