Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program?

In the past, the concept of a student television station on a campus with no cable television would have been nearly impossible. So would the idea of a “television” show that never makes it to a TV screen. But Harvard-Radcliffe Television (HRTV) is not a station of the past.

For most of our lives, the hours from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Friday have been “primetime” for television viewing. Television that couldn’t fit into this time slot wasn’t worth watching, and keeping up with a plotline required setting aside time each week to watch the show.

Now, commercial-free television shows are almost immediately uploaded to pirating networks and sites like peekvid.com: take any 10 students on campus, and chances are that they last watched a television show on their computers, not on a television set.

It’s fitting then, that HRTV, Harvard’s own network, is now almost entirely an online enterprise.

HRTV now includes an array of new and planned shows, a soap opera whose popularity reaches to South Korea, and a new website, which debuted in January, designed to be a portal for student-created video.

In the face of recent criticism about the quality of its programming, HRTV is trying to break through to students. This is the YouTube generation, after all—the age of do-it-yourself, and I-want-it-now—and Harvard might finally be catching up.

GOING DIGITAL

HRTV has been around for at least fifteen years, according to President Michael C. Koenigs ’09, and its flagship program has always been “Ivory Tower,” the longest-running college soap opera in America.

Ivory Tower premiered in 1994, but before HRTV went online, it depended solely on a few screenings of each episode around campus for exposure, audience, and success.

“Before we went online,” says Koenigs, “it wasn’t really television at all. We were really missing the curve for 20th century programming. But the Internet is a transformative thing, and so with it we’re really trying to step up and catch up to the other colleges that we’re currently so far behind.”

According to Koenigs, HRTV is finally gaining momentum. “Ivory Tower” is currently in its latest online season, with the third episode set to debut on Sunday, March 11.

“Crimson Hookups,” a dating show, is about to film an all-male episode, and “Respectively French”, a sketch-comedy show that came out with a pilot last year, has just released the first episode of its second season.

Two new projects, created by freshmen, have also been greenlighted and are set to debut by the end of the semester: “The Ivy Bites,” a program about vampires at Harvard, and “On Harvard Time,” a hybrid between a straightforward news broadcast and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

As a relatively young organization—(literally—it’s comprised largely of freshmen and sophomores), HRTV has high hopes for its future and the gap it hopes to fill on the Harvard campus.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

“HRTV and ‘Ivory Tower’ are important because there are so few outlets at Harvard for students to get involved in commercial film making,” says Eve A. Lebwohl ’08, HRTV vice president and “Ivory Tower” executive producer, who is also a Crimson editor.

“With the growing importance of web-based content, there’s a capacity for our student’s output to reach a wider audience, and to be watched through the same venue as the creative output from students across the country,” she says.

With the limitless audience allowed by broadcasting exclusively on the Internet come some unexpected consequences.

“Ivory Tower” seems to have gained mysterious popularity in South Korea, as revealed by a 2005 study on the locations of the IP addresses with the most hits on the HRTV website.

At the same time, making programming available to everyone means making it available to critics.

In January, IvyGateBlog.com, the Gawker of the Ivy League, criticized HRTV’s “Love/Hate,” a show in the style of VH1’s “Best Week Ever.”

The review, blogged on Jan. 12, said that the show “makes you wish they enforced age requirements for video cameras like they do for guns or rental cars.”

“The hosts are enthusiastic and attractive,” the post argued. “Its attitude is harmless...but around a minute and a half, the thought will dawn on you: They’re not joking.”

For HRTV, the controversy surrounding “Love/Hate” brought to light one what is currently one of their greatest challenges.

“While our programming is held to a higher standard because we’re at Harvard, we’re basically shooting all of these programs with three, very basic hand-held recreational cameras,” says Koenigs. “We don’t yet have the resources to meet those standards, but if we can get those resources we can really take off.”

MAKING DO

The limited resources of the station is a primary concern for freshmen behind HRTV’s two newest shows, with the teams behind each show choosing to address the problem in a different way.

