Northwestern TV adds a new channel

Student-produced shows may land on NUTV.

By Dan Strumpf

When Tony Tagliavia speaks, very, very few people listen.

To be exact, no more than 17 people listen to Tagliavia when he recites the day’s news in front of a camera at 7 p.m. every Wednesday. Sometimes his viewers are even fewer in number.

Why does nobody listen? Northwestern News Network’s studio in the the McCormick Tribune Center is adorned with colorful banners and shiny plaques — awards. Dozens and dozens of awards. More than 100 altogether.

And only 17 viewers.

Strict bandwidth constraints cap NNN’s live audience at exactly 17 when the show airs Monday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. on the Web at www.nnntv.org. The audience likely grows when the group re-airs its newscast three hours later on Evanston’s public access channel — Channel 6 — but NU viewers have to scour campus for a TV with cable access. Meanwhile, the university’s online television station, NUTV — which currently offers such fare as the Cartoon Network, an obscure French station and everything C-SPAN — still doesn’t broadcast NU’s only undergraduate news program.

“NNN is often overlooked,” said Phil Stuart, a Medill junior and NNN’s news director. “We’re not like The Daily, we’re not all over campus. It’s difficult for people to watch us.”

But this could all change when the Office of Student Affairs launches a pilot version of NU Channel 1, a station dedicated to student-produced programming that will broadcast on NUTV. The groundwork has already been laid for the channel, which broadcasts calendars of upcoming events on NUTV. The channel will open to student programming Fall Quarter. Organizers at NNN hope Channel 1 will finally provide a true window between the news team and the very students it covers — something the team has clamored for since it began in 2000, said Medill Prof. Joseph Angotti, the group’s faculty adviser.

“It’s been very discouraging,” he said. “The only thing that’s kept me from being totally depressed is that I know there are people on campus trying to get us on.” With other student groups already angling for access to Channel 1, the station has the potential to connect student programming to NU viewers in an unprecedented way.

“Our central piece is to get NNN out to students, so that every student can see NNN in their (residence hall) — and not just in a lounge or in a home,” said Cate Whitcomb, assistant to the vice president for Student Affairs. “It’s ridiculous that I can watch NNN from my home but students can’t watch it here.”

Plans for Channel 1 extend beyond simply bringing NNN into the campus fold, said Whitcomb, who sits on a committee that is laying the foundations for the new station. Performance groups already have expressed interest in Channel 1, seeing it as yet another outlet that will make their work more accessible to the NU community.

“I think people can expect to see programming from public safety to mental health issues to all kinds of student affairs issues, as well as comedy shows and debates between political candidates — and whatever else students want to produce,” Whitcomb said.

Erik Neinstedt, a Communication junior and president of the film group Studio 22, envisions a partnership between the group and Channel 1 that would allow its films to be broadcast weekly. Studio 22 sponsors about 10 student-produced films every year that are featured in a June festival in the Technological Institute. This year’s festival is June 5, and Neinstedt said he hopes it can be taped and re-broadcast next year on Channel 1. He proposed the idea as a “Friday movie night.”

“These films, they get made and they get seen in the RTVF community, but nobody else gets to see them after that,” Neinstedt said.

Arts groups, like A&O Productions, could also have a future with the station.

“I wouldn’t want to be broadcasting a concert and have that deter people from actually going to it — but if a show is sold out and there’s still demand to see it, that’s a different scenario,” said Brian Bockrath, a McCormick junior and president of A&O. A&O events besides concerts could also have a future with Channel 1, he said. For example, tickets sold out within a week when the group brought Michael Moore to speak at Ryan Field Fall Quarter. “That would have been great to do over Channel 1. We tried to accommodate as many people as possible but the capacity we had was 3,000. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people who wanted to go see (Moore) who weren’t able to do so.”

It’s obvious that student interest in the station exists, and some have said it’s about time NU introduced a station like Channel 1 anyway. Although NU was the very first among colleges to introduce a Web-based TV service like NUTV, it has lagged behind other schools, like Georgetown University or the University of Pennsylvania, which have had full-fledged student-run stations for a long time.

According to Whitcomb, some technological hurdles still stand in the way. For example, Whitcomb’s committee still hasn’t seen a clear demonstration of the technology behind the service. And one of the station’s biggest drawbacks will be its inability to broadcast live — erecting yet another hurdle for NNN, which, like many student groups, is struggling to make its work experience simulate real life. Every professional news station broadcasts its reports live. Why wouldn’t they? Live broadcasts are crucial to the immediacy that television news provides. And it’s one of the reasons TV has overtaken the newspaper as the news source to which Americans most often turn.

But perhaps NNN can go without this luxury for a while, Stuart said. He called Channel 1 NNN’s “big break.”

“A few years ago — before I was a freshman — they only had one newscast a week,” Stuart said. “Then we upped it to two a week. Starting at the end of last quarter we started to go live on the Internet. In the fall we’re looking to be on NUTV.”