By Wendy Maloff
Patrons of MacEwan Student Centre will soon have another means of staying informed.
As early as Feb. 1, 2002, closed circuit television will be installed in the MSC by NUTV, the student television station at the University of Calgary.
"Closed-circuit television will be set up in the MSC food court on six monitors," explained John Joffe, NUTV’s newly appointed Closed Circuit Coordinator. "They’ll be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
Initially the monitors will air text only and act as a bulletin service.
"We’re going to run the CJSW programming schedule, we’d like to run ads for clubs on campus, SU events and NUTV events," explained Joffe, "It’s another way for clubs to get their events out there."
NUTV is currently in the process of securing a license to air regular programming and Joffe was optimistic about the process.
"We’re hoping that we’ll be able to switch over to video approximately six months after launch," he said. "The text service is just to get us going."
When NUTV acquires video programming, Joffe predicted it will air NUTV’s own programming as well as programming from other universities and community events.
"This has been in the works since 1996," said Joffe. "There was a lot of talk of feasibility and checking out what was going on at other universities. There’s a network of universities in the U.S. doing programming and we’ll be associated with that."
Joffe suggested that in the future NUTV would expand the closed-circuit system across campus but was realistic about current goals.
"Right now, we’re trying to get this running, to see if we can run 24 hours of interesting programming a day," he said with a smile.
Joffe’s position was created specifically to deal with possible new problems that could arise.
"This is a chance for me to have a project that’s sort of my own baby," said Joffe enthusiastically.