Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film/video, major and alumni profiles.

Welcome back to another episode of Alumni Live.

I'm here with GVSU alumni, Jillian Austin, and today we're talking all about

the history of Grand Valley Television or Grand Valley Broadcasting Network.

Hi people.

Jillian, founding member of Grand Valley Television, what

did you call it originally?

Originally it was Grand Valley Broadcasting Network GVBN.

We switched to GVTV 'cause people liked it.

Were there like a lot of discussions around it?

When I joined, maybe a generation after, it was GVTV, but the cool

people knew it was GVBN before.

What were those conversations about?

Of why we called it G-V-B-N in the first place?

Yeah

I don't remember there being too much thought, it was a

student run television station.

When we started it there was a television station that was closed

circuit on campus that was running just one sort of PowerPoint slide

that said, "Happy Birthday Anthony."

First broadcast?

Yeah, but it wasn't us.

I came in as a freshman and that was the TV, the only thing that was broadcasting.

I remember speaking to people, just asking questions of what's the

deal with this TV channel that just says, " Happy Birthday Anthony" on it?

They said, oh, we don't have anything to show on it.

So I was like, we should put things on there That was the birth of the idea.

I was a film student or had the desire to be a film student.

I was a freshman, so I was moving in that direction.

Fall of '03 is when I started.

It was right before YouTube, before any democratization of

storytelling through video.

Our equipment was pretty expensive.

When I found out that in order to do the film program there were all these

additional costs, I was taken aback.

I didn't have a lot of money.

The only way you would be able to use the school's equipment is if you were enrolled

in a class and you could only take the equipment out for a specific project.

As a freshman, with all of my ideas I said to myself I'd like to be able to mess up.

I wanna get A's on my projects.

I wanted the ability to have a sandbox and play around, and that's where it started.

I wasn't the only one who wanted that.

So I said, thinking of myself first and then others later, I was like, "how

can we all utilize equipment outside of classes? This television station wasn't

playing anything. And so can we make things to put on this television station?"

And that was how the idea was born.

And because it was TV back before TV was as narrative as it is today , Grand

Valley delineated strongly between the broadcasting department and the

film and video department and it was like , never shall the two meet.

So, that's how we got the Grand Valley Broadcasting Network.

As you were talking, I got so many shivers.

It felt like I was touching the founding of this thing, because everything that

you talked about I felt when I was there.

So I, I started in 2008, you know, I would've just missed you it sounds like.

I left in '07.

So I was, beginning that second generation.

The things that I love about it and appreciate about it was this kind of

like, pick up and go, we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna put stuff together.

We were like creating shows, and it sounds like all of that was from that

first founding that you had where you said, " How can we make this?" And that

ethos was in it throughout, that feeling of we wanna do stuff outside of class.

I wanted a chance to mess up outside of class.

That is the value of what I found in it too, we were able to try

things out, get experimental.

That was in it from the founding.

So, Thank you deeply for that.

You wanna tell us a little bit about you

? I got my film video degree.

I was the era of Grand Valley where the entire workflow changed.

Non-linear editing was new-ish for Grand Valley, and I remember that was

a big thing we had to do as seniors was we had shot on film and then we had

to digitize everything and then put it into a system to do non-linear editing.

I'm sure it changed again, Randy, during your time at Grand Valley as well.

Oh, constantly.

Yeah.

We, we've seen so much change.

Right now, what I do is I am an experience designer and narrative storyteller.

I do a lot of consulting and work with a lot of different folks to essentially

create experiences for people.

And those experiences can exist in digital worlds, they can exist in

augmented reality games, or experiential or immersive theater or exhibitions

or museums, things like that.

I am very multidisciplinary and I would say that flexibility and all those skills

definitely came from the time I had at Grand Valley , specifically all the

projects and the time we spent at GVTV.

I felt like it provided an additional layer of education.

Did you feel that way too, Randy?

A hundred percent.

And it is so appropriate that you are now in experiential storytelling

because, you started this whole thing that we all got to experience.

Like this was your first experience that you created was GVTV.

Yeah.

It was really cool.

I'm excited to tell this story because a lot of people don't know it.

Originally it started with figuring out that it needs

to be a student organization.

We went down that journey and they were like, "you need four people."

