From left Assistant City Manager Tom Ritter, Councilman Mike Woiwode, Superintendent Jeffrey Felix, CoSA director Shane Schmeichel, Coronado High School Principal Jenny Moore, School Board President Dawn Ovrom, and City Manager Blair King.
Coronado TV launched officially yesterday afternoon with a ribbon cutting ceremony at its studios on the Coronado High School Campus.
The station is a “share-use partnership” with the Coronado Unified School District and the City of Coronado. Through the Coronado School of the Arts (CoSA), the district is providing the production and on-air talent. CoSA also hired broadcast veteran Tony Perri to serve as the station’s executive producer.
Coronado TV Executive Producer Tony Perri with some of his crew members
The city gave the district $20,000 towards the equipment and access to Coronado’s channel 19. The station, which airs on Time-Warner, previously offered a steady diet of event schedules interspersed with city council, city boards and commissions, and school board meeting.
For the past two months Coronado TV has been steadily adding original programing created by students.
Their signature show is “Crown City”, hosted by Andria Olmo. Once a month the show features a community leader. This month it is Andre Zotoff, general manager of the Hotel del Coronado.
Other recent features included student coverage of the Coronado Schools Foundation fundraiser, as well as a piece on the Armchair Travel lecture series at the Coronado Senior Center. This summer they will cover the Fourth of July Parade and a dance program at the Celebrate Oz Festival in August.
The production team is also creating public service announcement for the city. Currently, one such PSA is running relating to the new city-wide smoking ban, and plans are underway for the creation of a PSA about the summer shuttle.
Besides Time Warner’s channel 19, the new programing can also be seen on AT&T channel 99 and online at CoronadoTV.me by clicking the Coronado Live TV tab at the top of the page.
Two months ago, none of the high school students had any broadcasting experience. In fact, none of them were enrolled in CoSA. “We didn’t want to disrupt the digital arts program at CoSA, said Perri. Instead, he reached out to the general student population.
Jeffrey Felix, Dawn Ovrom center, Merridee Brook, Coronado TV’s Director of Sponsorship.
Perri has a great deal of experience in television production, having worked for Walt Disney Productions and KPIX in San Francisco. For the past six years he has operated his own production company, Surf’s Up Studios. And in addition to running the station, Perri teaches boardcasting at CoSA.
The joint venture was hatched last fall. “It was a way to make something out of something that wasn’t really doing anything,” said Rich Brady, President of the CoSA Foundation.
“It’s a win-win for the City to have an enthusiastic pool of students, an experienced producer and executive director, and support from the school district,” said Mayor Casey Tanaka
For the district it “fulfills two goals – a communication forum for our children and [an opportunity to] increase learning,” said Superintendent Jeffrey Felix.
City Manager Blair King, left, talking to Rich Brady CoSA Foundation President before the ribbon cutting ceremony.
Felix sees Coronado TV as an expansion of the district’s digital media programs at the high school and middle school, which he said would eventually include the elementary schools. “Both schools [Village and Strand] now have video programs for fifth graders.”
At the ceremony, Perri singled out middle school teacher Amy Steward for her contributions to the new station. She established a digital media lab at the middle school three years ago.
“Fifty person of the programming we have now on Coronado TV is from KCMS,” Perri told the Coronado Eagle. “They create packages every day and it’s good stuff. Amy has been integral in getting us to launch. She has wanted to see this happen as well.”
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Gloria Tierney
Staff Writer
eCoronado.com
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