BTV re-equips, plans a comeback
Revived BTV won't have commercial movies
Brian Mastroianni
Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Campus News
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After inheriting a station that had remained mostly dormant throughout the 2006-07 school year, a group of students say they are trying to build a solid foundation on which BTV can grow.
"We are currently working on gathering content to broadcast," Elizabeth Backup '08 said. Backup and other BTV managers Jad Joseph '10, David Notis '10 and Kevin Volk '08 have been trying to figure out what programming Brown students would want to see, devise a scheduling system and reorganize the group's third-floor office in Faunce House, she said.
"Right now, we aren't working on anything glamorous," Backup said. "It is important to take the time to build the station's infrastructure in order to make a sustainable community to get people together to make their dreams come true."
Founded in 1987 by Doug Liman '88, now a Hollywood director, BTV was "big and ground-breaking, with lots of programming," Backup said. Since Liman's involvement, the channel has gone through many incarnations. Recently, the station has focused on showing commercial films, but managers plan to discontinue that content. "We will no longer be showing commercial movies - once we get off the ground again - which will result in a much lower cost structure," Volk said.
When the four current managers took over the station, they inherited an organization that was in "hibernation with only two seniors as managers," Backup said. Since BTV didn't focus on new programming, but rather showed commericial movies and reruns of old programs, it suffered from a lack of student interest and involvement.
"There was no BTV community to keep track of organizing the station," Backup said.
With the gears in motion to reorganize BTV, the station managers are looking ahead at how to make the station more accessible to student filmmakers. "We really want to show content that we already have, in addition to showing new student content. Hopefully, we can get some more equipment to give student directors access to proper editing technology," Volk said.
While working with outdated equipment, some of which had dated back to BTV's founding, the station managers are satisfied with new computers that they have received from Ed Huff, multimedia instructional coordinator, Volk said. The new technology will make it easier for the station managers to update their scheduling system and work on the actual student broadcast, he said.