Students and faculty involved with Temple University Television have been nominated for 13 production honors in this year’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy Awards, sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In addition to the 12 student production nominations, Temple University has received its first professional Mid-Atlantic Emmy nomination.
The nominated student projects, guided by several Klein College of Media and Communication instructors, range from classroom ventures such as the Philadelphia Neighborhoods on TV show aired on TUTV to TUTV staples such as Temple Update and OwlSports. Neil Ortiz, adjunct professor in the department of journalism, is impressed with the hard work his students in Philadelphia Neighborhoods on TV put into the production.
“What I’m excited most about is how we all come together as a team and we put out the best product that we can,” he says. “And everybody contributes in one way or another to the final product.”
The World at Temple, a TUTV show launched in 2017, explores the stories of international students and global experiences at Temple. Mohab Abou-Elalla, KLN ‘18, served as the show’s executive producer. As an Egyptian immigrant, he is interested in providing unbiased representation to diverse groups of people in media. Now a video editor located in Los Angeles, he is just as excited for this year’s student production nomination as the nomination the show received last year.
“The show utilizes the fact that there’s an international community, and we try to tell the stories of those cultures to other people who wouldn’t necessarily have any interaction with those cultures,” he says.
Paul Gluck, general manager of TUTV and Ed Dress, TUTV content producer, are both very familiar with the Mid-Atlantic Emmys. Gluck is a former president of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of NATAS and Dress has won several Emmy awards. They both produced the TUTV documentary program Old Friends in a New Home: The NBC10 Story, which is nominated for the professional Emmy in this award cycle. The documentary follows the journey of NBC10, which recently relocated to the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia’s Center City. The creation of the documentary was aided by two students.
Gluck believes that working with TUTV allows students to network and develop their skills in a setting that closely resembles professional productions.
“It’s easy to get lost in the awards as opposed to what they represent. But it’s not just about the hardware that many have been fortunate enough to carry home over the years,” he says. “It is about pure recognition of the work done and the idea that when you work so hard on something it does not simply evaporate in a vacuum.”
Dress also recognizes the benefits students receive when they participate in TUTV projects.
“I think it’s great that these kids can [get] this training and expertise early in their career. It also lets them know that all their hard work is recognized. That it’s not just ‘I’m doing all this stuff but nobody notices,’” he says. “It makes you feel [like] ‘Hey, I can do this.’ And if students get that feeling, there’s really no limit to where they’re going to end up.”
This year’s awards gala will be held on September 28 at the Pittsburgh Grand Wyndham Downtown. Emmy nominees and student production nominees can be found below:
- https://natasmid-atlantic.org/awards/2019-mid-atlantic-emmy-nominees/
- https://natasmid-atlantic.org/students/collegeuniversity/2019-college-university-student-nominees/