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 to another episode of Alumni Live, the Podcast.

I'm host Randy Strobl,, and today we're gonna continue our series

on Grand Valley Television.

We have a whole panel of this next generation of GVTV.

We got Bobby Nielsen here.

Bobby, what was your role in GVTV?

Had a few different roles over the years.

Was involved from a freshman through a senior.

I was a station Publicity Manager at one point, Financial Manager,

Programming Manager, and News Director.

So a few different roles over the years.

Excellent.

We have Christina Choriatis.

Good to see you again.

Christina.

Hello, Randy.

Good to see you too.

So what roles did you have at GVTV?

I did a lot of different things.

I was a crew member on all of the shows that we all worked on.

I was a Producer, eventually became e-board member.

I, I think Bobby, you and I might have had the same position, different years.

I was also part of the advertising promotions team and whatnot.

Yeah.

Did, did a lot of involvement.

Did it all four years of college.

We've also got Erin Brefka on the panel.

Erin, good to see you again.

Hey

there!

What roles did you have at GVTV?

As far

as

the years I

was

there, I was on E-board and I had a couple roles there.

I was the

Financial

Manager to start and then I later switched to Human Resource Manager.

But as far as just day to day, I was running cameras, I exercised

my acting chops a little bit, so a little bit everything.

That sounds pretty familiar.

We've got Jamie Bartkowicz on the panel.

Jamie, how are you doing today?

Good.

How are you?

Doing really well.

Excited to talk to everybody.

Jamie, tell the people what, roles you had at GVTV.

As far as e-board positions, my first one was News Director, then I was Publicity

Manager, and then I was Station Manager.

Yeah, a lot of leadership there for Jamie.

Yeah.

McKenzie Brefka, tell us what you did at GVTV.

How you doing?

I am doing well.

I had none of the leadership.

I ran a show with two other co-producers and we, did a pretty good job of

getting a number of episodes out, but I ran crew and things like that.

I did a little bit of acting as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of the, the entire GVTV experience.

I'm hearing through all of your introductions here.

So the years that you were there, was as I was there and just

after, so what years Christina are we looking at for this group?

I came in 2009, graduated 2013.

I think Randy, you were a year above us.

You recruited us, and then I think we recruited Bobby and Jamie.

And so I think that's kinda the years that we're looking at.

That kind of idea of recruitment and, you know, one generation passing to the next

generation is something that we've heard a lot of throughout these conversations.

Going back to the very first generation of GVTV.

McKenzie, tell us a little bit about what that kind of mentorship bringing people

in, what was the atmosphere at GVTV.

There was so much collaboration.

One of my favorite things is that you just say, "Hey, I need people", and

you had everybody going, "Oh, I can do that." And it was just everybody

wanted to be part of something.

And, "Oh, hey, you know what? I can drag my roommate to that

shoot, they can hold a boom mic."

That kind of thing.

We definitely did that for our shoots.

"Hey roommate, we're gonna have you do a little skit real quick.

Okay?" That kind of thing.

And we just made it happen.

But really just, I went because I knew people who were there

and who were enjoying it.

And I was like, well, let's see what happens, let's check it out.

This is another way to spend time with people that I like and do something

fun, and it just became my life.

It became my life.

Bobby, when Kenzie says, that became my life.

Does that sound familiar to you?

And what does that look like?

Yeah, no, working on different things throughout the week, late nights,

whether it's a shoot on the weekend, a new shoot during the week, a live shoot.

Just a lot of different opportunities to get experience, meet people.

Jamie, I saw you nodding a lot as Bobby was ticking off the feelings at GVTV.

What was your experience like there?

I got involved in GVTV 'cause when I first came to Grand Valley as a freshman,

I was just looking at any clubs and I was like, well i'm majoring in film, so

this obviously seems like the right spot for me and it quickly became most of

my life during my time at Grand Valley and like Bobby said, a lot of late

nights, weekend shoots and it was great.

It was a great community and I look back on those years very

fondly and so glad that I joined.

Erin this idea of community, do you feel that community at GVTV?

Oh, absolutely.

I think from day one I felt everybody was willing to just sit next to the other

and talk and figure out what you're into.

And it became such an important part of what became my

social life at Grand Valley.

So a lot of my good friends, I mean everybody in this chat basically.

Like a lot of my best friends came from GVTV.

So it's continued, it's lasted through the years and opened doors and opened

spaces for community, and it was just a fun time of messing around and

creating fun things with your friends.