Let's back up two steps.

So you're having the first idea, right?

Who do you talk to first?

The first thing I did was spoke to the college to find out about this channel.

You're just going up to the President?

I went to the Office of Student Life to figure out well,

what's the story with this?

And I was told, it's just a place filler.

And I said can we do something about this?

And the answer was, well, a student organization could

exist and they could be over it.

And I was like what does it take to have a student organization?

I didn't set out to start a student organization or a television station.

I really had an idea for a show.

I wanted to make that, ironically, I never actually made.

Which is fine 'cause it was a horrible idea, but it sent me on this path.

They said, " you need four people and you need to, start a charter, and you

need to share what your organization's about, and then you have to go

to the student government and get funding." And so I was like, okay.

And so I think this is a perfect example of doing things one step at a time.

A girl I worked with on a project in class, Cori Fite.

I said, "do you wanna start this with me?" And she's like, sure.

Then there was a girl from my theater class, Hannah Gaff.

And I said, "Is this something you'd be into? I need three

more people." She said, yes.

My roommate down the hall, a finance major, her name was Iana Walker.

And I said, " I know you don't do TV or anything, would you do

this?" And she was like, yeah.

So she was our accounting person.

And so then we submitted the application and they said,

"sure, you've got a student org".

And then it got to be about the part of getting money.

That whole time I was hearing the Ocean's 11 theme, like playing in my

head as you're like assembling your crew.

There's two things I noticed in that story all different majors.

It sounds like you have theater, accounting, film.

So that was interesting.

The other thing about the Grand Valley program is you

couldn't utilize these tools.

it was before media was democratized, before we had cameras in our

pocket and before YouTube.

So this I don't wanna say barrier, but I will say like an opaque

filter between ideas and stories.

if you wanted to write for the Lanthorn, you just had to have, paper, pen,

computer, and your thoughts, and you could say, I'm gonna be a writer.

You didn't have to be an English major to write for the Lanthorn.

You didn't have to even wanna do radio to have a show for the radio station.

And so I wanted that same accessibility regardless of major for the television

station, which was a radical idea.

It's like, why would we, obviously the school is not up for everyone

who's not in a discipline to just use cameras willy-nilly.

So we needed station equipment cameras.

As you're listing those four people, I don't have their names

in front of me, but it sounded like those were all women's names.

Were the four founders of GVBN all women?

Yes, all women.

Did you think about that at the time?

No, I didn't.

Cori was the only girl in the class with me.

We were all female founders and I think that's another reason I wanted

the story to be told because this field, even to this day, women are

underrepresented . Just to know that this television was started by four

women, is an important story to tell.

Awesome.

This story keeps getting better every minute.

I started this thing, it was just like a slow snowball.

I got approached by someone from the Lanthorn and his name was Forrest

Karbowski and he did an interview with me We talked about the vision, anyone,

regardless of major, could have a show.

We could do things on the station, have that experience being

creative in a different way.

And He was so captivated by that vision and idea.

We finished the interview and he said "could I have a show?" And I was like

"do you have a show idea?" He was like, "I have a show." And I think the

name of the show was Question Mark.

And I was like, okay.

Then we had all these people who were like, I have an idea for a show.

And we're like, okay, so how are we gonna figure out what shows go on air?

And that's when Pitch Night was born.

Loved pitch nights.

Pitch night was great.

we decided to throw a party in the student center and just make it, a fun

time and we basically sent the message out and say, "Hey, anyone who has a

show idea, we don't care who you are, what it is, you just come and pitch us

a show idea and if we all agree on it, it'll go forth." And so what we set up

was, we'll have to act as Producers for these ideas because not everybody here

knows how to make a television show.

We don't even really know how to make a television show, but If we can be the

Producer for the story that's going to be told, we can work with a creator to

put everything together Uh, The spirit of the club is that we would all join and

be a part of it . Some people would work on other people's shows and vice versa.

And it became a community focused effort.

If you had an idea, you didn't have to get the crew all on your

own, the crew is within this club.

Just by being a part of the organization, you were crews on other people's

projects and people were crews on yours.

And it was just very remarkable.

I was there 2008 to 2012, I was working on things, I was, pitching my own things.

