Our Story

Founded in 1979, West Hartford Community Interactive is a nationally-recognized, non-profit media center that encourages citizen participation in community life by providing an open forum for free speech, community dialogue, cultural exchange and artistic expression. It’s a place where people come together to connect, create and share.

WHCi is home to three community cable channels serving the Town of West Hartford, a dynamic media-rich website, and an award-winning grassroots citizen journalism project called “Be The Media.” You can watch our programming on YouTube on the channel @whci.

For The Community, By The Community

Local Public, Educational and Governmental Media (PEG) play a crucial role in informing, educating and engaging communities. PEG media serve as essential platforms for transparency, civic engagement, cultural expression and education.

Community media centers and the people who work and volunteer in them are often creators of local information tailored to the needs of their communities - town government at work, high school sports, educational, cultural and community programming.

In those circumstances in which WHCi records (rather than creates), it is generally where nobody else is likely to do so, with the result that there will be no record of the information.

Our Town and Our Community Supports WHCi

56% of WHCi's Annual Budget Comes from Community Donations and Local Grants. PEG funding from traditional cable companies like Comcast and Frontier continues to drop significantly - WHCi while down annually by over $62k since 2008 is grateful to the West Hartford community for supporting us and keeping this special space for local television alive.

Cable companies use the public right of way to make billions - their only obligation for that use is to provide channels and support to local communities. That's how they were able to evolve to have channels like CT's own ESPN without local content.

We are asking state legislators to realign our funding and modernize existing state laws to allow us to continue to evolve in the current media ecosystem - free of commercial pressures and societal pressures - to remain truly independent.

Our Story

Founded in 1979, West Hartford Community Interactive is a nationally-recognized, non-profit media center that encourages citizen participation in community life by providing an open forum for free speech, community dialogue, cultural exchange and artistic expression. It’s a place where people come together to connect, create and share.

WHCi is home to three community cable channels serving the Town of West Hartford, a dynamic media-rich website, and an award-winning grassroots citizen journalism project called “Be The Media.” You can watch our programming on YouTube on the channel @whci.

For The Community, By The Community

Local Public, Educational and Governmental Media (PEG) play a crucial role in informing, educating and engaging communities. PEG media serve as essential platforms for transparency, civic engagement, cultural expression and education.

Community media centers and the people who work and volunteer in them are often creators of local information tailored to the needs of their communities - town government at work, high school sports, educational, cultural and community programming.

In those circumstances in which WHCi records (rather than creates), it is generally where nobody else is likely to do so, with the result that there will be no record of the information.

Our Town and Our Community Supports WHCi

56% of WHCi's Annual Budget Comes from Community Donations and Local Grants. PEG funding from traditional cable companies like Comcast and Frontier continues to drop significantly - WHCi while down annually by over $62k since 2008 is grateful to the West Hartford community for supporting us and keeping this special space for local television alive.

Cable companies use the public right of way to make billions - their only obligation for that use is to provide channels and support to local communities. That's how they were able to evolve to have channels like CT's own ESPN without local content.

We are asking state legislators to realign our funding and modernize existing state laws to allow us to continue to evolve in the current media ecosystem - free of commercial pressures and societal pressures - to remain truly independent.

Filmmaking with Smartphones Workshop