HOMECOMING 2008 Promos

You can check out some of the Titan Radio HOMECOMING 2008 promos created by BC 251 students.

BC 251 Online Mini-Movie Showcase

WATCH & VOTE ONLINE!!!
bc251.blogspot.com

You can watch the individual mini-movie projects created this semester by BC 251 students.
You can access each student's mini-movie through the BC 251 weblog where we also invite you to vote for your favorite. The poll is open through the early part of January to allow visitors time to watch the 20 different mini-movies. It can be a hassle to watch on campus as YouTube files take a while to load up. The campus network automatically puts a YouTube file on the bottom of the list of things to process. If you click to watch a mini-movie, give yourself some time. Perhaps you can make some popcorn and when you come back the YouTube window will tell you "replay" and you can watch without any problem.

Don't forget to vote for your favorite!

When News BREAKS...Can they fix it?

What happens when a van crashes into the studio of a Chicago news station (WLS- ABC O & O) while it's on the air?




Mini-van crashes into Ch. 7 studio
Associated Press
10:29 PM CST, December 23, 2007
Chicago police are investigating a car that crashed into the downtown studio of WLS-TV (ABC-7) during the top of the 10 p.m. news. No injuries were immediately reported. Just after 10 p.m., a loud noise was heard inside the studio and on the air startling weekend anchor Ravi Baichwal. Baichwal reported on the crash throughout the news cast showing footage of a smashed window and broken glass about 15 to 20 feet away from him. He added that the studio suddenly has a cold draft. The car was reported to be a silver minivan. Chicago police spokesman David Banks had no further information.

Hello, HULU

I've discovered "Firefly" on Hulu. I'm really losing interest in DVDs, Netflix and network TV. Hello, Hulu. Instead of trying to track down what episodes exist on DVD, I'm finding "Firefly" episodes on Hulu.

What's Hulu? It's a place on the web for free movies and TV shows from the likes of NBC and FOX (the two have teamed up for this). The beta site went live in October featuring shows from NBC as well as collections of vintage shows-- so now I can show my 10-year old "Lost in Space."

Hulu seems to also be the first to allow you to embed on your blogs, etc. You take shows and clips from Hulu and embedded them on your sites or in emails. Wow! This could really force the networks and studios into a new business model. Move over YouTube as it isn't always about viewer created content, especially when you want explosions and special effects. Those things cost money and Hulu runs on ad revenue.
A Great Show No One Ever Watched: FIREFLY
Schlocky, Classic TV Sci-Fi Irwin Allen-Style: LOST IN SPACE (

Sure it's sci-fi, but it's the best show on television! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Great sitcoms are dead...but HULU lets you re-discover ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

BC 601 Final Exam Period- Metaphors Galore

Pick a metaphor relating to graduation, the job search or just about any major transition in life and you can play it out via Titan Traverse. That's what we did for the BC 601 final exam period. Two and a half hours of creative, physical activity designed to add an experiential, tactile and physical metaphor for the transitions the capstone students now face. I hope everyone walked away from this exam period knowing they are not the first to venture down this path (look another metaphor!) and the journey can take you places you never expected. This experience is the perfect thing for folks to blog about going into the winter break.

See all the pics @flickr.com

Sky's "On the Verge with PSAs"

Sky Yaple graduates this semester and with her being on the verge of completing her degree at Westminster, she took the occasion to formally present her work in a program she calls "On the Verge with PSAs." The project looks at how she created public service announcements for radio, TV and moved them to the web on behalf of her client, the New Castle Public Library.

You can check out the web site she created here...READY GO READ!!!

This is also a time to note that Sky's presentation is a solid example of how to build a capstone presentation. The 10 minute talk was on task, focused, well-rehearsed and showcased the work she created. Well done, Sky.

Field Trip to KDKA

The BC 311 students along with some Titan Radio hitchhikers, Jill Carle, Andy Borts and Pam Marlowe, traveled to NewsRadio KDKA AM in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night for an end of semester field trip. I chose KDKA because of it's rich history in broadcasting, proximity to campus and the fact that BC 311 focuses on radio news. I also know the PD/ND so that helps- thanks, Marshall!
I also want to thank Jim Amato, news editor and our host for the evening. Jim's not only a polished professional, but he's an incredible resource as he has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to broadcast history. Thanks, Jim!

The gang from BC 311- Nicky Piszczor, Shayna Marti, Thomas Miller, David Greig, Doug Kunst, Christina Roseto and Tom Benoit.

All By My Elf

Aidan Mewha (Class of '07) has turned me into an elf. What a odd, yet endearing thing to do for the holiday. Thanks, Aidan. Now what do I get you? I guess I have enough photos of you to return the favor.

You can click here and see my animated elf moves.

It's a really cool do-it-yourself animation presented by OfficeMax. Clever way to promote online!!! I know this kind of online nonsense has floated around on the Internet before, but this just seems to promote some holiday cheer and goodwill when I really needed it. Thanks, Aidan.