The fact that you, in those founding days decided that you wanted anybody

to be able to pitch, just sent such a great message to what that

could be, and really empowered lots of us to pitch shows, make shows.

Not all of my pitches got picked up, the ones that did, it felt like, okay, these

are things that people wanna be able to put resources behind people wanna work on.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

I did everything from holding booms to directing, editing,

helping animate, acting.

We really did rotate between everything, which in college, just

such a great way to experiment.

So talking about that founding, the two things they asked for was bring

us four people and bring us a charter.

Tell us about the writing of that charter, how did that go?

I think back, and my memory fails me of what writing that charter was about.

I do remember googling Robert's Rules of Order, 'cause none of us knew them.

And then also figuring out what does this look like?

We'll need a President , a Vice President, a Secretary.

We started creating positions.

From there it became, what was the main vision and goal.

In design you start with the audience, who is this for?

One thing that was clear is that we weren't designing it for ourselves.

It was always for the people participating.

We knew it was for students.

The mission is that students decide what goes on the air, program the

station, like the radio station.

So it was really important that students were at the heart of it.

We put things in that we knew students wanted.

Yeah.

that was a hundred percent my experience there too.

When we talk about those pitch meetings, the way that you got on

air is you needed a majority to raise their hands and say, this is it.

Like, no faculty decided what shows would go on, no single

person in the organization.

You had to have a plurality of the group.

And that, was just such a radical thing.

I've talked to a few people at other schools and they were like,

we didn't have anything like that.

I feel like we created something special that first year out.

You created it with students, for students but surely there

was some faculty involvement?

We had LeaAnn Tibby out of the Office of Student Life.

She was very instrumental in just basically telling us what we need to do.

And that was very helpful.

Alan Bell a Broadcasting Professor was our first faculty sponsor for the club.

He was very broadcast heavy and he was great.

So he got us started on that first year and I think that second year.

The rest of my time there our sponsor was Kim Roberts, which was awesome.

And she was the faculty sponsor when I was there too.

Love Kim.

She was very instrumental in helping guide it and she loved the

spirit of She's a rebel anyway I think she enjoyed that part of it.

As you're pitching it to Grand Valley, what were your big

arguments to Grand Valley?

Like why should they have picked up GVBN?

The major thing was, it's like we are missing out.

Every other college had a television station.

The pitch was " how can we be this university that's calling on, the

best of the best, we wanna bring people here and we don't have this

very basic television station."

So one was, we were filling the gap.

We had the radio station and we had the newspaper and we

don't have the TV station?

So again, a lot of it wasn't necessarily riding the back of

the Lanthorn or the radio station.

It was more about this is a complimentary media ecosystem

and we're missing visual media.

We have a very robust School of Com, we have a robust Broadcasting, we have

a robust TV, this is a part of it.

Grand Valley is a young school.

Did you feel that kind of young energy of we're creating things,

this isn't a rigid university yet?

There was room for creation.

I will say there was still rigidity.

It was still a question of why is this important.

Students got it automatically, I don't know if the university did automatically.

It took some time to be honest, and it was a student run organization.

It wasn't something that was established as part of the school or the university.

Now the university totally embraces and supports it.

But in those early days, it was very student driven.

A lot of the conversations I had as President was about answering that

question of why is this important?

And like I said, it was before YouTube, so the idea of why do we need to have a

station where college students do silly things that don't really mean anything,

they're just what they wanna sell.

It just, it was a hard sell to be completely honest, but because it was a

student organization, when I said I had to go raise the money, I went to students.

I think that was my first business development pitch.

I do business development pitches all the time.

Selling big ideas is a big bread and butter of my job, but that

was my first experience in it.

So we actually, I remember, had to go to the Student Senate and request funds.

A quarter of a million dollars is a lot to start the station.

It was student money, so I had to go to the student senate.

We went and we researched what the equipment was.

I remember someone reached out to me by email who was working

at WOOD TV at the time, his name is Nick Monacelli and he had more

broadcasting experience than I did.

He was instrumental in knowing some of the other technical servers

and different things we need.

But, we had to research it all and print out an entire equipment

list with the cost, and the picture, and why we needed it.

We had this 30 page document that we went to Student Senate with and said,

"this is what we need and here's the itemized budget of what we need and

why we need it and what it's gonna do."

