HomeTown Wins Award

Small Business or Start-up of the Year - HomeTown Television Other finalists include Culver's of Noblesville and Peterson Architecture. HomeTown Television's Roy Johnson said the station began as a necessity to better inform the community of its events and sports. "In 2002 the daily newspaper had gone down to two days a week. There was no local television station, no radio station, no way to distinguish Noblesville and Hamilton County from anywhere else that was just a suburb of Indianapolis," he said. "So we started talking about doing something that was community service oriented. It gave us a chance to kinda look at the heart and soul of the area in which we live and appreciate all the things about this community." The business is involved within the community in a lot of ways - from covering council meetings to parades and the annual Street Dance - but HomeTown Television is most known for its coverage of Hamilton County high school sporting events. "We started off with local high school sports - it expanded into doing all the state championships for the IHSAA," said Johnson. "The NCAA, we're doing a lot of things for them now - a lot of the local colleges." HomeTown Television covers the University of Indianapolis, Wabash College, Marian University and Franklin College with its HomeTown Sports Indiana channel. "HomeTown Sports Indiana has really evolved into a sports mega station for the state of Indiana," said Johnson. "We not only do all the local high school - football, soccer, basketball, softball, baseball - we've also done things like the NCAA Division I championships in golf at Purdue. HomeTown Television does a live high school football game on Friday nights, a tape delayed game on Friday night, and covers two college football games on Saturdays. "To put on these kinds of productions we do, especially the sporting events, it's not just grab a camera and go out there and start filming," said Johnson. "Rick Vanderwielen, the guy who started the company, is the genius behind it all of that because he built it all from scratch, he knows what we need and is constantly improving on what we are putting on there." On Comcast, HomeTown Television can be found on channel 19. HomeTown Sports Indiana can be found on channel 81.