I do want to touch on that open doors concept.

Before we get to that, just let's think back to our first day at GVTV.

What does that bring to mind?

How did you end up at GVTV?

Who's got some stories about first days at GVTV?

When we talk about the long lifetime impacts of being on GVTV and the

friendships that I've made, obviously everyone on this call is a friend of mine.

But I was just such a shy freshman just trying to get involved in GVTV.

And I went to the GVTV news meeting and we were just taking inventory of equipment

and, I believe she was the Station Manager at the time, Chelsea Mazinski was there.

And she was just so inviting and talked to me and like made me feel so welcomed

and we became friends and Chelsea is one of my best friends to this day.

And I think that's just really crazy to think that like, because she just

was open to me in joining and was like, "Why'd you wanna be in GVTV?" it

like led to a big friendship and then led to so many other opportunities.

So it's one of my first memories of GVTV is that weird little inventory meeting

where I was like, I don't know what I'm doing here, but met a lot of people.

Was that as a freshman Jamie?

Yeah, I was a freshman.

It was like week two, and they were like, we're looking for

volunteers to take inventory.

And I was like, okay.

And so I showed up.

First day.

Uh, other stories?

Bobby, what do you got?

First thing I joined was news and a friend from back home's cousin

is Amanda Stevenson, who was the News Director at the time.

So I had reached out to her, just trying to make that connection

'cause I wanted to get involved.

Similar boat of Jamie, just kind of like unsure, college is

new, don't really know anyone.

But Amanda was great.

The entire team was great, very welcoming, kind of trying to find what

interests you, what do you want to do?

So it was a great way to just jump right in and start working on the show.

Erin, tell us about your first day.

My first day was really strange and honestly, I think McKenzie and I have very

similar first day stories, but my first day came about, I think I started just

over halfway through my freshman year.

I wasn't really thinking about it that much until my roommate actually told

me that he really wanted to go, but he was too awkward to go by himself.

And specifically, he had a crush on one of the members in GVTV at that time.

So that was a big part of the reason why he wanted to go.

And I was just like, all right, dude, I'll wingman it up, I guess.

And I was dragged by the crush to go to the my first meeting.

And McKenzie was on the other side of that, but, yeah, so I ended up showing

up and kicking back and being like, oh, this is actually pretty cool.

Like he can go do whatever, I wanna actually participate.

That is a great story.

And so Christina, we're talking 2009-ish you started, right?

Tell us, what was going on in 2009?

2009 freshman year started off really rough for me.

You know, it was my first time living away from home.

Literally didn't even know how to make friends.

It was a real struggle, and so I was like, all right, let me put myself out there.

I'll go to Campus Life Night and I'll see what clubs are out there.

And I looked at every single table and got every single flyer and every

single free pen and t-shirt and piece of swag from all these clubs.

Filling up that swag bag.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And I think GVTV was giving away pens or something at the time.

I don't know.

But I was like, oh yeah, I think I've heard of GVTV.

I'd really like to go and check this out.

And so went to the first meeting and everything.

And I think like McKenzie, you were saying right away it was, "okay, we're

crewing up, we're filming this thing, we're doing that who wants to do this,

who wants to learn?" It was such a good learning experience for everyone.

And so for me it was a great thing because, you know, I was struggling

to make friends socially, but I also really wanted to learn these skills.

I was going into the film program and it was kind of this perfect sweet spot

of being like, okay, I'm gonna learn something new, but I'm also gonna

socialize at the same exact time.

And so it kind of became, my friends were there and everything, and we were

going on shoots every single weekend and it became a really good time.

And I think our meetings were Monday nights at the time or

were they Wednesday nights?

Wednesdays

Wednesdays Wednesday.

Wednesdays.

I feel like they might have switched to Mondays one year or something, but

you know, every single Wednesday it was like looking forward to seeing everyone.

And so after that first meeting I was like, I'm hooked.

I I wanna come back every single week.

I wanna, I wanna work on everything.

That is such a warm story.

I thank you for sharing that.

So we're talking about going on shoots.

You're saying shoots are happening every weekend.

What is a day in the life of GVTV production?

What was a shoot like?

It depends on the show.

Every single one of them was different.

I mean, We had everything from news, which I think all of

us at one point all did news.

We had the Game Game Show, we had dramas, we had Afterlife,

it was the Star Wars drama show.

Right?

Like we had everything.

And so every single show.