The Student Senate grilled us.

They wanted to make sure we knew our stuff.

They wanted to make sure that it was valuable.

And we actually had to get the support of the radio station, the

Lanthorn, Greek Society, other student organizations because we

all shared the same bucket of money.

And so to ask for quarter of a million dollars from the budget that

everybody else is to use and run their student organizations was a big ask.

It was a fight for about three years.

And I'm glad we did it, but at the same time it would not have been possible

if the students in the Student Senate and the students from other student

organizations said, "yeah, we believe in this and believe it should be a thing."

You said it took three years that's the majority of your time in college.

What were some of those, particulars?

I mean, as you're hitting those bumps, like what were some of those bumps?

The reason it was playing Happy Birthday Anthony, is it

didn't have the infrastructure.

It was a shell of a station.

We didn't have the server size to hold the amount of media.

We didn't know how much media we would need to hold.

So there was a few other things that we had to figure out.

We did not have a studio.

We had a corner of the student center that was our office

and we put our servers there.

So we had to figure out everything from who's gonna maintain the

equipment, how to maintain it, we had to teach ourselves how to do it . We

had to make sure it was secure.

So we had to have security and lock things up.

And again, like this was all new, thankfully in the four years I was

there, we didn't have any theft.

We didn't have any vandalism.

But, these are all the things you have to think about.

I think that's the beauty of college and youth, I didn't think

that through when I started this.

But every step of the way we said, okay, there's something else

we need to get and think about.

So that's how it happened.

Over the course of those three years, we got the money incrementally.

It was definitely a crawl, walk, run situation.

I remember someone who was really instrumental was Josh Kahn, He was

a student a few years older than me.

Great guy.

Went on to work for Capital Record and Sony and all these

different people in music.

I remember he grilled me very hard.

We became really good friends after that, 'cause eventually he did approve it.

I remember the biggest thing was, we wanted five cameras.

they were like, we'll give you two.

We were like, "okay, we'll take two cameras and we'll take

these mics and this setup."

The first lineup of shows that got pitched were very scrappy.

I remember it was a college cooking show that got approved.

A few other shows, they were ambitious projects.

That was the other thing that was great, is students coming up with

their ideas, just saying, whatever you wanna pitch, and we green light it.

They were coming up with some great ideas.

Ambitious and scrappy describe the whole organization.

What a great opportunity.

You're talking about like building coalitions, getting in

there, winning over the Senate.

What was that like?

Were you wining and dining people?

Just going to meetings?

It wasn't that sophisticated, it was more dedicated to the mission.

Coming in and saying , this adds equity and value and really winning people over.

It was a timing thing.

I remember the second year , YouTube started being popular.

YouTube had a very similar spirit in the beginning of anyone can do something,

anyone can make something and put it up.

Now you think about how, the command of storytelling in a digital space is

being introduced to us so much younger.

Not for a quarter million dollars.

Yeah exactly and not for quarter million dollars.

There was a time when people weren't thinking that way.

To be able to say, "Hey, anyone can do this", became, this isn't just because

I wanna make a television show, it's because you're in Greek life, maybe you

wanna make a television show, maybe you wanna act, maybe you wanna do something.

That idea of opening it up to everyone made it our station.

It didn't belong to the film department or the broadcast department.

It was Grand Valley.

That was instrumental in the name change as well.

It was GVTV, Grand Valley's TV station.

That's cool.

So you're going through all this, for three years pedal in the

metal trying to make this happen.

What was your head space during this?

Was it weighing on you and stressful?

Were you excited the whole way?

What did that feel like?

Yeah.

It was stressful.

I was still focusing on schoolwork, but this was my recreation.

My free time was the station and everything else was school.

My head space was just to be focused on this and this was

the hobby, this was the joy.

I think a lot of it too was because it was feeding so much into what

I cared about and what I wanted to be doing, that it just felt

like an extension of my education.

Balancing classes and four different shows you're working on is hard.

Yeah.

I want to protect people from that.

I don't think anybody in the organization needs to have to deal

with the budget or how we're gonna, keep the lights on or if we broke

equipment, how we're gonna fix it.

Because I felt like those things could, dampen creativity and the

message were trying to build.

