About A-TV News
A-TV News is the student news production team in the Journalism Department at Utah State University. The team is composed of two classes, Newscast I and Newscast II, plus students in enrolled in some Special Projects classes who want to continue honing their production or writing skills beyond those two courses. Every week, the A-TV News team produces two programs, A-TV News, a thirty-minute news program, and Cache Rendezvous, a thirty minute magazine program. During spring semesters, a sports program, Kickin’ Aggie Sports Show, is also produced.
The programs have been running in one form or another for twenty years. They have been aired on local cable stations, on the campus cable channels, and most recently on local low-power TV, internet systems at Utah State University, In Ogden, and on links through various other web sites. Alumni of the programs (and of the USU Journalism program) are working in broadcast and other communications positions around the country, including Salt Lake City, Denver, Spokane, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Colorado Springs. They are in good demand as producers, mainly because of the experience that they gain in the Newscast classes at USU.
Each week, the students plan the programs in assignment meetings, deciding what events they will cover. They shoot video tape, edit the tape into the packages (stories) that go into the programs, write the scripts that the announcers read, decide how the programs will be shot, run the cameras, perform all the technical studio jobs–put the entire show together.
Every year, we enter the programs and many of the stories in the programs into several contest. In the fall, we enter the National Broadcast Society regional competition. In the spring, we enter the Society of Professional Journalists regional competition. Over the years, we have been extremely successful in both. Both the newscast and Rendezvous have been honored over and over again at both regional and national levels, and dozens of stories have won awards in dozens of categories for our students.