The team behind the vampiric “Ivy Bites,” led by executive producer Antonio J. Hernandez ’10, and executive director Alexander J. Berman ’10—also a cast member on Ivory Tower—has chosen to use its own equipment for all the technical aspects of its show.

After their debut on March 18, they will also be screening their show online—not on the HRTV website but on their own server at Vidaxis.com.

“HRTV hosts their shows through Google Video, which makes their quality very different,” says Berman. “We’re filming and broadcasting in high definition, so although we think they do great things at HRTV, we have a slightly different vision.”

“Our partnership with them is one of cross- promotion,” says Hernandez. “It’s really the shows that are what the network is, so while we think the competition created by increasing the volume of shows is great, and that there should be even more, you’ve got to overcome the technical aspect before you get anything made.”

Combined with their reservations, however, about lack of technical resources, Hernandez and Berman have high aspirations for what they believe HRTV could come to represent.

“Television is moving away from the network-affiliate format, and becoming much more free-based. We just hope to exploit that,” says Hernandez

“I feel that Harvard is the best college in the world, and I want to make our programming the best programming in the world,” says Hernandez. “Because production costs have gone down so much, and it really just takes the right equipment and the right talent to get this done well. We have the potential here to compete with any nationally-produced program.”

Mia P. Walker ’10, creator and executive producer of “On Harvard Time,” which is styling itself to become Harvard’s version of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” has more concrete plans to make Hernandez’s vision a reality.

“Our plan is to revive the equipment in HRTV’s current studio in Hilles library, much of which is over 20 years old,” she says.

ON AIR IN FIVE...

“What HRTV is now is ‘Ivory Tower’; is shows that people do themselves with equipment from the Carpenter Center,” says Walker. “We need the capability to shoot clips, and have a steady camera on the anchors at the same time.”

“Being online is definitely an advantage,” she continues. “It allows for more story development, for us to keep our viewers posted constantly. With YouTube and everything, online broadcast is kind of a cultural phenomenon, but our goal with our show is to be more professional.”

The conflict between produciung for speed and for quality is another test in the station’s further development.

“One of the things that’s been a challenge for us is that with Internet television there’s a demand for rapid production,” says Lebwohl. “We have an endless opportunity, or obligation, to provide students with content 24 hours a day.”

Constant content, though, is a distant dream. “Ivory Tower” premieres with a new episode roughly once every two months.

“Crimson Edition,” a documentary program praised by Koenigs, Lebwohl, Hernandez, and Berman for its excellence and professionalism, has thus far produced only one episode—a story about pre-frosh weekend that has been on the website for almost a year.

“Ivy Bites” and “On Harvard Time” hope to cater to audience demand by premiering episodes much more frequently.

Berman and Hernandez plan to shoot between three and four episodes at a time, and then premiere each chunk of episodes over about an eight-week span. Walker, with her co-producers Derek M. Flanzraich ’10 and Kristina A. Dominguez ’10, hopes to produce a weekly seven-minute program that is shot on Wednesday evenings and premieres the following Friday.

LOOKING FOR RECOGNITION

Even with the all the hype surrounding the development of new shows, HRTV hopes its mainstay won’t falter.

“It’s really exciting that we’ve been able to create an institutional framework to ensure that ‘Ivory Tower’ continues to run in its current form,” says Lebwohl.

Though Nick Summers of IvyGateBlog.com is highly skeptical of college television in general, the blog gave “Ivory Tower” a rare positive review, comparing it to a previously panned Columbia soap.

“The humor is more subtle—we hope that was irony, at least,” Summers says. “The acting a little more inspired…and overall, this is a show with a lot more polish.”

Commenting on his criticism of “Love/Hate” and the conflict of the Ivy League double standard, Summers says, “YouTube has made it possible for college TV shows to reach a lot broader of an audience than before. But bad is bad wherever you are, and good is good. I really don’t expect Ivies to be producing good college television”

HRTV has already reached an audience far beyond Harvard Yard, now the challenge is to provide steady, quality content.

“We want to be professional but also realistic,” says Walker. However, she thinks “On Harvard Time”—the satirical news show—at least provides an educational opportunity. “Where are students who want to go into broadcasting going to gain experience? We hope through this show.”