And so I think our head space when working on it was trying

to keep this as pure as we

could.

I know part of my head space too was that I didn't make that show that I wanted to

make, which was the whole reason I did it.

I remember finishing up about to graduate with my film degree and a professor who

isn't there anymore said "what did you do?

You didn't do a lot of projects here.

You didn't do senior thesis.

You didn't do projects." I was like, I've been making this television station.

And they were like "that's a nice student organizational hobby,

but what did you do in film?"

It was a challenge for me to get internships.

I left feeling like I didn't have a lot to show.

I remember my senior year I was like I've been producing an entire

television station with all these people, but what is something I

can show that I too am a creative.

I'm also a flower in the garden.

So I said I should create a show.

I made a silly show that apparently got resurgence.

So, it might be the longest running show on the station.

I was like, let me do something.

Let me do Random-ish.

Random-ish was your show?

Wow.

We were creating that still when I was in, and as far as I knew, it was

part of the bedrock of the station.

It's the experimentation show.

I remember thinking I could script a whole thing, but that's gonna be a lot.

I was going to my senior year and I was like, I have to

have something to say I did.

I'm gonna do this show.

And I was like, Random-ish.

It's gonna be a sketch show.

That way we can democratize just part of it.

Short form sketches we can write.

Random-ish Sketch, that was my first time writing for puppets

and doing a puppet show.

I remember somebody said, the "library has puppets." And I was

like, "the library has puppets?

Why does the library have puppets?" And it has puppets because of the education

department and teaching for Grand Valley.

So we checked out puppets and one of our sketches was a puppet sketch.

Was a good time.

Someone told me that show is still going on.

One of my favorite sketches, came back like five years after

I was gone, which is crazy.

Was like Chicken and Grim, chicken being chased by the grim

reaper throughout the campus.

Someone else wrote the sketch, but I still talk to both the Chicken

and the Grim Reaper to this day.

They're really good friends of mine Really GVTV is all the

friends you made along the way.

I don't know, about you Randy, but the relationships made through the

television station were invaluable to me.

Yeah.

Oh, a hundred percent.

To the point where one of my really good friends who, we met

in Grand Valley Television, he just lost his job I'm working to

bring him into where I work now.

Even though it'll just be part-time while he is looking

for something else full-time.

Like we still support each other and are still trying to help each other out.

A lot of my best friends stood up in my wedding.

We met in Grand Valley Television, like, it's lifelong friendships.

Sure.

One of my friends from high school also went to Grand Valley and was trying

to recruit me into his fraternity.

And, I went to some parties, tried to show up and figure it out.

And at some point he was like, "all right, are you gonna pledge like you in?"

And at that time, I'd already done GVTV stuff and I told him " I already

have my letters and their GVTV."

That's awesome.

I think that's one of the things, you know, if I think about designing the

next experience, I'm really excited about this, you know, this podcast is great.

And to your point, if it is a fraternity, a sorority, a grouping

for us like-minded individuals who are scrappy and just wanna tell the story

no matter what we have in front of us, it's a club that lasts beyond school.

I still, talk to several people from Grand Valley and I'm also curious and

interested to see where people line up.

I know Forrest, who wrote the article and had the show, works for Rockstar

Games now and a bunch of other people are doing all kinds of stuff all over.

It feels good to have a network.

I know I'd love to meet, it's so crazy to think it was 20 years, but

I'd love to meet some of the other people that have been at the station.

I ended up in a screenwriting group, I live in Las Vegas but there was a few

writers in LA so we jumped on a television screenwriting group . There was only five

other people, and I do the introduction of, "I'm from Michigan." Someone else

was like, "I'm from Michigan." I was like, "where'd you go to school?"

"I went to Grand Valley was President of the television station." And we get to

talking his name's Talon Rudel we started chatting and we're really good friends.

We still talk to this day, but we randomly met in a writer's group.

He was President in 2017, so he was like President like 10 years afterwards.

He was like, "I didn't know the story of GVTV, and I always wanted

to know, so you should tell people."

And so it was actually him and his excitement and him telling me about what

he did in the station and how much he loved it that made me go maybe I should

check back in and say, "Hey, let's talk about it, how this thing got started."

That's, so cool.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show.

