IOP Students Meet to Plan TV Talk Show

Students met at the Institute of Politics (IOP) on Friday to outline their plans for Harvard’s first student-run entry into the field of TV punditry.

If all goes according to the plans that Leslie S. Bishop ’05 described last week, the first few episodes will be shot by the end of the year and will be initially broadcast over the Internet, then on New England Cable News.

She said the show, which is still unnamed and would be financed by the IOP, would provide an outlet for the broad spectrum of opinions resident at Harvard.

“In many ways, we have trouble getting these views past the gates of Harvard,” Bishop said. “While this is a great opportunity to get some television journalism experience...it’s also a service to the public.”

The thirty or so students who have already signed onto the project will start by learning the basics of production needed to make the show.

Those segments would first be broadcast on-line, like the IOP’s ARCO Forum events.

Because Harvard students don’t have cable, the program can’t be piped into students’ rooms, as is common at other universities.

The streaming shows would only be temporary. Next year, after gaining some television experience, Bishop and company hope to present their show to the New England Cable News (NECN) for syndication.

“The producers at New England Cable News know about our project, and know it’s coming,” Bishop said.

The show would fill an important niche in New England broadcasting, Bishop said.

“Why is it important for young people to have their voices on TV?” she asked the crowd at Friday’s meeting.

She cited a survey which said that only 37 percent of adults think that today’s youth will be productive when they grow up, and she blamed television for distorting perceptions of young people.

According to Bishop, the new television show would represent youth in a field dominated by adult views.

“Lack of a voice can lead to young people being misrepresented,” she said. “Young people struggle to get attention for the projects they do think are important.”

The show faces an uphill battle if history is any guide.

Harvard-Radcliffe Television (HRTV), another Harvard entrant into broadcasting, enjoyed brief fame with such shows as “Ivory Tower,” a soap opera set at Harvard, which it distributed to Houses via videotape.

The group has been gradually sidelined by a lack of cable access, according to Debra T. Mao ’05, a newscast producer and general assignment reporter for WHRB.

She has higher hopes for the new project.

“I am definitely going to be involved. As a freshman I came in here...I had done a lot of television stuff in high school,” she said. “What I found was an HRTV that wasn’t really with it, so I went to WHRB...but television was my first love.”

John Heyer, an MIT alum who attended the meeting and wants to start a new Boston cable network, said a good student show was long overdue.

“The West, they’re just so far ahead of us. Nothing exists in New England,” Heyer said. “That’s why I’m advocating the new channel.”

Mao agreed that there was a gap in the Harvard media that needed filling.

“The Crimson is very monopolistic in that way, because there’s no broadcast media,” Mao said

And she said student-run WHRB radio, because it has a mostly off-campus audience, is less student-focused than the new TV show will be.

“It’s really in its infant stage. I have gotten a lot of enthusiasm for the project. I’m now getting a lot more help,” Bishop said. “I hope this will be the core, the group that people look back on as starting it all.”