Really took production on its own.

It kind of just developed it into the way that worked for the group

of students that was working on it.

Okay, so McKenzie, what was a day on the news show like?

A little bit of chaos.

Jamie, uh, had a strong reaction to that.

I don't even remember.

It was all blur.

It was basically Bobby running the show and telling me what to do.

Bobby, did you have that iron fist?

Is that what I'm hearing?

So one of the things we'd started doing, probably, I think ,Jamie it was like maybe

our freshman year or sophomore year, but we, started to do live shows, which was

something that the station hadn't done, to my knowledge, up until that point.

So that was, that adds a lot of pressure when the show has a, a live start time.

You can't just like redo it.

So it was fun, but it definitely added some pressure to get

things moving and done.

So Bobby, starting a live production, never been done before.

What went into that?

How did that happen?

Yeah, well it started off, there's a lot of kinda like

behind the scenes technical stuff.

So one of the first things, we had the cable channel, but in order to

get the cable channel to be able to do live, we had to move it from

basically one part of the building directly into, uh, the control room.

So that was lot of conversations with Office of Student life, and eventually

we were able to move it down, which then gave us the ability to basically just

patch right in to do live broadcasting.

Yeah, so it was a lot of planning, a lot of logistics, but then once we had

it, we also did a number of other stuff.

I think everyone here worked on the Telethon at one point, so

being able to do that let us do things that we weren't able to do.

I just wanna say real quick to any students listening to this

now, going live seems like such an easy thing in the year of 2025.

You just do it very naturally on YouTube and stuff.

Back then, when we were just a broadcast channel, I don't think we had like a

YouTube live presence, I don't think that was something we could do yet.

It was just going live on channel, whatever we were.

But that was such a feat.

So Bobby deserves a lot of credit for making that happen.

'Cause I remember he would tell me all the things that had to happen to do

it, and it was like he was speaking a different language to me and I was

like, "Yeah, no, it's great! You do it!"

So we're going live.

What was that first live show like?

Did everything work?

What?

What were you sweating about?

I blacked out.

I don't, I couldn't tell you what

They all blurred together.

I

remember

being there for the first live show.

I think I ran one of the cameras or just remember, I'm pretty sure we did not

start on time, if I remember correctly.

I think we had a lot of technical issues immediately that we had to work out.

But once.

That was all figured out, once we actually went live, I think all of

us were actually surprised at how, generally speaking, it went well

for a first stab at going live ever.

Except the teleprompter wouldn't work.

Oh, that's right.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, a lot of technical errors to start things off, but I guess that

wasn't necessarily a huge surprise.

Well, and I think that's one of the really special things about being at GVTV is,

you know, it is this time to experiment.

It's a time to try things for the first time.

If there are technical glitches, it's not like there's, $20 million on the line.

It's a time for us to try things.

In that spirit of experimentation, learning about yourselves through

experimentation, what stories does that bring up for you?

I mean, it got me my job.

We could talk about opening doors.

Yeah.

McKenzie, how did that, lead to your job?

Being a producer for the Game Game show meant that I was planning shows, I was

planning shoots, I was coordinating cast members and crew and things like that.

I was going to the editing suite and staying there for six hours.

There's definitely a YouTube video of us making a musical out of editing.

But being able to say, I have juggled all of these things, and I did

good work and you can see it, and it was broadcast, and it's all on

YouTube now, and I'm proud of it.

It allowed me to confidently go in and say, yeah, I can be a

producer of an actual newscast.

And they said, "Oh, okay. Yeah, you can."

That is incredible.

And Bobby, maybe we were a little bit hard on the prompter, right?

Like things didn't work.

But I mean, the message of the story is you did get on air and

you did start something brand new.

What does that feel like?

It was a lot of fun.

I mean, we started with news.

We did like a 15, 20 minute show.

And then after we did that, that's where then we moved forward with,

now we've done this thing that we've never been able to do.

How can we run with it?

How can we do something different?

How can we challenge ourselves?

And that's where the next big thing that we did live was I think the

telethon, which was a multi-hour variety show kind of thing.

Aaron, tell us about that telethon.

What was going on on screen?

Oh man.

It was probably one of the most chaotic things I ever experienced at GVTV.

But it was so much fun.

I did camera.

We were stationed all over Kirkoff, like we had our main studio and then we were

out front of the basement area of Kirkoff.

Kind of like between all of the shops and stuff.