Talking about your life today, to throw that Professor's question back at you

where they ask " what did you do while you were here?" So GVTV's founding, all

of those skills, informing who you are today or the stuff you create today?

I look back and reflect on it, and it speaks to who I am naturally, a gardener.

I am a black woman and I work in media and, I'm a marginalized person here.

What's interesting is when you have been marginalized in any way, be

it socioeconomic, race, religion , neurodivergency, there's a world sometimes

where they say, "you can't be planted here, you can't find your garden."

So you end up being a reluctant gardener and you end up being a gardener who's

there to foster the growth of others.

And so I learned those skills through that.

Now I have a really great eye for finding other people who are gardeners.

I have a keen sense about being able to build communities and platforms that

allow people to tell stories and to really

transform.

And I realize that, especially through this conversation now, that's

how that informs who I am today.

I am an experiential storyteller.

I'm a narrative designer.

I build experiences and work on multi-platforms to tell stories.

I do design and I think about the transformation that people

have once they go through it.

I never thought about it that way, Randy, but I think you're right that

GVTV was the first experience I designed.

I think when I'm looking to see, how something is effective, it does

always go back to transformation.

How is the person transformed?

How are we transformed by it?

I'm glad it's still going to this day.

And, I think about GVTV often, and that chutzpah I had 20 years ago.

to do this.

I muster that energy anytime the world gets hard.

You just have to figure out the next step and find like-minded

people who believe in your big, crazy idea and keep moving forward.

I've been doing that ever since.

still doing that to this day.

Wow.

Jillian, my life is so much better, you've set me up for a great career

where I'm having a great time in my life, and I attribute that directly

to GVTV and all of our time there.

Thank you so much for the gardening you've done and helping us bloom.

I really appreciate it.

Oh yeah.

Thank you.

It feels really good.

If you don't mind indulging me a little bit in my own GVTV journey, which I

feel like connects to yours perfectly.

You started as a freshman and I showed up to Grand Valley Television as a

freshman myself, I was like, "okay, I'm gonna get involved with some

stuff" with the full intention of just sitting in the back and just learning

from, who I thought were gonna be the luminaries of, Grand Valley time.

How'd you get sucked in?

Our President at the time a guy named John Tremblay

. He's my best friend, Dr. John Tremblay

. John had taken your direction of gardening and he wanted to find some underclassmen.

He found me and my friend Adam, who at the time we didn't know each

other, and we were both freshmen.

He was like, "Hey, you both seem like you wanna be involved? I'm gonna put you on

the e-board." He put us on the executive board, me in charge of the special

events show, Adam in charge of finance.

And just gave us this lifetime green light to just " Hey don't sit in the

back, get up here, you have value."

I remember we had some crazy name for this called Project Hawk.

When I was a junior I said, " we built something cool and magical, how do

you build something sustainable?" I think the fact that GVTV still

exists means it truly is sustainable.

How do you build a system and sustain it?

Part of it is we can't let this die with us.

And we noticed a lot of organizations had this sort of drop off.

So you have the people who started are there as they age

out, the organization dies.

We didn't want that to happen.

So we said, " all right, everyone find a freshman, find someone younger who

will be there after you're gone, that you can impart all your knowledge onto.

They've gotta be different, scrappy, bring something new to the table." We all kinda

spread out and found different people.

John was my person.

I think it's funny that John selected you.

We became friends he wanted to be in broadcasting.

I think at the time he really wanted to be radio 'cause he has that velvety voice.

And I was like, " this isn't that at all.

This is television.

You should give it a shot." And so he came to some meetings, he started

getting involved, he was producing projects, he was doing things.

I think he did marketing for a little bit.

But the idea is I wanna show you what we were doing and how this works

and show you behind the curtain.

I'm big on it being democratized and accessible.

I never wanted it to feel like a senior thing or you had to do anything

in order to be able to do this.

you're enough as you are, wherever you came from, you were a full human

before you got to Grand Valley.

Even if you're a freshman, there's experience and stuff you

have that'll add to the table.

So, none of those things I thought were necessary.

If you were a freshman, you could pitch.

So many places, even universities are like, "No like you have to spend the first

year and a half learning film theory, what other people did, study the greats,

know the vocabulary." I just was like, no, let's not do that for this club.