The BC 251 Homecoming Promo Assignment

BC 251 students will create Titan Radio promos for YouTube to invite alumni to Homecoming 2008.

Light Up Night LIVE on TV

Another Westminster College BC FIRST!
LIVE from New Castle...it's LIGHT UP NIGHT.
(More Pictures Here)

Jill, Pam and Chuck worked with Cindy at the Chamber of Commerce to create a holiday spectacle on live TV thanks to some portable lighting from PennDOT. Despite the damp, cold night Santa made his way to town on a fire truck. People came out with their winter wear and umbrellas, but the rain seemed to stay away except for some light drizzle here and there. The parade runs again on Saturday night at 7 and again same time on Thanksgiving evening.

DVRs KILLING Appointment Television

Why watch what's on TV now when you can watch what you want to watch now and you don't need "video on demand" to do it. That's the marketing hook for TiVo and it works for a lot of peoople. For example, I have nearly 10 episodes of Heroes on my TiVo waiting for me to watch when I have time. Unfortunately, I haven't had time. However, that's the glory of the DVR. I watch what I want when I want. Now that DVRs have a 20% penetration into U.S. homes and Nielsen is accomodating for them in it's television ratings, some are saying TELEVISION IS DEAD.

LOST executive producer and writer Damon Lindelof is one of those proclaiming the death of TV. He's also one of those writers out on strike against the networks and studios so he's clearly working to garner some attention for his cause as he penned the following piece for the LA Times.

Mourning TV

By DAMON LINDELOF

Published: November 11, 2007

Los Angeles

TELEVISION is dying.

I should have realized this four years ago when I first got my TiVo box, but denial is always the first stage of grief. I simply couldn’t acknowledge that this wonderful invention heralded the beginning of the end.

TiVo stores your favorite movies and shows on its hard drive, allowing you to pull up last night’s episode of “The Daily Show” as easily as you click open documents on your laptop. In fact, once you download the original broadcast — sorry, I meant to say “record” it — you can watch it at your leisure. The next morning. Next year. Your call. Because now? You own that episode.

Best of all, you got it free.

Television has always been free. Sure, if you want all the N.F.L. games in high definition, you have to pay the piper, but the broadcast networks still offer their entire schedules for absolutely nothing. The only catch, of course, is that you have to watch commercials. Economically, it’s a fair deal. The network pays for the shows, gives them to viewers, and makes its cash back through advertising. Which regrettably brings us to the most wonderful thing TiVo does: It enables you to ignore the commercials that keep the whole system running.

Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete, and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It won’t be cable; it will be the Internet.

This probably sounds exciting if you’re a TV viewer, but if you’re in the business of producing these shows, it’s nothing short of terrifying. This is how vaudevillians must have felt the first time they saw a silent movie; sitting there, suddenly realizing they just became extinct: after all, who wants another soft-shoe number when you can see Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock 50 feet tall?

Change always provokes fear, but I’d once believed that the death of our beloved television would unify all those affected, talent and studios, creators and suits. We’re all afraid and we’d all be afraid together. Instead we find ourselves so deeply divided.

The Writers Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) has gone on strike. I have spent the past week on the picket line outside Walt Disney Studios, my employer, chanting slogans and trudging slowly across the crosswalk.

The motivation for this drastic action — and a strike is drastic, a fact I grow more aware of every passing day — is the guild’s desire for a portion of revenues derived from the Internet. This is nothing new: for more than 50 years, writers have been entitled to a small cut of the studios’ profits from the reuse of our shows or movies; whenever something we created ends up in syndication or is sold on DVD, we receive royalties. But the studios refuse to apply the same rules to the Internet.

My show, “Lost,” has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s Web site. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing.

If this strike lasts longer than three months, an entire season of television will end this December. No dramas. No comedies. No “Daily Show.” The strike will also prevent any pilots from being shot in the spring, so even if the strike is settled by then, you won’t see any new shows until the following January. As in 2009. Both the guild and the studios we are negotiating with do agree on one thing: this situation would be brutal.

I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for “Lost” to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on “America’s Next Hottest Cop” and “Celebrity Eating Contest,” I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us. Which brings me to the second stage of grief: anger.

I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously?

Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made.

But I am willing to hold firm for considerably longer than three months because this is a fight for the livelihoods of a future generation of writers, whose work will never “air,” but instead be streamed, beamed or zapped onto a tiny chip.

Things have gotten ugly and the lines of communication have broken down completely between the guild and the studios. Perhaps it’s not too late, though, for both sides to rally around the one thing we still have in common: our mourning for the way things used to be. Instead of fighting each other, maybe we should be throwing a wake for our beloved TV.

Because the third stage of grief is bargaining.

And bargain we must, because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room. And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen.

And we’ll still be writing every word.

Damon Lindelof is the co-creator and head writer of the television series “Lost.”