By Kenneth Mullinax
Students in ASU’s Department of Communications will start the new year with a new look for their broadcast training studio. The Bama State News Studio, located on the fifth floor of the Levi Watkins Learning Center, now rivals the style of many commercial television news sets.
Within the last month, the newly renovated studio been transformed from a classroom to more of a professional news set, explained Professor Eric Knox, a new faculty member with prior extensive professional experience with a local news outlet.
“We thought it was important for us to renovate our old studio set that was not more than a plain desk with a curtain hanging behind it to what we now showcase with a totally new commercial look – with modern equipment and furniture accessories that many commercial television news outlets would be proud to use,” Knox said. “We now have a professional look that has the ASU logo prominently displayed on one side with a nice wood and vinyl panel. It will allow us to have two sets to use for student broadcasts and educational training. We have a goal to soon add a ‘green screen’ that can transpose images on it, which are frequently used by weather broadcasters to show the direction of storm fronts moving into the area via radar.”
Knox gave much of the credit for the new Bama State News Studio’s design and installation to ASU staff member Jermal Allen.
“Jermal is a big part of what we are doing with the new studio,” Knox shared. “He serves as the audio-video production manager and lab instructor here, and we have worked very closely together when it came to the studio’s design and the future plans we have in store for the Hornet Nation’s broadcast communication students.”
FUTURE ASU STUDENT TV PLANS
Knox said that at present, the department only produces a news show twice a semester; but once they garner more resources, they plan to do more, which will help the department’s students have a richer educational experience and increased opportunities to gain impactful internships and careers after graduation.
“We would like to eventually move our student broadcasts to once a week, but to do that, we must improve on having enough content (news stories) to fill a 30-minute segment. We also desire to install the green-screen… and have multiple sets with additional lighting so we can give our students the experience of a real TV news studio with all that goes with it,” Knox said.
