An open letter to the Seattle City Council

Local Journalism Matters

Communities of color have long suffered from hit or miss media coverage. Sometimes local government pays attention to the concerns of businesses and residents in our neighborhoods and sometimes it doesn’t. What makes the difference is whether our leaders hear about the crime, drugs and homelessness in our streets. Now, the Mayor is proposing to slash the Seattle Channel’s budget, vastly weakening a community resource that so many have come to depend upon to effectively communicate their needs. For the past two decades, the station has strived to reflect, inform, and inspire the community it serves with a slate of locally focused shows and coverage that you can’t find anywhere else.

Viewers know they can get fair and helpful information about the City when they view Seattle Channel programs on-air, online or on social media. They expect programs which highlight the diverse civic and cultural landscape of Seattle. We believe the 2025-26 budget proposal that slashes the production staff in half would mean eliminating all the station’s original programming and halting its ability to live stream and post stories to web channels. It would be a grave disservice to Seattle residents.

It makes no sense to lose the audiences drawn to award-winning shows like CityStream, ArtZone with Nancy Guppy, City Inside/Out, documentaries like Community Stories and the annual Video Voters Guide. While cable subscribers all over the United States have been diminishing, Seattle Channel has gained more than 118,000 followers and subscribers on platforms Facebook, GovDelivery, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and YouTube. For the first 8 months of 2024, the Seattle Channel had more than 1.7 million views. The year with the largest viewership was 2020, with historic public health and public safety events bringing more than 4 million views to the Channel’s platforms.

At a time when media outlets of all sizes struggle to survive, it is short-sighted to destroy a strong and reputable resource that allows our communities to be seen.

As members of Seattle’s Asian American community, we urge the City Council to restore full funding of the Seattle Channel to preserve government transparency and continue reflecting the diverse communities that make Seattle unique.

Sincerely,