Cougar Cast will be the first regularly aired program at MU. It is written, produced, edited and shot entirely by students in conjunction with the communications department.
Channel 10 will begin airing the program October 24. The shows will be produced under the guidance of new communications professor Dan Kimbrough, who has professional experience in both field and video production.
CGR – Cougar Radio and The Highlander were the only practical experience offered to students in media until now, says Elizabeth Guarnieri, the show’s co-executive producer. She says she never had a chance to get this hands-on experience before she did an internship at an Illinois news station.
“The whole reason [for Cougar Cast] is for the Communications department,” says Guarnieri, “so we could learn how to work under a deadline.”
Three teams will work together over three weeks to produce a 15 minute show. A video team will shoot on campus, a studio team will shoot in studio and editing team members will create the finished product. Two executive producers, Guarnieri and senior Amanda Janiga, will keep everything running smoothly.
Students will have the opportunity to take different roles each semester because they have to learn all facets of the production. For example, an on air personality will also work in video production.
“If you want be on air you have to do everything,” said Guarnieri, who speaks from the experience of her internship, where she shot, edited, and reported news stories.
Junior Rachel Roa thinks the program will make for a more exciting Channel 10.
“I want to learn based on other people’s experience and make my own experiences,” said Roa, an Accounting major with a minor in Communications. “I think doing video would be good.”
Students will produce and air two shows this semester and Guarnieri hopes to have one show per month during the spring semester. “The very first regularly programmed good show will take a while,” Guanieri. “Hopefully one day we’ll be biweekly, then weekly, then daily, then maybe live.”
Guarnieri hopes to demonstrate what is possible to do with a communications degree and she wants to inform the rest of the campus community through the television medium.
“I never really pick up the newspaper but I think it would be cool to see a student’s point of view [on the news],” said sophomore transfer student Ashley Galambos.
The first show will run for two weeks and new programming will begin November 14.
Anyone interested in working on Cougar Cast should attend meetings held each Wednesdays at five in the television studio in lower level Munson in the McAuley-Walsh building. Anyone who cannot attend should contact Guarnieri or Janiga by e-mail at guarniee@misericordia.edu or janigaa@misericordia.edu.
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