For 15 years, Central Oregon Community College has had its own television channel. Broadcast engineer, Eugen Helmbrecht has been restoring and developing the channel for the past four years.
“COCC TV can be accessed via Bend Broadband channel 218, and a schedule of programming is available on the COCC website,” said Laura Boehme, assistant director of information technology at COCC.
The channel runs at all hours and features college news, announcements, college hour, student and faculty interviews and occasionally documentaries, according to Boehme.
COCC TV originated from when classes used to be broadcasted via local television. When that was discontinued, the station changed its focus to the broadcasting of student life.
“Social life is just as important as the educational process,” said Helmbrecht. Currently, student life is announced to students via three different sources–The Broadside, The COCC youtube channel (youtube.com/user/coccvideo), and COCC TV.
“COCC TV has two main goals,” Helmbrecht said. “The first of these is to bring the social life to the students by highlighting the best of students hobbies, music and sports. The second of these is to give exposure of COCC to parents and the local community.”
Helbrecht would like to see COCC TV flourish into a higher quality and more developed channel, such as the channels for Palomar Community College in California and Portland Community College, which both receive high traffic.
“We have been talking recently about getting students more involved in videography, photography and production,” Boehme said. “We’d like to get students to take on roles in the development and review of channel material.”
To reach this goal, COCC TV will need more student volunteers who wish to get involved, and opportunities for work study are available.
Rosalinda Corning
The Broadside
