To discover the newest addition to on-campus living, students need only to grab the remote control. Six new channels - Cartoon Network, UPN, MTV2, ESPNews, ESPNclassic and Fox News - broadcast on channels 36 through 42 have been recently added to the basic cable package for students in the residence halls and the on-campus apartments.
The Spectrum is pleased to see that the Residence Halls are actively taking steps to improve student entertainment. The choice of channels, however, seems to revolve almost entirely on entertainment. None of the new channels focus on educational content like networks such as C-SPAN or the Discovery and Learning Channels. Television fundamentally alters the way our entire society communicates, and it seems that the programming on a college campus be more intellectual.
Falls Earth Station, Inc. is UB's cable provider and offers UB news stations in the form of bundled packages. For example, ESPNclassic and ESPNews are sold as a group. This means that UB cannot simply select particular stations, but must select groups they feel will meet the students' wishes.
Falls Earth Chief Executive Officer Jerry Barnes said his company seeks to provide the best value to students, but ultimately the university makes all subscription choices and thus takes cost into consideration.
"ESPN raises their rates 20 percent each and every year," Barnes said, and added that ESPN "costs almost as much as everything else on the system combined." Because UB provides ESPN, it must forego other channels because of budgetary constraints.
Apparently the campus residents made the choice of what stations to add, since a survey was conducted to determine the viewing needs of students, according to UB Residence Halls Associate Director Pete Niland.
Though the UB Residence Hall Association conducted the survey, RHA President Daniel Hall said he was unaware his organization had the power to select campus channels. According to Hall, RHA has not made a channel recommendation for the past three years.
While it is somewhat unclear who made the final selection of new channels for the standard package, the survey results show that students have only themselves to blame if they dislike the new programming. The new channels reflect the students' wishes and it is unfortunate that students chose cartoons, music videos and sports over more thought-provoking programming, but in the end, at least UB has shown that students truly can influence what kind of entertainment the university provides.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