Let's open it up.

John was extremely passionate.

And I'm sure you felt that too when he picked you and Adam.

John is, the best among us.

Such a generous person.

uh, To the point where we were making a show, again pitched

by person who was studying IT.

John was directing it and, I don't know what I was doing, I was on the crew doing

something, helping lighting or something.

I had some ideas and John says, "why don't you direct the show?" And so

he gave me the camera and was like, here make the show and just again,

just a green light for my life.

I'm happy to know it comes from your original vision of the

organization it feels wholesome.

I remember then the broadcasting department was like "we

have some anchors over here.

We have some people don't wanna tell news." And I was like,

"Okay , then pitch a news show." Nick Monacelli pitched a news show.

And so that's how we had news is because there were students

that were passionate to do news.

And so he brought that flavor to the network because it was

just fully scripted content.

That's so cool.

Nick Monacelli taught me a lot about broadcasting.

Were there any other names you wanted to call out?

Let's see, another person that I have to mention who was amazing was James Walsh.

He's a writer, he actually played the Grim Reaper in that Grim Reaper chicken sketch.

A lot of our older sketches are still on YouTube.

So you can find some of them.

Erik Steele was also instrumental.

He was one of our first show creators.

He had the college cooking show.

He made the first logo and mascot.

Someone found, this weird, furry, hand puppet and he was our mascot.

Our colors for GVBN, were very 1970s television station.

brown red and yellows . We were very passionate about that mascot.

He's gone now.

I think he's been pushed aside.

There's so many people who were instrumental in it.

Everyone on the student senate that year, who voted to give us the money.

We were fighting for money to buy a camera.

The hardest thing to communicate was why we couldn't just use School of Comms

equipment and why student money needed to be used for this and not university money.

The other thing I wanna mention is all the people that did television before me.

I don't even know their names.

But I wasn't the first person who wanted to do a television station there, and

I wasn't the first person who did it.

And I think that's something to think about when we're doing

things no ideas are unique.

You're not gonna create something new that nobody ever thought of.

And it felt like a very spiritual endeavor because I wasn't alone in this, there were

some older students that I spoke to, who were behind, " Happy Birthday Anthony".

Another person was Mike Rios.

He was leaving as I was starting this.

I do remember I spoke with him because when I said I wanna do a

television station, someone said, you gotta talk to Mike Rios because

he's already been down this road.

I chatted with him and he said, you know, you can do what you like, but it

shouldn't be student money paying for it, it should be university money because

he felt it was a service for students.

That gave, the directive towards the student run television station and why

that is so very important to the charter.

Because if it isn't gonna be something that's provided for our education by

the university, it's something that we choose to pay for, then we should

be the one to choose programming.

So that makes me feel really good that it's still surviving with that tenet.

If Grand Valley wanted a television station, they could have had one.

But this station is for students for testing and

playing, failures and successes.

And that is important for all of our education, but it's also a valued service.

What was your argument to Grand Valley to say, like, why we want our own

equipment and not use School of Comm's?

The argument had to be made to the Student Senate explaining those were cameras and

equipment that were purchased for the sole purpose of being used for students

with the School of Comm that were focused on film, television, broadcasting.

So again, I think that was the big deciding factor is you hear

television station, you think, it's only for TV and film people.

It's not for me.

I'm in Greek life, I play lacrosse, I am on Student Senate, What

does that have to do with me?

Why should my student money go to this?

This is a resource for you too.

If you have an idea, you can pitch it even if you don't wanna produce it.

That was also revolutionary.

' 'Cause usually when you have an idea, you have to be the one doing it.

But the idea that like you could just have a random pitch.

I think that was the vision people tied to.

Finding Producers for these shows was interesting because the

producer pulls it all together.

I remember writing a Producer guide, and saying the creative person is a

bunny rabbit you have to protect the bunny rabbit and you have to make

sure that the bunny rabbit can create.

T hat was a fun journey, learning how to be a producer and then

teaching other people how to produce.

Being a Producer on someone else's project is the most selfless

thing anyone could ever do.

To be like, not only do I think your idea's good, but

I'm gonna help you make it.

Every Producer chose their project, and would have a sit down with the

creator, and have that conversation of how do you wanna be involved?

