College Broadcasters, Inc., better known as CBI, is a “a member-driven organization serving students and advisers of college and high school electronic media outlets” that annually hosts a national awards ceremony showcasing the best student work across the country. Despite reporting remotely for most of the year, TUTV student programming continued to demonstrate its excellence in media broadcasting, placing first in three categories for a grand total of seven awards won at the 2020 CBI Awards.
Temple Update won both first and second place for Best Newscast for their March 12, 2020 segments and November 14, 2019 segments, respectively; OwlSports Update was nominated for a total of four awards in six categories, including second place for Best Social Media Presence; and Temple Tonight won second place for Best Comedy.
For Temple Update, this is the third year in a row that the show has taken up two of the top four finalist spots in the Best Newscast category, placing first and fourth in both 2019 and 2018.
“I think Temple Update students over the last couple of years have demonstrated a sophistication in the kind of stories we do, and in the way they’re treated,” says Peter Jaroff, assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production and executive producer of Temple Update. “The writing is strong, the production values are good, and the content feels like it’s a news program.”
Paul Gluck, associate professor of practice in the Department of Media Studies and Production and general manager of TUTV, says that collegiate awards are a useful tool when looking into how other collegiate media approaches similar challenges, and in what ways they differ.
“The CBI Awards are there to recognize the best work being done at the collegiate level in a variety of genres,” Gluck says. “It was something we thought we wanted to participate in because it was the opportunity to somehow benchmark the work we were doing.”
Jaroff agrees, and while recognition is nice, he believes that the quality and work ethics present at TUTV were there long before the CBI Awards, and will be long after. “I’m not in it for the awards. The students really deserve it and it’s great validation, but I don’t think we should be producing shows thinking ‘hey, we wanna win an award’; we want to produce shows that represent the best we can do, that represent Temple and that serve our audience,” Jaroff says. “And if we do that, and we win an award, that’s great.”
See a complete list of Klein-based awardees and watch the winning segments below.
- Temple Tonight, 2nd Place, Best Comedy
- Temple Update: March 12, 2020, 1st Place, Best Newscast
- Temple Update: November 14, 2019, 2nd Place, Best Newscast
- OwlSports Update Station Promo, 2nd Place, Best Station Promo
- OwlSports Update Production’s Inside the Nest: November 19, 2019, 3rd Place, Best Sportscast
- OwlSports Update: A Walk-On, On the Water, 1st Place, Best Sports Reporting
- OwlSports Update – @owlsportsupdate, 2nd Place, Best Social Media Presence