We had a cheer group, I think, I can't remember if we had like a

marching band or something like that.

I don't think I have done so much running with a camera on my shoulder

in my life than I did that day of just like, "We're not getting the feed"

and then running back to the studio and being like, "Oh, you're up." And

then running back and grabbing the camera and just, it was a lot of chaos.

But again, we managed to pull it off, which was fun.

And, Christina give us a baseline of what is a telethon?

What does that mean?

Where did that come from?

Every single year GVTV participated in Relay for Life, which was the American

Cancer Society's, big fundraiser.

It was a walkathon.

And so every single year we'd like try to raise money for it.

And we had a team and we eventually partnered with the

on campus group to help, make commercials for it and everything.

And so after we got this live system going.

We were like, let's do a telethon to raise money for, Relay for Life.

And so the telethon, I mean, traditionally it's somebody's on the

tv like answering phones for like 24 hours collecting money and everything.

And I don't know if we, were pretending to do some of that.

Like we might've had some staged phones to be like, "We're collecting money

right now!" But the whole idea was that we spent a whole day just promoting

this big event where we were trying to raise, I think it was $2,400 in 24 hours.

And so, we started in the morning, we had tables set up in Kirkoff promoting

that we were doing this big live event in the basement of Kirkoff that

night where we were gonna have the marching band and the cheerleaders

and the comedians and everything.

And while we were doing this, we were collecting money and we were fundraising.

And Then that night, it was a couple of hours, we were actually doing the

live feed, and I think that's when we brought in the most amount of money

because people were actually watching.

We were so like, "Wow, like this is really a thing that we're doing.

People are really tuning in and they're donating and everything."

And so we did meet our fundraising goal at the end of the night.

And that's kind of how telethons work.

For us, we were trying to raise money, we were trying to do something good

for the community, we were trying to test out these new things that we had

learned through GVTV and everything, and it was kind of this, big project that

we all put on to put it all together.

I mean, I'm still really proud of what we did for the telethon.

I thought it was just such a multi-communal type of event.

It was GVTV, it was working with all of the musicians, and all

of the other organizations that we got to help put the event on,

and the comedians and everything.

And so, I think it's all something that is very memorable to all of us.

That is so cool and, to hear the storyline of, if you've listened to the other

episodes leading up to this, starting with the founding of GVTV, as being this

thing that was experimental, we don't even know if we can get on the air right?

To creating shows for it, the special events show that I helped produce

and we all ended up working on it.

And that growing into news and bringing in Relay for Life and

that growing into the telethon.

There's just this beautiful continuation of, generation to generation handing off

these different ideas shows, and always improving and making it better and bigger.

That's, I think, just a great culmination of, many years of people's work.

So when you think back on those creative days, who are some people that stand out?

What were some moments of mentorship maybe that people that gave you the

green light to tell you you could do it?

Who are some of the, the stars of that time of GVTV?

I mean, I think Len O'Kelly is the obvious answer.

Yeah.

Len for sure.

He was our, uh, station advisor at the time and really, really

mentored all of us to bring us to where we were at that point.

Yeah, he was a very big advocate.

When he stepped in, he was already advisor for The Whale, the radio station.

And so when he came in for GVTV, he just had a lot of passion

for getting these things going and making it bigger and better.

And so I really appreciated how much he advocated for us to other faculty to, the

Office of Student Life and everything.

So we'd come to him with like the craziest ideas and he just was never phased.

And he was like, "Yeah, let's try it. Let's do it." Like

nothing was off the table.

That's what I was gonna say.

He would say, yeah, let's do it.

How do we wanna do it?

I felt really good about myself when I was Financial Manager.

It's famously a position that no one really wants, but we all know someone

has to do at least during that time.

And so I wanted to be on the E-board, so I just jumped into that position.

I was not a fan of that, responsibility.

But I remember having to go in front of the Student Senate and do a big pitch of

like why GVTV's important and why we would love to get funding so we can buy all

this new equipment and be able to go live.

And I remember Len showed up at that and was just like, "I got your back"

and was just there to be the one person in the room who I actually knew.

So I wasn't completely having a mental breakdown.

And we ended up getting the funding, so I was like, "Okay,

this worked. Cool. Thanks Len."

Hey, it's Randy.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Morse-Cuppy

Film, Video, and Animation Study Abroad Endowed Scholarship.

The scholarship was established by Bill Cuppy with support from Deanna Morse to

help film, video, and animation students with the cost of studying abroad.

