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"Discover Philadelphia" Ovation Partnership Announced

Today, April 8th, at 10:30 at City Hall we announced a new partnership between the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, Ovation, and Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, to make $500,000 of donated media available to promote Philadelphia's cultural assets. More information on this program, dubbed "Discover Philadelphia" is available here.

Ovation is the nation's only arts-focused cable channel, with a reach of 40 million households nationwide. Thanks to Comcast-Xfinity, Ovation is just being added to the Philadelphia region's channel line-up. To celebrate this, to give back to Philadelphia's cultural sector and tell its story nationally, Ovation is making this gift of airtime and production services.

So what exactly is happening? We will be given airtime for an array of what are called "interstitials" - short pieces of content aired in between other programs. For these segments arts groups are being asked to submit whatever raw content, known as "B roll" they may have. All of this content will be reviewed and a selection of them chosen to be clustered into a series of different interstitials highlighting various aspects of Philadelphia's cultural assets. These  spots will be produced by Ovation as part of their gift. Here is an example of a similar spot from Ovation's work in Chicago.

In addition, we are asking any groups that have an existing public service advertisement of 30 seconds to submit this content as well. Again, a committee will review the submissions and select some PSAs that will be granted donated airtime. The number or broadcasts per spot will depend on how many spots are selected for this component of the donation. The $500,000 value of the gift is divided equally between the two programs.

Applications are due Monday May 6th. Both the interstitials and organizational PSAs are expected to begin airing in July 2010.

In addition to this donated air-time, Philadelphia's arts groups are also being encouraged to participate in Ovation's online community, creating profiles and uploading content.

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