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UK universities partner with local television broadcasters in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Oxfordshire to allow their students taking journalism courses to practice their skills. Students will gain work experience as their universities help run a new batch of TV stations in the country.
Journalism students at Glasgow Caledonian University will contribute to Scottish TV station STV’s programmes as stipulated on its bid when it won its licence to operate the new television station GTV. Pamela Gillies, the university vice-chancellor will serve as a director of the new station, which will be broadcast via Freeview and will go live on the first of October.
Senior lecturer in journalism at Glasgow Caledonian University Julian Calvert notes that the university has graduates already working at STV, and the partnership with the broadcaster will create even more opportunities for learning and work experience for its current students. Mr Calvert said students were “producing a lot of material which is near broadcast quality” that the new station could use.
GTV’s magazine programmes will also cover activities of university arts groups, and could increase the depth of its programmes by featuring academics.
STV will also partner with Edinburgh Napier University to win a licence to run a local station in Scotland’s capital. The university’s students will also gain work experience by running programmes for GTV’s Edinburgh counterpart, ETV channel which is also going live on 1 October.
Bobby Hain, director of channels at STV said that their partnership with the two universities is the “closest formal association a broadcaster has formed” with UK universities as many HE institutions already operate their own TV stations. He described the partnerships as the “first of their kind” and “unique”.
Mr Hain said students will do work for GTV and ETV as part of their course, while some students will receive pay for their efforts.
Oxfordshire will also have a new station, That’s Oxford, that will draw support from Oxford Brookes University’s journalism students. The university will work with the station to offer a new foundation degree in local television journalism. The station is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2014 with presenter Esther Rantzen as vice-president for programming.
In its Ofcom bid, the station stated it will work with Oxford University Sports Federation to “replicate the North American success of college sports on local TV”. It also aims to bring live coverage of its “high-profile” lectures to local TV viewers.