Alumnus Bill Cuppy talks about why he started the scholarship.

We created this scholarship because experiencing the world and other

cultures has been life-changing for us and we wanted students to

have a similar experience during this pivotal time in their lives.

Caroline Hamilton, the 2024 recipient of that scholarship, describes the

benefits of the support she received.

I'm a film video major and I have a German minor.

I've been studying German for about eight years now, and so I decided to

study abroad this past summer in Germany.

It definitely challenged me as a person.

I had to figure out how to do things and communicate and just

put me outta my comfort zone.

It introduces you to new things that you'd be afraid to experience because

you don't wanna embarrass yourself, but you have to just go for it.

The scholarship itself, just the almost permission to be

like, yes, go experience this.

Go learn, go see what happens, how this changes, how you see the world

and how you approach your work.

It took the pressure off of me a little bit to just be like, I can

experience this and not have to worry about everything else going on.

I can just go enjoy my time there and see what I can learn and grow from.

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

the link in the description.

Now back to the show.

So those are, the broadcasts, the live shows, but you also

had some fictional shows.

McKenzie, tell us a little bit about those.

We did.

There were so many different options.

The variety that people brought in and said, I wanna do something about

this, I wanna do something about that.

And some of them were scripted and some of them were not.

And some of them were kind of halvsies.

And it was really cool to have everybody from their different backgrounds,

like we had writing majors who were like, "Yep, I'm gonna write a script.

I don't know anything about film. But we're gonna write a script."

GVTV is not just for the film people or just for the broadcasting people

within our little group here, most of us were in film or broadcasting, but we

had so many other people as part of it.

And I feel like that's really an important bit because

sometimes you lose sight of it.

So we had people who were like, "Yeah, I wanna be part of this 'cause

it's cool and I'm gonna write a script and y'all can then make it."

And it was a really a fun thing.

You got theater majors who were like, " I wanna be in your show." So just meeting

new people that way was really fun.

What are some of those, uh, scripts that stand out?

I don't know if this is good or bad, but a lot of the scripts that stand out to me

were maybe not ones that ever got made.

But we used to have pitch night once a quarter and oh man,

that was my favorite night.

Just 'cause the wildest things.

And Erin and I still think of just like a stupid skit that you talked about all the

time that was called Cheese Roommate and I couldn't even tell you what it was about.

And it was just like a really dumb skit that we kept saying we were

gonna make for a show, but we didn't.

I think that was my favorite part about Pitch Night is sometimes we'd

get like really actually good content.

And then other times I think we just like really empowered students of Grand

Valley to be like, do you have a weird idea that you just wanna shoot your shot?

We're listening.

And I think we green lit a lot of very weird experimental things.

Whether they actually got into production was a whole other thing.

But we were very open with the weird, fun skits and being experimental on what

people wanted to produce for our channel.

Christina, walk us through one of those pitch nights.

What was a pitch night?

Oh my goodness.

Basically the Pitch Night is where anyone on campus, any student could come to our

GVTV meeting and pitch a show for the station and they could pitch a show and

say, "Alright, you guys vote on this.

You guys pick this up.

I'm walking away.

Somebody else can make this."

And it could've been anything.

It could have been drama.

It could have been another news show.

It could have been a sketch show.

Some of these pitches they would get voted on.

And we'd say, oh yeah, these are gonna be great.

This is gonna be the great next show and everything.

And then sometimes it would just never get made.

But sometimes they would get made and they'd get turned into

some really amazing content.

And basically like the student would go up, I think they had five minutes, maybe,

maybe less than that, to do their pitch.

I think we all just then voted on it.

We all just said, do we wanna make this show or not?

Yes or no?

And if it got the green light, then the next week we'd say, okay, we have a new

show picked up, who wants to produce it?

And then we'd have to find a producer for it, and then the producer

would start finding a crew and putting it together and everything.

Yeah, we got some amazing shows out of Pitch Nights.

So those shows would get green lit. We're gonna just kinda like walk over all

the hard work real quick of making it.

And then all of a sudden there was a Premiere Night where

these shows would premiere.

Bobby, tell us what a Premiere Night was.

Yeah, Premier Night was always a fun night because you got to see

what everyone had been working on.

So a lot of times you'd hear about stuff, you'd get updates at meetings.

What was also really fun is it also coincided usually

with like Family Weekend.

