Mornings on the Hill
Mornings on the Hill (MOTH) is a weekly web show that is broadcasted live to the Syracuse campus community. The show focuses on the campus and surrounding neighborhoods and covers a wide range of topics.
MOTH is an one-credit elective for seniors and graduate students that meets Wednesday mornings from 7 AM – 11 AM.
Students have to do a lot of work outside of class because they don’t have a lot of time before the show airs live at 10:00 AM. After students pitch their stories and get them approved, they go out to shoot and edit them.
MOTH includes profiles of students, faculty and staff, and others associated with the University community. Students also cover events and trending issues on campus.
Students in MOTH play a number of different roles. Those interested in producing rotate roles as; executive producer, line producer, and associate producer. Those students are in charge of putting the newscast together every week and supervising their fellow students, as far as stories and content.
There is another pool of students that rotate roles as anchors and reporters. These students serve as on-air talent and they are the ones that go out and cover the stories.
Students who enroll in MOTH benefit from having the opportunity to play multiple roles.
“I think that it is always a good opportunity, particularly for students who tend to be interested in either production or on-air work,” says Professor Suzanne Lysak, who teaches the course. I think it’s always good to get as much experience as possible in all of these roles.
Lysak said that students who are interested in being on-air talent benefit from playing the role of a producer. They get to see what is going on behind the scenes, and it directly impacts what is expected of them, as far as their on camera work.
“It tells any employer – rather that’d be in news or not – these students have experienced the pressure of going live and have had to meet deadlines,” said Lysak. And if they’re not in news, they know these students have had to work together as a team, there is great pressure that they have had to deal with, they had to learn to take a lot of information and collate it, find out what’s most important and present it in a coherent fashion.”
Watching the students develop and learn how to work together is Lysak’s favorite part of teaching the course.
“To see them become more comfortable each week and to work as a team,” said Lysak. They figure out where they need to support each other, particularly in the hour before they go live. They figure what they need and people step up and help out. So, it’s good to see them work as a team and accomplish that goal of getting a newscast live.
Mornings on the Hill streams live on the Orange Television Network (OTN) website every Wednesday from 10:00am-10:30am in the fall and 10:00am-11:00am in the spring. Viewers can also watch MOTH on the campus cable channel 14.1.
