HRTV Shows Off New Website

This week, Hardvard-Radcliffe Television (HRTV) started promoting a new website and a new look for the group’s programming, which organizers hope will shock and seduce undergraduates into tuning in.

The site includes a steamy music video, the latest of its reality dating show, “Harvard Hookup,” as well as sneak shots of a male undergraduate urinating on an unaware man posing by the John Harvard statue.

“We’re going to bust out of the scene in a way that makes H-Bomb look tame,” said Vice-President of HRTV Michael C. Koenigs, ‘09.

While the group expects such programming to have off-campus appeal, for now, HRTV is focusing its appeal on the Harvard community.

In the past, only HRTV’s program “Ivory Tower” was available online. The soap opera regularly attracted upwards of 15,000 viewers per episode, according to Koenigs. But download tracking software revealed that the majority of the show’s viewers were not actually from Harvard, or the United States for that matter. In fact, most were from South Korea.

As a result, HRTV is highlighting several campus-centered features, including a show called “Wild on Harvard” which splices footage from Harvard parties, spiked with the addition of a dance beat and special effects, such as an occasional lightning bolt. This slot on the site currently displays a montage of the Harvard-Yale pep rally.

“I’ve been on a number of lists passing around the link to the video, and I think people have been really impressed by the quality of the filming,” said Campus Life Fellow Justin H. Haan ’05.

Prominently displayed on the site is a music video, “Afroditi,” produced by Peter C. Shields ’09. The segment features Shields’ Greek and English vocals on top of a techno beat and includes a plot involving a dominatrix, played by Simona Bartlett, a student at Johnson & Wales University, who poisons her man and then strips into clubbing clothes in time to seduce Shields in a steamy dance number.

On top of regular installments, independent submissions of campus pranks and jokes will be posted on the site, such as the John Harvard statue urination clip.

“It’s often these kind of...clips that attract large audiences,” Koenigs said.

In the future, HRTV plans to include segments of extracurricular events, such as the Harvard Ballroom Dance Team performances.

While the new website was up on Harvard’s server since Feb. 2, HRTV only started promoting the site last week following its purchase of the domain HRTV.org.

To publicize the new site, club members handed out fliers in front of Annenberg and e-mailed house lists. The group tallied 4,000 hits on the site since last Friday. And this time, according to Koenigs, the majority of viewers tuned in from on campus.