2008 Woodie Awards
UTVS prepares fall programs
Dana Johnson
Issue date: 9/13/07 Section: Intermission
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The station is entirely student operated and broadcasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, on channel 21.
They also broadcast selected Husky hockey games on channel 14. They have an average staff size of 90 students in order to fill the schedule.
UTVS News
UTVS is on the air weeknights at 5, 6 and 9 p.m. covering the latest news and happenings around the world. They cover stories in the St. Cloud area that stations in the Twin Cities usually pass over.
Each day, a newscast of about 30 students work nearly all day to prepare the show. National stories are fed to their newsroom 24 hours a day. Weather updates are featured during the program and are also kept updated online.
"We do our news Monday through Friday, so it's our biggest production and is the only show that's daily," said Tyler Bieber, general manager of UTVS.
"We won our first College Emmy last year, so we're looking to improve on that show."
Husky Productions
Broadcasting all of the Husky hockey games over UTVS is "Husky Productions." They plan on shooting the women's opener Oct. 5, which will kick off the show this year.
The show has big plans for growth.
"We're probably going to go statewide with our production, which will go to a few of the schools we are playing which will simultaneously broadcast to their states like Alaska and Colorado," Bieber said.
The show is UTVS's largest production next to the news, so they are hoping to bring in some awards for it.
Back to the Movies
Seen throughout the day on UTVS is "Back to the Movies," a movie review show dedicated to letting students know what's coming to the local theater and whether it's worth their time and money to see on the big screen.
"Back to the Movies" also reviews DVDs along with interviewing stars to help viewers get a behind the scenes look.
The hosts usually take time to quiz the movie buffs who may be watching. It's one of the few shows that has been running strong on UTVS over the years.
Monday Night Live
At 10 p.m. Monday nights viewers can tune into UTVS or listen to KVSC 88.1 to hear and see the latest entertainment artists on "Monday Night Live."
The show gives artists a chance to perform live on the radio and television simultaneously. The host and coordinator interviews each artist halfway through each show.
The hour-long evening is broadcasted live from the KVSC studio.
"We're just trying to get into gear," said Andrew Nielsen, "Monday Night Live" co-producer. "The first shoot is Monday the 17th. It's one of the longest running UTVS shows; it's a pretty easy shoot because we don't need much for crew, so it's pretty easy to maintain."
Triviaholix
Broadcasted almost daily and recorded live once a week is "Triviaholix," a game show specializing in pop culture.
"It's a big viewer interest, a lot of college students get into that show," Bieber said. "It's a 'Jeopardy' kind of show with contestants from the St. Cloud community who get pretty excited about it. We definitely need contestants for that this year, so we always try to get people to come show up for that."
Sports Soup
Relatively new to the lineup is "Sports Soup," a sports discussion show that covers almost every sport. It airs once a week Wednesday covering different opinions about professional players.
This year UTVS hopes to incorporate some high school and college level sports team coverage as well.
Americans Anonymous
Airing at 7 p.m. Thursdays is the relatively young show "Americans Anonymous."
"'American's Anonymous' is sort of like taking 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report' and throwing them in a bucket, mixing them up and then sort of stepping on it," said Robert Becka, fifth-year student at SCSU and host/co-producer of "Americans Anonymous." "What you pour out of there is going to be 'American's Anonymous.'"
Combining sketch comedy with political comedy, its fan base is quickly growing.
"We shoot Tuesday night and air Thursday night, we're the only show that I know of in the history of UTVS to be that stupid," Becka said.
As the year progresses, UTVS will be airing random events and programs at SCSU. Currently, they are still broadcasting 24 hours, yet they haven't filmed in three months because of summer vacation.
Next week they plan on airing new episodes of each of these shows. Overnight it is common for them to air a few hours of "Zilo," a national program that airs students' work for universities across the nation.
UTVS submits content to them as well, but a majority of the programming is from students around the United States.
It is also common to see UTVS filming events live in Ritsche Auditorium or other large events on campus. Currently, the CEO of Wells Fargo is scheduled to speak, and UTVS plans on simultaneously broadcasting it into Atwood for the overflow crowd.
"We'll be working Trivia Weekend with KVSC again this year, so that's always fun," Bieber said. "We throw people in because we are desperate for people to work those 3 a.m. shifts on our production. It's a great opportunity for those who normally wouldn't direct or do audio to take over."