This was a time when a lot of people would also invite their family, their

roommates, and it was just kind of a really cool opportunity to see

everything that everyone had been putting all their hard effort into.

It was like the Oscars for GVTV.

It was a big night.

Yeah.

Well, and not just in the scale of it, but people got dressed up too, right?

Yeah.

This idea of, you know, making things and finding your own what

you wanna do professionally.

Bring me on some of your journeys of growth throughout this.

What did you go into GVTV thinking you wanted to do, and what

experiences led you to what you ended up doing on the other side?

I went to school for, started as a Coms major 'cause I wasn't sure exactly

and I ended up with Broadcasting being my major, which was great.

And I actually did that until 2020, so about seven and a half

years in the local TV news market.

And I went from there and now I do kind of project management, which

very much was the producer role that I had at the station and at GVTV.

So that's kind of where I'm at now, and I use a lot of those skills.

I do a lot of volunteering now for a non profit.

And I'm really using all of the things that I honed starting as a

Producer for the Game Game show.

Before I move on to other people's journeys, you wanna just plug

the Game Game show real quick and, and what even was that?

The Game Game show was a show about games and each episode was a different game.

We played Blood and Gut Sugar World, AKA Candyland.

We did a rock paper scissors tournament.

We did a obstacle coursey type thing out on the lawn by the performing arts center.

But in the middle of every episode, we decided to split it up and we

played, or we had our own version of the movie Clue in the middle.

So we had a little scripted segment.

Most of us made some sort of appearance in that.

Our show was a lot of fake live, but also some scripted stuff, which

was a really fun combination for us.

And we did three episodes a semester.

Which was pretty significant at the time.

That's a lot of shows.

And I had the good fortune of hosting some of those early shows.

that was a lot of fun.

Anybody else wanna say anything about Game Game show before I

continue on with our journey?

McKenzie also missed out on the second season, which went from Clue to a spoof

on Survivor, which I guess was scripted.

I don't honestly remember.

it was very scripted.

Definitely scripted.

it was scripted for everybody but me I guess.

'Cause Game Game show is where I got to bring out my inner theater kid because

I was too nervous to actually go take theater classes and be on a stage.

So when I was on Game Game show, I could just be a crazy person.

And so during the Survivor season, I was just this lunatic in the woods that

was harassing all of the actual players.

And I very much embraced that role.

It was probably one of the most fun projects I got to work on.

Anytime I did Game Game show, I was just like, all right, we're

gonna crank this up a little bit.

I think Survivor at those shoots were the most good, chaotic, that I experienced.

We did vlogs back and forth during the middle while we're moving locations.

We used my 1998 van headlights for lighting by the clock tower.

We got permission to drive it up right up there.

So we had the tiki torches behind us for our tribal council

. So fun.

Anybody else wanna say a thing about Game Game show before we continue on?

Game Game show is where we all became best friends.

I mean, legitimately.

I think I wasn't involved in Game Game show, but I was there because I just

liked hanging out with you guys, you know?

It was a fun set.

Oh my God, it was so much fun.

We realized years later, Erin, that you were in every episode.

Because you're in Clue and Survivor, but you also hosted and were a

participant in two different games.

Yeah.

I did the Gamut host, contestant and scripted person,

Incredible.

And I think that idea too of doing things because you know, we're

just hanging out with friends.

That sounds really familiar to me too.

I mean, we started this talking about, the long hours but what's 12

hours when it's 12 hours of hanging out with some of your best friends.

So Erin, you, came into GVTV and experienced the whole bunch of everything.

You said you acted, you said you, were behind the camera.

What did you come into the experience thinking you wanted to do and then,

what did you come out the other side realizing you love to do?

Yeah.

It was a really fun chance to experiment like we've talked about,

because I ended up being a film major.

Started as a comms major as well, but inevitably became a film major

and I was very interested in doing scripted stories . So I really wanted

to make a show and fictional based content I thought was really cool.

But through my time in GVTV and all of my exposure to everything,

by the time I graduated as a film major, I found myself being much more

interested in real world storytelling, like documentary style things.

So, I ended up working in news for about seven years.

And coincidentally as a teleprompter operator was how I first got my start

thanks to GVTV that taught me how to use a teleprompter . So yeah, I was

in news and that really was a great experience to learn how to tell real

stories and I feel like a lot of what I learned transitioned into that.

And then I jumped from news to working in marketing for a little bit and making

commercials and promotional content.

And now I work for, state government doing videos and promotional

stuff through an agency with them.

