If one were to turn on KWSC-TV, they would now be able to see programming all day. The studio has recently started using an automation program, which allows programming to go on the air 24/7. Assistant professor in the communications department, Pat Janssen, talked about his time as a student at KWSC-TV and not having automation.
“I did campus media here when I was a student,” Janssen said. “In the earliest days of radio and television for me as a student, anything we wanted to be on the air had to be live. We had no automation for TV or radio… so if you wanted to run 24/7, you had to have someone in the radio studio at 4:00 AM, and sometimes that was me.”
Janssen said having people in the studio all night running programs was impractical, especially for college students, and most commercial TV and radio stations have automation. He also said that KWSC-FM, the radio station on campus, has had automation for over two decades.
“It was something we didn’t have at the TV level,” Janssen said. “It was something I felt was pretty necessary.”
Janssen said there are a lot of benefits he’s already noticed to having the automation.
“People are more likely to watch a station that is on all the time,” Janssen said. “If the station is on all the time, and there is a level or standard to keep up with, it keeps you more invested, and you feel like you want to keep that product standard up.”
Janssen also said there’s great stuff being created on campus that can be highlighted on the station.
“There’s so much great content being made across the mass communications department,” Janssen said. “Folks in sports media, or film, even the journalism and electronic media majors are making news products that I would love for people to see more than once… I want there to be more avenues for creative content to be made.”
Janssen began his time teaching at WSC in the fall of 2023, and he said everyone in the department was on-board and supportive of him getting automation, even though he was new.
“Within the first month or two of my time here, I applied for technology grants available to us,” Janssen said. “From there, we had to procure some equipment and software and get some extra funding, because this is not cheap. Our broadcast engineer, Andrew Eaton, and NATS, particularly Chad Smith, did a lot of the research and installation. Andrew put a lot of time and effort into not just installing it, but learning the software and helping to program it, and NATS identified the technical things that we needed. Without them, it would’ve been a failure of a project.”
Janssen said as the semester progresses, the students at KWSC-TV will learn how to run the automation themselves.
Those tuning into the station can see a number of programs including sporting events covered by the sports media team, reruns of newscasts, and eventually films developed by WSC students. Janssen said the number of programs will continue to grow.
“I think there’s a lot of reason to love making television, and it’s beautiful to have the opportunity in Wayne, America, to make television and be creative,” Janssen said. “I hope people recognize the power and value to be able to do that.”
