Alumnus News
1970s Broadcasting Reunion
Left to right: Dennis Majewski, Thom Cornelis, Bill Bund, Joe Tenerelli, Cheryl (McClennahan) Kuba, Tom Brooks, Chris (Johnson) Maggee, Scott Reid, Dennis Douglas, Kat Johns, Tom Akers and Joe Torrell
The Department of Broadcasting held its seventh annual recognition banquet on Friday, April 24, 2009. The department recognized William F. Bund III as our alumnus of the year. Bill graduated in 1976. Bill is Senior Vice-President for Disney/ABC. He is based in Chicago. 22 alumni from the Department of Broadcasting attended the banquet and 14 of the 22 alumni graduated in the 1970s.
Scott Reid and Rick Heath
The weekend of April 24-26, 2009 was also the 1970s reunion "Stuck in the 70s." The reunion was conceived and organized by Scott Reid, alum from 1978. The Banquet was held from 5PM to 8PM followed by a Meet and Greet at the Pace 8PM to closing time. On Saturday April 25th "Stuck in the '70s" @WIUS 10:00-noon.
Scott hosted a radio show. Alums gathered at the student radio station and shared stories, toured the TV Station and WIUM 1 PM followed by an Uptown Pub Crawl at 8PM. The reunion group met Sunday for a Goodbye Breakfast at 10AM at the Ponderosa. Approximately 20 alums from the 1970s came back for the weekend.
Student News
Broadcasting at the Summit League
Camera operator — Courtney Voelz
Western Illinois clinched the top seed in the 2009 Summit League Softball Championship after finishing a top the regular-season standings with a 21-2 league record. North Dakota State earned the No. 2 seed, while Centenary and Southern Utah will be the third and fourth seeds, respectively.
And Broadcasting will be delivering the play by plays.
Announcers — Derek Diesner and Jon Stockton
The double-elimination tournament will be held Friday and Saturday, May 8-9, at Mary Ellen McKee Softball Stadium on the Western Illinois University-Macomb campus. The winner of The Summit League title will earn the league's automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.
Read more about the championship.
Faculty News
Sam Edsall and colleagues from the Mobile Computing Task Force presented how they incorporate mobile computing into their curriculums at TechFest 2009.
Edsall attended the National Association of Broadcaster's convention in Las Vegas. He reports that he saw some new technologies in the making including the following:
- 3DTV That's 3-dimensional television that is currently in development. The company that created the ad for the Monsters vs. Aliens movie trailer at the Super Bowl halftime was there. They used the red-blue technique that has been around for ages, but now a polarized version is showing great promise. Like the red-blue 3D technique, you still need to wear glasses, but the glasses are not tinted so there is no color distortion. It's kind of eerie watching television like you are looking out a window, but it's simply remarkable.
- NHK, Japan's television network showcased its ultra high-definition television. Our HDTV sets can display images with up to 1024 vertical scan lines. NHK's new system has over 4,000 lines of resolution! They see this system being used not so much to television in the near future as they do for the film industry. The clarity of the image rivaled that of a big screen movie theatre and they had such a theatre set up to prove it. There were a couple of other neat things like the vendors that made the CNN holograms for their election coverage. You could wait in line and become a hologram yourself if you wanted to. Star Trek here I come!
Department of Broadcasting Website.