So it's kind of just gone up a little step each time.

That is great and it always comes back to those skills that we were using in GVTV.

I mean, we were even making promos and commercials.

For our own station.

McKenzie you are nodding vigorously at that.

Are there specific commercials you remember making?

Oh, I just still remember standing by the clock tower.

Chanting GV TV is TV for GV.

And that pops into my head at least once a month.

It's catchy.

Anybody else wanna talk about, commercials or promos before we continue on?

Somebody found this old TV and they carved it out so that somebody

could wear it on their head.

And we swapped off whoever our mascot was.

But, the GVTV man was our commercial go-to, if I remember correctly.

So fun.

Some of that short content, was really fun too, things like Random-ish,

things to just really crank out.

some short ideas.

Bobby, you wanna talk about what you went into GVTV thinking, doing a bunch of

stuff, coming out the other side, learning about yourself and your profession?

Going into GVTV I had two interest areas, cinematography and producing.

Although I do still really enjoy cinematography, producing is the

thing that I ended up going into.

During my time in GVTV whether it was like producing news on a weekly basis,

doing station programming, helping the financial side of stuff, just different

skills that really helped get me on a good path for going into producing.

Are there days where you're producing today where you feel like you were set

up by GVTV to deal with, some of those rooms or some of those discussions?

Currently I work with a team of students, so there's a lot of

growth, a lot of development.

So I think that is definitely one similarity, that I see from my time

in GVTV where there were a lot of people who were mentoring, teaching.

And As we moved up in the organization, like we were then in those roles

helping all the new members.

So that's something that in my role currently, I'm mentoring students, helping

them grow, helping them learn different filmmaking skills and stuff like that.

So I think that's probably the best similarity I'd say.

And that idea of mentorship and growth and we're teaching each other things.

I mean, I think that's a big example of why the organization was so

successful for, all these generations.

I learned a lot from the people before me.

And I certainly tried to teach some of those special events workshops where

I was like, here's how we do stuff.

And that idea of passing knowledge forward it's great to see that you're

still doing that professionally.

I think that is a great launching pad, from GVTV into profession.

That's really cool.

Christina, what did you learn about yourself professionally, the skills

you like to do, and how does that led to where you are today?

I started GVTV wanting to do editing.

And that's what I did for Special Events for the first year.

I edited all the packages and I was like, yeah, this is exactly

what I wanna do and everything.

And then, I think just naturally being a part of GVTV you

just start producing stuff.

And then I kind of realized that I liked that a little bit more than editing.

The last couple of years I did producing and then being in like

the leadership roles and everything.

And not even realizing it, but it just naturally led me to that path of being

a producer professionally in my career.

It's still what I do today, over 10 years outta school and everything.

Also being involved in news and events, that's something that I still do today.

I don't think at the time I would've told you that I would have wanted to continue

doing TV, or I would've wanted to continue in news and documentary and everything.

I think I really wanted to go into like true like film,

Hollywood making and everything.

But then that just didn't happen.

I naturally stayed in TV, and I really think that it was a good fit for

what my skillset was and I'm, still using it to this day and everything.

So when you're out there like producing like real world stories,

are there elements of GVTV where you felt like, " I'm ready for this"?

A lot of times I think in a career people feel like they're thrown into

something and they're not prepared.

But what was your like first day on the real world job like?

That's a good question.

I think my first day in the real world, I was an intern for a documentary

production show type of format.

And they handed me a camera.

And I was like, "Well, I'm not really a camera person, but I do have some of

these camera skills that I learned from GVTV. So sure, I guess I can film this

thing. You know, I could set up this interview." I felt like I know enough

about this one thing that I can go into my professional career and feel confident

to just do whatever they ask me to do.

I didn't do camera after that, but I mean, I felt like I could.

That is something that I hadn't really thought of before, is that because

we've all worked so many jobs in GVTV, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes

because we wanted to experiment.

We had touched all the departments.

Film and broadcast classes really made sure that we, worked on everything, but

we were like nose to the grindstone in GVTV and in all these different positions.

I hadn't really thought of that before.

That's really cool.

So Jamie round us out here, what did you go into GVTV thinking you wanted to do?

Is that how you ended up on the other side, and what

did you learn along the way?

I came into GVTV, like most film students, as a freshman I wanted

to be a writer and director.

But I also gravitated towards the news show right away because I

was on my high school news team.

