David Crossley

I was the person who started York Student TV in November 1967. Initially it was a combined film/TV production outfit called "York University Tele-Film Productions" - a clumsy name which lasted less than a year and bit the dust when the film part was hived off into a separate student society.

The original idea came from a lecturer in the Education Department at York whose name I now forget. I was a Biology and Education student who was peripherally involved in student filmmaking that was then part of the student Drama Society. The Education Department had just acquired some early video equipment, together with three technical guys to run it and essentially didn't know what to so with it. The lecturer suggested to me that I should start a student TV society to make use of the equipment and the whole thing took off from there.

I initially gathered together a group of 10 to 20 people, I think by putting up on notice on college noticeboards. We met every Monday evening in the little meeting room overlooking the Langwith dining room (is is still there?). At these meetings we discussed ideas for the weekly 'news magazine' programme we called 'Newsround', wrote some scripts and generally had a good time. Script writing was made easier because a couple of our members (not me) could type and one, (Sieta Rijkelijkhuizen who later became station director and who now also lives in Australia) actually owned a portable typewriter which was a great boon.

We produced 'Newsround' on (I think) a Wednesday afternoon in the 'studio' in the basement of the Chemistry building. We had two cameras on dollys and the vision switching (such as it was) was done by the senior technical officer employed by the University. Cameras were operated sometimes by the other technicians and sometime by trusted students (a couple of our members had worked as camera operators in broadcast television).

The first couple of "Newsrounds' were pre-recorded and I remember watching the first one in the Langwith common room surrounded by our production team and a couple (only) of curious students. We soon went to live programmes which made the whole production process much more exciting.

I now live in Sydney, Australia and have been in Australia for 40 years - I came here after graduating from York in 1968. I initially came to Australia to do a PhD but dropped out of that one. I then became, for four years, an educational TV producer at a university in Sydney - the only job in which I used my experience with YSTV. I did get a PhD several years later, spent some time working for government, and now run my own consultancy company providing advice on energy and environmental policy and programs.

YSTV was actually very important to my personal and professional development. It gave me my first experience of starting an organisation from scratch - I've started several others during the last 40 years. YSTV also gave me my first experience of leading and managing a team of people and I'm very grateful to that initial group who put up with my inexperience and enabled me to learn a great deal.

I come to the UK about once a year to visit my father (who's now 91) and my sister who live south of Manchester. It's possible that I could come to York during one of these visits if anybody would be interested in talking with me. I'd certainly be interested to see where YSTV has got to 40 years later. I'm actually very proud that my baby survived all this time and is still going strong.