You’re on campus. Even worse, you’re in a dorm room. You’re mindlessly switching the channels on the television, and channel 18 catches your eye. You realize it’s good-old Student Run Television enhancing your relatively monotonous life with student-run comedy shows and music video programs.
Most of the time you’ll go right past this channel. In fact, some students probably don’t have channel 18 programmed into their televisions. Why? Because students have always thought of SRTV as a station with shows that are mildly entertaining at best.
But there has been something of a rebirth at SRTV. While most on campus sleep peacefully, the people of SRTV are attempting to create a TV station that students will actually watch and respect.
Operations Managers Mike Kaminsky and Talar Parunyan, with the rest of the SRTV personnel, have come together to give SRTV a new look and a new life.
“”We are asking everyone to think of this as year one at SRTV,”” Kaminsky said. “”This is the first year we’ve had the funding and the personnel to transform our studio into a legitimate college television station.””
SRTV is technically not a student organization. Rather, it is a service of the Associated Students. SRTV was originally created in 1996 as an offshoot of KSDT with a grant from the A.S. Council.
But times are changing, and SRTV is ready to stake a claim in student life.
“”We are expanding our show line up,”” Parunyan said. “”While we traditionally did music and ‘couch’ talk shows, you will see more political shows, more comedy-style sketches and definitely more coverage of events on campus.””
SRTV’s new endeavor is to report on every A.S. event next year, as well as giving exclusive interviews with bands that perform on campus and other features to the students.
SRTV’s staff also wants to provide more coverage for sports teams on campus, as well as for events put on by other student organizations. SRTV has already been sighted at Round Table during the A.S. election results and in the Price Center during the “”Take Back the Night”” event.
“”We encourage any organization to come to us and we’ll help them promote their event for free,”” Parunyan said.
SRTV will also take on a new role, that of being an organization that sponsors events. These savvy TV kids were behind the recent listening party for Radiohead’s new album, and a hard-core punk rock concert on the UCSD campus is in the works.
Whether you like it or not, SRTV is growing and finding more exposure on campus.
“”In just one year, our membership has grown from four members to 40,”” Kaminsky boasted. “”We are actually getting new members every week, and I think this is because people are realizing that we are a place to come to where you can learn things that will actually help you for the future.””
“”We also want to focus on helping people who are interested in the entertainment industry,”” Kaminsky continued. “”There are very few classes on campus that allow you to learn digital editing, but we have the cameras, computers and staff to train anyone who’s interested. We’ve also been working with the big networks to get people who work at the station internships and jobs.””
SRTV was able to get new equipment due to an increased budget, and that has allowed the station to do two-camera shoots along with special effects and mixed audio.
Kaminsky gives credit to the administration for the increase in support and equipment.
“”The administration has been extremely supportive of our new direction, and we definitely wouldn’t be able to improve if it weren’t for them,”” he said.
So consider this the dawning of a new age for SRTV. It has always been underrated but is coming back strong.
“”We want SRTV to feel more like a college TV station that’s unbounded by traditional rules of network TV, which allows its viewers to participate and be unafraid to take a stand on issues,”” Kaminsky said.
For these same reasons, don’t expect to see SRTV on your local cable access channel. A conscientious decision was made not to expand its reach off campus due to the limitations of what people could say and do on the air.
“”There was also a movement to generate more revenue to the station by selling ads to corporations,”” Kaminsky said. “”But we shot that down because, again, we didn’t want to answer to any higher power, except the students, of course.””
SRTV has been reborn. It asks people to forget about the past and look to the future as it makes itself known on this campus. Soon enough, channel 18 won’t be avoided.
