Photo by Genevieve Humphreys

TigerTV, Trinity’s 24/7 campus television station, serves as a realm for students to explore professional media training, express creativity and acquire skills that will make them more marketable in today’s changing media landscape.

Senior Danielle Trevino, station manager of TigerTV, leads the team of station executives and oversees broadcasts.

“I joined TigerTV in my sophomore year and have been working on the show ever since. But students may get involved even from their first semester at Trinity,” Trevino said. “Unlike other colleges, which only allow students to work on the campus television broadcasts during their senior year as part of capstone projects, Trinity lets you do it when you want to.”

Whether it be writing, directing, camera work, technical work or on-camera talent, TigerTV allows students to access a broad range of experiential opportunities.

“This is a great intellectual space to prepare people for professional journalism and broadcasting careers, but there are also people from other majors like mathematics, religion, physics. We have a very unique group of people,” Trevino said.

TigerTV is completely funded by the Department of Communication without any alumni involvement. In her role as station manager, Trevino has to make sure that the shows do not go over budget and go through all the paperwork over the summer period to ensure a year of successful broadcasts.

“I actually did the budget in the summer for the entire year. The Communication Department has its own money dedicated to TigerTV and assigns it to us at the beginning of the semester,” Trevino said.

Several adjustments have been made this year to the shows. Last year, the station had another show called “EndZone” running. Due to the expense that piled up and lack of traffic and availability of students, the show was cut from the official list of programs. Senior Ben Klinkenberg is the executive producer of “The Not So Late Show,” and believes that quality is more important than quantity when doing broadcasts.

“I always direct my members so that things are up to standards and level of real television broadcasts,” Klinkenberg said. “We are more concerned about the learning experience of students and what kind of experience they get. But the next step for us would be entering competitions, which we have not done before.”

The Communication Department and TigerTV executive team have also revised their goals and plan for the school year while still maintaining the structure of each show. One of the changes included the addition of a new segment on Studio 21.

“Studio 21 did not have a music segment before. But now we do, and the segment runs for 10 minutes, which takes the workload off when planning and scripting for the show,” Klinkenberg said. “It truly is a learning curve.”

The show features local artists and is also a way for budding Trinity musicians to get their name out.

First-year Runyu Li, currently works for “Newswave” as part of the one-credit Comm 1131 Apprenticeship course and has enjoyed the experience handling cameras and field reporting for the show.

“TigerTV is one of the reasons that I came to Trinity. Everyone is helpful and willing to help you with your work,” Li said.

Although faculty adviser James Bynum is well-known as the “go-to person in times of crisis,” the student staff makes all decisions about programming, scripting, producing, directing, editing and distributing media independently.

However, one problem that TigerTV has been facing is the reliance on the number of volunteers who show up on set.

“Sometimes there [are] not enough people on set, and we would have to stretch our resources greatly,” Trevino said. “This is something that we cannot control, and I hope more and more people join TigerTV. It is an active learning environment and will definitely be helpful for everyone in different ways.”

Tune in to TigerTV every week on Time Warner channel 98 in the San Antonio area. “Studio 21” is live on Tuesdays at 5 p.m., “Newswave” is live on Fridays at 3 p.m., and “The Not So Late Show” is live on Thursdays at 5 p.m. All broadcasted episodes can also be found on TigerTV’s Vimeo.

Trinitonian

Trinitonian

Tuning in to TigerTV