Who do I need to find to make this happen?

Is this your vision?

It was a really cool process to think back.

I kind of wish we had something like that in the real world.

And it's a great way to find out people's personalities and

what they really like to do.

'Cause inevitably the Producers were people that wanted to be doing it.

I think it informed later lives.

It was very "yes, and..." organization.

That continued through when I was there.

The show, Random-ish, we were all in whatever you wanna do, we're doing it.

I'm glad people got to do crazy things on that show it was so fun and ridiculous.

What is the impact that you see GVTV having in real life?

Does it speak for itself now?

I'm very curious to see how it's going now.

Whatever is happening is beautiful.

I have no attachment to it, but if it's serving the students and the students

are still running the television station that's all that matters.

That's great.

Looking ahead next 20 years what are your hopes and dreams for it?

My big vision is that GVTV is outside the campus too, not just a closed circuit.

Just having a station where it transcends beyond Grand Valley, and Grand Rapids,

and it becomes known to, the world.

A television station anyone can tune in.

You could be in, Dubai, Missouri, Florida, or Las Vegas, and see

what students were working on.

I think that would be amazing.

Spin it up into a community similar to the film and television alumni, but to address

the very specific niche of the TV station.

There are people now, I guess of 20 years who got hands-on film and video

experience making projects, messing up, doing good things and bad things, that

was bonding through creation and play.

And I think being able to tap in that resource would be great.

And I think making a sort of alumni group for GVTV could be in order.

Being able to do that would help so many students as well as graduates to connect

and even help with work placement and, finding our way in this crazy world.

So I guess if that was it, I would say between now and the next 20

years, building a strong bridge so GVTV isn't just the years you're

there, that you're doing it.

That's beautiful.

Let's explore this like Star Trek thing for a second.

So, we're gonna beam down and the year is 2004, you are going

to talk to 20-year-old Jillian.

What are you saying to her?

I'm gonna to say keep going and remember it may not be about you

now but it's about all of us.

I would tell her that she's making something that's extremely

important to her, but also will be extremely important to other people.

And that she should still honor her show idea, even though it's bad.

I know it was a bad idea, but I think she should still think it's a good idea

she should still be chasing that idea.

She has to learn that wasn't good.

But, to keep inspiring and pushing forward and that she's doing great.

What about you?

I know you're interviewing me, but what would you tell, freshman you?

Oh man.

Okay, if I'm jumping in my Star Trek time machine going back to 2009 I'm gonna tell

young Randy to chill out a little bit.

Young Randy was just trying to do everything saying yes to everything.

Maybe try to teach him a little bit about work life balance.

Probably All right.

It's less of a question, more of a celebration in that let's just, take

a moment and be like, you created something, founded a TV station,

were the Executive of it, right?

You were the President and that has lasted now 20 years.

I never would've thought that when I started, but now I look at it

and I think back to that Professor that said, but what did you do?

I'm sad for her, younger me who thought this wasn't enough.

And so I think, sometimes, when you're building something is a greater

purpose and there's a sustainability factor built in, and you create

these rituals, like Pitch Night was a ritual and finding younger people

to take under your wing was ritual.

It is really building a community and I think communities live on their own.

It feels so good that it exists . Thank you for acknowledging that.

And that's a lot of careers launched with the ability to

experiment and pitch something.

Your personality is so much of the ethos of what I loved about GVTV and

I didn't even know you until today.

like we just met on this call.

I feel honored.

Nobody knew this story and I left feeling like I didn't do anything.

I just started a club and it took a really long time to feel okay 'cause

I felt like the story wasn't told.

Nobody knew that students did it.

Pointing out that it was a black woman that started, this feels

really special and important.

Yeah.

a lot of people don't know that either.

I remember there was a President, maybe about 10 years ago, that I reached out to.

And she was a female president, I told her I'd started and

she's like, "I didn't know.

I thought I was the first female President.

This means so much." And I'm like, " yeah, there's a lot of underrepresented

people." One of our founders was queer.

That's, that story is not told, so I think especially right now and

especially in the world, it's so important to not lose those stories.

Thank you for sharing your heart and sharing your vision and

what a great thing you created.

Thank you for having me, and I can't wait to hear all these other stories.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

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