RTV5 premieres shows, episodes
While the screenwriters’ guild strike may have students lamenting the loss of new episodes of their favorite network television programs, Rice’s own television network is premiering new content and new shows.
Rice Television 5, the student-run organization that manages channel 5 and streams shows at rtv5.rice.edu, has doubled its membership over the past semester, streamlined equipment and increased content output with new programs and new episodes of old station favorites.
Last spring, the station members heavily advertised their organization to new students during Owl Weekend’s “24-Hour Show” and promoted their new show Top Cocktail for current students. RTV5’s Programming Director Brett Snider said the effort paid off.
“I feel like the strategies we set up last year with visibility and gathering outside content have worked,” Snider, a Hanszen College senior, said. “It was a skeleton crew last year, and I feel like [this year] we’re at least functionally manned and still on the lookout for new content.”
For creative minds looking for an outlet, the staff offered its equipment and expertise to get ideas off the ground. New content has emerged from this push, including the new restaurant review series Chewston, more hosts for the Rice Interview Series, in which students interview prominent members of the Rice community, and ideas for a show like Coffee Talk, where hosts review coffee shops and interview interesting people from Rice.
“Mostly it was people just showing up with show ideas,” Will Fischer, the station’s director of technology, said. “Most people don’t realize how open RTV is.”
The station has also taken upon itself to film campus events ranging from Brown College Theater’s Jesus Christ Superstar to Secular Students of Rice’s “Ask an Atheist” forum.
Brittanie Wallace, a Baker College junior, is preparing the new show Chewston with Fischer. She said the idea came to her in a conversation with Fischer over the summer and that the execution has been easy and enjoyable.
Chewston shows Fischer and Wallace eating in different restaurants and commenting on their experiences. Three episodes have been filmed, and the first episode, a segment on the Mint Cafe located near the Galleria, will air soon.
Wallace said she wanted to show students the restaurants around Houston that may not be well-known among Rice students. She said she always tries to mention prices and locations so students can access these oft-missed restaurants.
“The [Rice] Village is not the most interesting place in the world,” she said. “There are lots of places in Houston that would do well to have Rice students’ business. Just because something’s far away doesn’t mean it’s expensive.”
This new content has not come at the expense of popular shows. A new season of the popular Top Cocktail, the game show where contestants mix drinks for judges, has been filmed, and a live taping is planned for the President’s Study Break Dec. 9. Fischer, a Will Rice College junior, said new equipment, such as wireless microphones, has made taping easier and more professional.
Even with many new members building ideas, Station Manager Dan Derozier, who is also the Thresher cartoonist, said the core members of RTV5, those that helped build the station and launch new content, were inspired by Top Cocktail’s success. This show was the station’s main project last year, and it occupied the small staff’s time considerably.
“Once we started doing Top Cocktail, we realized we could handle our own production a lot better, and we can actually do it really well,” Derozier, a Hanszen senior, said. “It excites people to be a part of it.”
Fischer, who has participated in RTV5 since he came to Rice, is surprised and pleased with these new developments.
“When I was a freshman, I was really pessimistic about out viewer base,” Fischer said. “We’ve just upped the ante.”
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