Station Spotlight: University of La Verne TV

Last Updated on January 2, 2014 by askcbiorg

Special thanks to Don Pollock, adviser, for answering!

Tell me a little history about your station and where your station is now?
The University of La Verne Communications Department has contracted with the city of La Verne to run their cable access channel for over 20 years. Four years ago the university took over operation of the city of San Dimas cable access channel too. Most of the programming on the channels is created by University of La Verne TV broadcast and broadcast journalism students. University of La Verne student productions have won awards from CBI, SPJ, the Alliance for Community Media, the Broadcast Education Association, CINE, the Tellys, Accolade and Pegasus.

What sets your station apart from other college radio/tv stations?
Community engagement is what sets the university of La Verne’s program apart from other college stations. Students are frequently out in the community working with community members, local businesses, government officials and local schools. In every production class students need to work on a number of community productions for which they earn crew slips.
In fall advanced students produce a video magazine that looks at people, places and events in and around the cities of La Verne and San Dimas. In spring students produce a newscast, “Foothill Community News” that covers news in the cities of La Verne, San Dimas and at the university.
Sometimes the TV station gets hired to produce for pay programming. Students are often hired to work for pay on these productions.

Why did you choose to work at the TV station?
I am a professor at the university. I am also the head of broadcasting. Before coming to the university I worked in public access TV. It was natural for me to take over the running of the TV station when we contracted with the city to run the local access channel. Several of our graduates work for the local cable company. Many of the LVTV station’s employees have been University of La Verne Communications graduates. We also offer internships to university students who want to stay local and work in production. A number of our broadcast journalism graduates have gone on to work on air in TV news in  Los Angeles, Connecticut, Milwaukee, Fresno, CA;  Bakersfield, CA; Charlotte North Carolina and Laredo, Texas.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for your station?
I got tired of staying home on Halloween and having kids bang on the door and beg for candy, so I created a hillbilly character to host a live, two hour, drop in and call in Halloween TV show. The character, Billy Bob, has done Fourth of July and Valentine’s Day specials too. Although I no longer host the show, the Halloween show has evolved and is now produced live in the community and replayed on TV later. City officials and the university president like to come on the show and tell bad Halloween jokes.

What’s the best part of college TV? And the hardest part?
The three best parts of the TV station are providing a venue to air student video work, raise extra money for the department through outside production activities and to foster a close relationship with the surrounding communities.
The biggest challenges are making it through each year on a very limited budget and balancing teaching, university administration, making films and running the TV stations.