Yalies finally make it to the small screen

It's 10 p.m. on the Monday night before spring break, and the Trumbull library is full of students cramming for exams and hammering out papers. Other than the clatter of keyboards and the mumbling of a student hunched over a molecular biology textbook, the place is silent. But in the meeting room upstairs, Beth Deters, TC '04, can barely sit still.

EUGENE WONG/YH

"This is a great opportunity," Deters says excitedly as she flips through production contracts, programming schedules, website printouts, and ad samples. "We are the first people to do this, and I think we can develop it into a wonderful creative outlet for students." Deters is talking about Teli, the Internet television station she and a group of fellow freshmen have been quietly planning for several months. When Teli—the name is a play on the word television and the name Eli—begins broadcasting on Mon., Mar. 26, it will cap a nearly five-year campaign to put Yale students on the small screen. Many students have in the past tried to launch a TV station on the unused channels Yale rents from Comcast Cable, only to be rebuffed by the Administration. But it was Deters' willingness to accept the unconventional medium of Internet broadcast and her eagerness to embrace an eclectic coalition of interested students that has propelled Teli from concept to reality.

The current dream of a Yale student television station dates back to 1997, when the University agreed to rent seven channels from Comcast for its internal programming. Three of the channels were put to use; two carry the SCOLA international news network (which, due to a technical glitch, displayed still images of a boat and a refrigerator all fall), and one is used by the Language Lab. But that leaves four channels that simply carry a blue screen and the words "Yale Vision."

ERIN LEWIS/YH From left to right: Gil Doron, TD '04, Samantha Culp, TD '04, Josh Lockman, SM '04, and Beth Deters, TC '04.  These enterprising Teli-tubbies are paving the way for the first generation of Yale TV..

In September 1997, Dan Levy, CC '00, and Bill Marino, TC '01, tried to fill the dead air, calling student TV "the next new wave at Yale." The duo asked the University if they could televise their talk show, DJ Thunderballz and Bill, which featured, among other guests, a dancing orangutan. Levy and Marino were told that Yale needed to form an "advisory board" to review programs. Unfortunately, the board never materialized, DJ Thunderballz was never televised, and after only one episode (which was shown in the Trumbull common room), the idea faded into oblivion.

Students have entertained other ideas since then, such as broadcasting recently released videos, but the problem that remained was Yale's unwillingness to cooperate. Shortly after Yale first acquired the channels, Provost Alison Richard, GRD '86, convened a committee to study their best use. Chaired by Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske, JE '74, the committee determined the channels should be developed, possibly for student programming. The Administration as a whole rejected the suggestion, however. At the time, Meeske explained that the other administrators "were worried that they would fill up the space for the empty channels [and] that there would be no room for new technology in the future." Meeske said Richard feared a "political battle" with students if the University first aired student programming and then later decided the channels should be put to other uses. With no clear plan, Yale Vision's future remained uncertain.

When Deters arrived on campus this fall, she was determined to resurrect the idea of student programs on Yale's unused channels. At first she seemed to be making headway, bringing her plans to several key administrators, including Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg. Ultimately though, Deters ran into the same problems as those before her. "Yale remained cautious about releasing the channels," Deters says. "Administrators were really concerned about issues of liability and review, and I realized that even if we made it through all the red tape, there would not be as much freedom in what we could broadcast." Increasingly frustrated with the Administration's foot-dragging and determined to get a Yale TV station off the ground, Deters decided that the Internet, with its freedom and low costs, would be the ideal medium.

Deters realized she would not be able to launch an Internet station on her own, however. She turned to Gil Doron, TD '04, a possible film major, to develop programming for Teli. Deters also tapped Alexander Clark, PC '04, a consultant for Microsoft and the software guru behind Yalestation.org, to develop the technology Teli would need. And in order to get the word out, Josh Lockman, SM '04, and Samantha Culp, TD '04, joined the fledgling station as "promotion directors."

Such a diverse cast of characters often leads to interesting discussions. At a recent meeting, Clark debated which video encoding format to use while Lockman and Culp planned a launch party. Doron, meanwhile, bristled at even calling Teli a television station. "We're not TV—we're a new platform for local artists. We're calling ourselves an online TV station because there's no other name yet for what we do, he said. "It's like radio in the early days, which was just vaudeville. No one back then had any idea what to put on the air. We have no way of predicting what we will become. Just consider Teli to be a sort of online art space." Deters struggles to command all this chaos as Teli quickly approaches its broadcast launch.

Even when Teli finally premieres, its founders will still have to address whether students will watch videos on their computers. Commercial attempts to broadcast Internet TV do not offer much hope. Even before the recent market downturn, several prominent Internet broadcasters were forced out of business because they failed to attract visitors. Pseudo Networks, which originally aired Internet radio, collapsed soon after it began broadcasting video. And DEN.net, which was backed by high-profile investors such as Microsoft, died when its ambitious plan to produce and air its own content proved too expensive.

But these companies were beset by many problems that will not be an issue at Yale. The main problem that commercial Internet broadcasters faced was the connection speed of their viewers. Watching video over conventional modems is simply unfeasible since it requires interminable download times. But since Teli will be hosted by the Yalestation.org server, on the high-speed Yale network, video will be able to play almost instantly. Commercial Internet broadcasters also hoped to reach the general public, which is generally much slower to adopt new technology than college students. In the age of MP3s, Yale students have already grown accustomed to thinking of their computers as stereos. Watching TV online does not seem like a much larger conceptual leap. Finally, Teli will not face the cost of producing its own content, which was a burden on other Internet broadcasters. Teli will work side-by-side with Yale film organizations such as UPIX. As Doron puts it, "We want to promote them rather than turn them off or compete with them."

Teli officially launches Saturday, with a public bash at 279 Crown St. A few shows will be up over the weekend at www.teli.tv for students who wish to explore the new station. And on Monday, Teli will begin airing its full spring lineup. Doron emphasizes that this season is only "a pilot for Teli—we are experimenting with a novel medium. This semester we will learn the abilities and limitations of running an online video-on-demand station." Short five to 15-minute shows will air this spring. Teli has acquired the rights to clips of YPU debates, which have included notable figures such as Ralph Nader and Larry Flynt. Some of Yale's sketch comedy groups have already signed up for shows, and Teli hopes more will follow. Doron's personal pet project is a bizarre Romanian news show that he says "relies on associational editing and the Kulashov effect." Even though all the videos will be accessible at any time, Teli hopes to organize its shows into "programming blocks," such as the "weekend slot." Deters said this group of Tom Green-esque comedies would be designed for students "who might be coming home from a `mind-expanding' night of partying."

Teli has even more ambitious plans for next season. Doron hopes that in the fall, Teli will air full-length student films (edited into 20-minute segments) in addition to new programming. Current plans call for a reality-based "Yale Cops" program, and a General Hospital soap-opera parody called "DUH." Farther in the future, Doron hopes to air some of Yale's many student-produced plays and start a theater criticism show.

Of course, all these future plans depend on how students take to the new station. Despite careful planning, this is the biggest challenge Teli's founders face. As a publicity stunt last week, Doron planned to throw old TVs out of his dorm window and shout, "Television is dead!" Just how dead remains to be seen.

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