I am not really sure what exactly I will be putting up on this blog, but I feel like I need a place to put down my ideas and thoughts on topics, in addition to allowing myself a place to explain various things about the channel at length. This seems like a better place to give behind the scenes information than Twitter, which was admittedly a stupid place to even think about using as a "Behind the Scenes" outlet...
Anyway, the overall tone of this blog is going to be very relaxed and candid. If something is happening that I don't like, then you will see it here in all it's gory detail. I want a reader to be able to understand why I am doing something even if they do not agree with that action, and I feel that the only way to do that is to explain my exact thoughts with regard to it.
Now, it is about time I got around to introducing myself. I am Alan Dreher, and I am the Administrator for the CWRU Movie Channel. The CWRU Movie Channel is a 24/7 TV channel, available to students at Case Western Reserve University, that plays movies. But that can mean a lot of different things. For example, when I took over the channel in January 2011, it was barely anything. It had movies and it operated 24/7, but that was about it. With 3 hour time slots(regardless of the actual length of the movie) and a repetitive programming schedule, it was about as barebones as it could possibly have been. For as much as it was costing the University and Ignite TV, it was really bad...
That is where I came into the fold. I had grand plans for the channel immediately. I saw an opening in the programming that the University offered us over the cable services, and I envisioned a student-run, student-operated HBO/Cinemax competitor, complete with the production values and presentation that would be expected from those channels. I will admit, this was a bit grandiose. But, by the end of the year, I felt like I had done what needed to be done. The channel was still clearly student run and wasn't even remotely HBO or Cinemax in terms of presentation quality, but the channel was at least interesting to look at and had something relevant on it at all times. Lately, that has turned into crafting videos that preview content coming to the channel. It has been a lot of work, but if the presentation isn't good enough then what is the point in having good movies?
It is an ongoing process, and we will continue improving the channel, but it is going to be slow until I get a larger staff behind me. I want to make and sell advertisements to put on the channel, so that hopefully it can become a self-sustaining platform or, at the very least, a larger channel with a greater number of movies per year.
I also want to cultivate a regular viewership, and to me that means engaging a community and building a group of fans. To do that, I need to serve the community, and I will field any and all community suggestions for movies that you want to see on the channel. The Facebook page will be used as a polling station to directly pick 4 movies that will be on the channel in any given month, and I will do my best to make sure that I can fit as many suggestions as possible into the schedule. Even if it was just one person suggesting a movie, if they want it enough and I can make it work, I want to make that happen.
But cultivating a viewership isn't just about listening to the community. I also need to build a viewing culture on the campus. We are all busy and we all have things that we need to do, but that doesn't mean that we can't make time for things that we enjoy. More often than not, the things we enjoy most are social. Viewing movies and viewing television can, and should, be social acts. My goal with the channel, and some of the social programming related to it, is to build a TV viewing culture on the campus that brings people together. One of the ways that I am looking at doing that is by presenting a Weekly Series. A regularly scheduled show that brings people together as they watch it. We have the ability to license HBO television shows, and I can't think of a better way to build a regular viewership than to offer content that can't be found anywhere else on this campus. Although we haven't decided exactly what we are going to be doing with it, I personally believe that offering Game of Thrones is a fantastic idea. It is a great series and definitely has an appeal across the campus. Taking advantage of that to arrange weekly viewing parties in individual dorms or other common areas, I think that having the show every week would build a TV viewing culture on the campus.
However, service doesn't need to end with the channel itself. Given the amount of money being spent, we need to offer convenience, and locking you at a box and telling you when to watch it doesn't seem like convenience to me. That is why one of the most exciting things about the upcoming semester is that we are going to begin offering On Demand content. Everything on the channel will be available to view anytime you want it simply by accessing a web portal. It will require a wired connection or VPN, but you can get access to it whenever and wherever you want it. I will probably do a one day delay on whatever Weekly Series we end up using just to encourage viewing the channel, but everything else will be available On Demand as soon as the new content starts up. This will amount to 90+ "free" movies, accessible On Demand, every year for Case Western Reserve students. Ultimately, this is a great thing to have, even if it was a nightmare making it actually happen... But that may be a story for another blog post...
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