New show on student-run channel hopes to remedy dearth of athletic news coverage
This past Wednesday, for the first time in 10 years, a brand new show broadcasted live on TigerTV. “Endzone” aims to become Trinity’s source for university athletics and local sports news. They hope to achieve this by featuring footage and commentary curated by TigerTV’s all-student crew.
The show is the latest addition to the channel’s line-up, which includes three other student-produced programs. “Newswave” is TigerTV’s news option, “Studio 21″ delivers music and entertainment news, and the “The Not-So-Late Show,” as the name suggests, functions as a variety show that airs in the late afternoon.
The shows exist in part as training for up-and-coming media professionals, providing students with the opportunity to produce content that represents the diversity of TV broadcasting. The emphasis on producing quality content while training bright students led staffers like Benjamin Gomez to notice the glaring absence of sports as part of the TigerTV line-up.
“We had a little sports content on one of our shows, but nothing near the scale of what sports is in the media industry,” said Gomez, who saw alumni in sports journalism as proof of concept. “A lot of communication majors with sports management minors have gone on to have some sort of sports journalism role,” said Gomez, making a huge creative leap, “and Trinity really hadn’t fulfilled that need, until now.”
It has been four years since Gomez joined the TigerTV team, so he should know how the system works. But only in his current position as station manager did he finally see a way to provide students with the much-needed opportunity to practice some level of sports journalism.
The show is made possible via a partnership with Tiger Network, the university’s live-streaming channel for athletics and special events. Providing large amounts of raw sports content, Tiger Network is instrumental to the show’s mission of shining a spotlight on Trinity’s athletes and teams.
Although the station had not seen an addition to its lineup in at least ten years, the plans didn’t stay on paper for long. After receiving departmental approval in December, TigerTV managers ventured far beyond their job descriptions to make the show a reality.
The initiative for “Endzone” was presented to the department of communication, where it was granted approval for a “pilot stage.” This means that the show is currently broadcasting for 15 minutes every other Wednesday, which is not as much airtime as the 28-minutes pre-existing shows receive once a week. Endzone’s producers hope that once the show establishes itself within TigerTV, its airtime will be increased, be it in length or frequency.
Selecting the show’s content was facilitated by the clarity of its mission. “We knew we wanted to focus mostly on local and Trinity sports, but we didn’t know specifically what we wanted to go into the segments,” said Rosie Van Vliet, who made sure to enlist herself as executive producer of “Endzone.”
This flexibility allowed the production team to build the show on the cast’s skills and interests. The show covers an overview of the past week’s events in Tiger Athletics, highlight reels from the week’s games, live interviews recorded at the games, and a roundtable to discuss major headlines in national sports news.
Miranda Reinhardt is a producer and commentator tasked with selecting highlights from the ongoing basketball season.
As a former basketball player, she appreciates what the show will do for athletes. “It’s a show dedicated to our Trinity Tigers,” said Reinhardt, “it’s something that TigerTV has been missing, and a show that is very involved with what’s happening on campus.”
TigerTV adviser James Bynum is pleased with the project’s success. “I’m very impressed with the initiative of the students. I was a little concerned that we wouldn’t have enough student workers for the show, but so far it’s been great.”
The show has flourished quickly, and aims to continue expanding. “We had tremendous success in our first show,” said Gomez, “our hope is to cement the show at TigerTV, and reach out to Trinity supporters and recent grads in the sports journalism sphere.”
You can catch Endzone every other Wednesday, at 5 p.m. on TigerTV and streaming live on the Tiger Network stream.
