FARMINGTON -- A cooking show featuring a down-home Farmington chef preparing a simple Mexican-style meal in his own kitchen is what won over judges at this year's festival put on by the major organization of community-access TV stations in New England.

"The Simple Gourmet," featuring Stan Wheeler and produced by JP Fortier at Beeline Cable's community access Mt. Blue TV Channel 11, won second place in the professional instructional and training category.

The station and Fortier also won second place in the "Local Attractions-Professional" category for its show on Chester Greenwood Day events in Farmington that included coverage of the parade and the Polar Bear Dip in Clearwater Lake in Industry.

The Alliance for Community Media represents more than 1,000 public, educational and governmental access organizations and community media centers throughout the country. The film festival awards will be presented at the annual meeting Nov. 12 in Hartford, Conn. The New England region includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Wheeler's show has become popular, not just for the 2,000 Farmington and Wilton cable subscribers, but nationwide. According to PegMedia, a media transfer site for public, education and government community television stations and producers, the two dozen shows the site has available have been downloaded 466 times by public access stations around the country.

"There are at least 30 stations playing the show," Fortier said.

He said the Alliance awards are as big a deal to community access channels as the annual Associated Press awards that are given to newspapers are.

No other community access station in Franklin, Somerset or Kennebec counties was listed as an award winner.

Mt. Blue, with an annual budget of $70,000, was up against larger stations with budgets in excess of $500,000. Other than Fortier, the station's staff is made up of community volunteers and interns from the University of Maine at Farmington. UMF provides studio and office space for the project in the basement of Merrill Hall.

The key to the success of Wheeler's show is simplicity, Fortier said.

"It's popular because people see Stan as a regular guy who uses simple recipes and regular ingredients and gets results. And the results are awesome," he said.

Wheeler's shows cover entire meals with entrees that have included pan-seared salmon, grilled food, Asian and Greek cuisine, ginger shrimp and pizza. A limited selection can be viewed at www.mtbluetv.org by clicking on the Video Gallery.

Because of budget constraints, a new show is produced only about once a month.

Wheeler, a minister, a Farmington Fire Department chaplain, and a full-time dispatcher for the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, is an unpretentious chef.

The shows are filmed in his family's kitchen in Farmington, he wears regular clothes and as he talks viewers through the recipes, he offers tidbits of information about food, techniques, serving suggestions and affordable ingredient alternatives.

He says people like the pace because they can easily follow along.

"I try to prepare food that is not ordinarily eaten but is not beyond the reach of ordinary cooks and uses ingredients that are readily available," he said.

"You would be amazed at how many people come up to me and say how they love the show. I even have had staff at Hannaford (the program's sponsor) tell me that people were asking about an ingredient I had mentioned on the show," he said.

He and Fortier are planning on taking the show "on the road" to area restaurants to film chefs preparing their signature dishes.

"It's a lot fun," he said.

Fortier, who has worked in video production for 17 years, said he is constantly picking up new ideas by studying other broadcast and cable shows like the Food Network, attending conferences and talking to fellow professionals.

"The flow is very important. The taping can take an hour and it takes hours to cut it down to about half," he said.

The second-place award for the 2008 Chester Greenwood Day events in December featured UMF intern Laura Jennings' play-by-play of the parade through downtown Farmington. She then interviewed people before and after they took the plunge into frigid Clearwater Lake during the afternoon Polar Bear Dip. UMF student Sam Mullen did the camera work.

The production, including a slow-motion segment of the crowd of men, women and children jumping into the frigid water put to heroic music, along with Jennings' bubbly enthusiasm turned an ordinary event into an entertaining show, Fortier said.

"Laura did a fantastic job. And it was pretty impressive to get a second-place award for something as mundane as a parade," he said.