The Mass Communicator

The College of Mass Communications is Making News

Reporting live from the College of Mass Communications, it’s the MCTV newscast. MCTV is a bi-weekly newscast produced completely by students in the Multiplatform News Delivery class.

MCTV is a 10-minute newscast that reports news geared toward Texas Tech University students. There are 15 students in the class, and they do everything in the production process from writing the scripts and reporting the news to filming and editing the segments. Professor Randy Reddick, chairman of the Department of Journalism, and Josh Robinson, an equipment manager for the College of Mass Communications, supervise the group. Visiting Assistant Professor Tim McAlavy, who teaches Broadcast Journalism, has also been working with students doing the field camera work and preliminary editing.

“We are really just there to make sure everything comes together,” Robinson said. “We help things run smoothly.”

Robinson said the MCTV team wants to increase the content and audience of the newscast. It also wants more classes to work on the program, possibly adding multiple newscasts per week that last longer than 10 minutes. MCTV is currently only broadcast on the closed-circuit televisions in the Mass Communications building.

“In the future, we would like to see MCTV broadcast on Channel 14 for students to see across campus,” Robinson said.
The idea behind MCTV originated in the Multiplatform News Delivery class of the previous year. According to Reddick, the class had been working on a prototype of MCTV, but had encountered several studio production issues. In the end, he said, the production emerged from its difficulties by addressing the lack of technical support.

“We did come out of the spring semester with a pretty good fix on the support that we lacked, and that in part led to the hiring of Josh Robinson, who came on board during the summer.” Reddick said.

Robinson conducts the final edits and engineers the production of the newscast itself.

Daniel Horsch, the fall 2008 news director/editor/producer of MCTV, was very active in the development of the project. Reddick said Horsch approached him with the idea, but did not know plans for the news channel were already in motion.

“His vision of the newscast was in perfect synch with what we had already outlined the previous semester,” Reddick said. Furthermore, Reddick said Horsch did all the organizing for the on-camera work, selected the stories, wrote the newscast script, and did a fair amount of the anchoring.

Horsch has a good sense of the purpose for MCTV and the benefits it offers students of the college.

“This newscast is beneficial for all mass communications students,” Horsch said. “It allows the students who put it together to add work to their media portfolio, while providing useful information to all the students who see it.”

Horsch said the Multiplatform News Delivery class is set up to give all the students an opportunity to gain experience and exposure. There are three different anchors for every broadcast. The students help with every aspect of the newscast, including coming up with all the story ideas. They use class time to work on the newscast, but they also have to put in additional hours after school.

“Everyone can put in their own ideas,” Horsch said. “This open communication allows us to try new things.”

Friday is filming day, and the students use their own time to film and edit MCTV. Horsch said there are usually three to four different stories each time. The newscast averages about 10 minutes.

“Our goal is to make the newscast a weekly program,” Horsch said. “We really hope to one day broadcast MCTV campus-wide.”

Ashley Goode is a senior studying public relations from Marble Falls, Texas.
Mica Graybill is a senior studying public relations from Jacksboro, Texas.
Jill McClellen is a senior studying public relations from Roswell, N.M.
Contact Information:
Josh Robinson – josh.robinson@ttu.edu
Daniel Horsch – daniel.horsch@ttu.edu, (915) 545-2482