COM Department Secures New Broadcast Production Lab

The Communications Department has acquired a new broadcasting space that will allow its majors new opportunities to work and create media in a professional-caliber production studio. The new broadcasting studio is projected to be in working order by late Fall of 2021 and is being made possible through funding from the Dean's Office of the College of Arts & Humanities.

The Communications Department hasn't had a dedicated broadcasting space since 1980, which was then a TV studio that was ultimately given away to the Digital Media Arts Department by the dean at that time. In recent years, the three programs that make up the Communications Department, Advertising and Public Relations, Journalism, and Film, Television and Media Studies, have been working and learning in the Field House, a computer lab located on the CSUDH campus.

CSUDH introduced the Broadcast Journalism course to the Journalism Program only a couple of years ago. Still, with the announcement of the new broadcasting space, the program advisors have raised their expectations of what will now be possible.

The workroom will provide COM majors the opportunity to learn a range of skills required to succeed in future broadcasting careers by producing television and radio broadcasting programming in a hands-on communal environment, living-learning classroom and recording studio.

Not only will the workspace allow COM students to explore more about producing media content in a professional studio environment, it will also give the Journalism Program, in particular, a broadcasting space for bringing back Bulletin TV, a YouTube channel that is the broadcast version of the student-run Bulletin Newspaper.

The studio room will also be home to workshops that will educate students on operating lighting, cameras, microphones and will give them the chance to learn what it's like to run a television studio. The space will also be used for courses such as Broadcast Journalism, where students will learn how to be a journalist in a broadcasting environment made for television.

It will also be used for lab time for COM 110/111, the Introduction to Digital Media Production course, and a place to create podcasts and audio recordings using isolation cubicles. Since the space will be used as a production studio for the Communications Department, faculty will be able to meet with students or for small groups of students to collaborate and create a variety of media content.

The broadcasting studio is in Room 3600, located on the third floor of the University Library, the same floor as The Bulletin newsroom. It will have a green screen, a news desk, and space for lighting and cameras, making it a functioning news studio on a smaller scale. It is taking over what was formally the Promoting Excellence in Graduate Studies (PEGS) office.

Dr. Fernando Severino, a new Journalism professor at CSUDH, will be the Bulletin advisor as of Fall 2021 and has the most experience in broadcast journalism within the Communications Department. Dr. Severino is well-versed in journalism. He worked for five years as the International News editor at CNN Chile, the Chilean version of the 24-hour news network, as well as the Marketing Communications Specialist for the 3M headquarters in St. Paul, Minn. He has also worked on an international documentary project about the fall of the former Soviet Union.

"The broadcasting space will bring tremendous experience," says Dr. Severino. "I will use it in my courses to teach about editing and make it relatable to my field experiences."

The broadcasting space is enhancing expectations and experience throughout the Communications Department's programs and has been a wish list contribution that was long sought after.

By working together, the Communications faculty and students will soon have the means to write, create and manage high-quality programming and content to strengthen the already strong curriculum and learning outcomes that the Communications Department offers to its students.

"It will prepare the students for what it's like to be in the newsroom," added Dr. Severino, "and it will teach them how to speak appropriately in front of a camera," something he says is not easily done via remote learning or in a underqualified setting.