Instead of learning all the things that I loved doing in filmmaking, I think GVTV

taught me all things that I really hated.

So there was like a hot second where I was like, editing's

cool, and then I very quickly was like, no I can't do this all day.

And I learned that I didn't want to pursue news, I didn't wanna act, and so

I learned a lot of things where I was like, "okay, that's not what I wanna do."

It also taught me by the time I became Station Manager that we had a

lot of cooks in the kitchen at GVTV.

We had a lot of personalities, we had a lot of opinions, and when you're

the President of the station you just have like a lot of people telling you

what they think is right or wrong.

And I think that was a really valuable lesson for me of managing chaos.

I learned that I loved managing chaos as much as it drives me crazy, I do love

high pressure intensity things and I do like dealing with a lot of personalities.

That's a skill that has definitely carried me through my career in

Production Management and Producing.

Being able to handle a lot of opinions and listening to them, making

sure everyone is heard, but also saying, "I hear you, but this is the

direction we're going." And having more of a stronger voice as a leader.

So I think being essentially a kid leading 50 students, was a very

terrifying experience for me, but I also learned a lot from that.

And I think it really helped me in my career being in rooms with a lot

of people and a lot of opinions.

That is so cool.

'Cause I would expect, technical skills to be something on that list, but you're

totally right that learning all of those soft skills really helped set us up in,

in ways that weren't just technical.

So I think we've done a pretty good job talking about, what we learned at GVTV and

how that affects our professional lives.

But I feel like with this group especially there's this other

social component that's happening.

So, let's wrap this up by just talking about your friendship

and how does that look today?

And, what did that look like in GVTV?

I think me and Bobby spent more time with each other than anyone

else in our lives, through GVTV, through classes, and everything.

When I think about my time at Grand Valley, I just think of being next

to Bobby in some shape or form.

But everyone here is a friend of mine and these are friendships that have

carried on well past college and stuff.

To this day people have shown up for me in really bad times and really good times.

We've celebrated at weddings together, we've met at funerals together.

We've really run the gamut.

And it's crazy to think it was just because we all showed up on a Wednesday

night somewhere and we're like, "Do you wanna make Cheese Roommate?" And because

of that now, like we're so spread out throughout the country and doing totally

different careers, but, every time I get together with any of these people, I feel

like I'm back in 2013 at Grand Valley.

McKenzie you wanna touch on those?

I mean, Erin and I have the easiest one.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah,

We're married.

So Erin, you had told us that you were brought into GVTV to be someone's

wing man, but, I mean, obviously uh you and McKenzie are married.

Can we just talk a little bit about how that happened?

It's really funny because we didn't actually date at any

point during our time at GV.

We were aware of each other but, uh, McKenzie was in a long-term

relationship and I was just being a crazy person in college.

But we really did get to know each other really well through mostly GVTV.

Because like I had other friend groups and as hard as I tried to pull McKenzie

into them, she was always somewhere else.

I don't know.

We just formed that bond and so by the time school had wrapped up

we both coincidentally ended up getting news jobs in Grand Rapids

for competing news stations.

And I needed a roommate 'cause I was moving out of Allendale.

And I needed one too.

So we ended up moving in together 'cause we were like, I know you're not gonna

steal my stuff because we know each other.

And it took about eight months of living together to realize that

we were more than just roommates.

That is beautiful.

Who officiated your wedding?

Oh, uh, Len O'Kelly was our wedding officiant.

On campus.

GVTV has a big running theme through our literal marriage.

I mean, our wedding theme was red carpet, so we took the TV and

the film thing very seriously.

Yeah, talk about a premier night, huh?

Christina, I feel like you also, have had some really good friendships and

you also were in GVTV with your sister.

Do you want to tie this all up, bring it home, and talk about how

much you love all these people?

I don't know how much more I can say other than I do love you guys.

I was reading some of my old journals to refresh my memory about what was

happening at the time and everything.

And I'll like read a journal entry from like the beginning of freshman

year, and it's like, "Oh, I'm so lonely. I don't have any friends,

blah, blah, blah." But then by the end it was like, "I love GVTV. Every

single one of these people is my best friends." you guys all became my circle.

And by the end of college, you guys were friends for life and everything.

There's obviously been some time that has passed since we've all caught up with

each other, but it doesn't feel that way.

it feels like, I was just talking to you yesterday, like we were sitting

in our meeting room on Wednesday night just chatting with each other.

Well, I don't think we could say anything better than that.

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