Good Morning Campus

Good Morning Campus
Genre:	Magazine
Broadcast:	27th June 2005
Producer(s):	Jonathan Bufton Kat Sutton

Unrelated to the earlier Good Morning Campus (see later).

In May 2005, after stopping doing the station's scheduling after two years, Jonathan Bufton wrote a spoof YSTV listings page on the YSTV Messageboard. It included a breakfast show, and a number of respondants said they'd like to do a breakfast show actually at breakfast time (unlike previous breakfast shows broadcast at more "studenty" times).

It was decided that the show would be broadcast 7am-9.30am on the Monday of the last week of the summer term (27th June 2005), presented by Jonathan and Kat Sutton (who surely one day will be doing it for real!) and have a theme of looking ahead to the summer as well as looking back at the year's output. Also featured were weather reports "live" from Central Hall balcony with YSTV's weatherman Anthony Laverty and spoof regional news sections (complete with BBC style dodgy opt-outs) from such exotic newsrooms as Derwent Digest.

The show followed the format of others such as BBC Breakfast and GMTV by following a set schedule, with certain elements repeated for those tuning in. The format decided upon had "news" features in the first fifteen minutes, followed by weather at quarter past. There was then an interview, followed by regional news. The second half hour would begin with a round-up of the headlines, followed by a paper review and highlights of YSTV Week that year - complete with weather at quarter to and more regional news at the top of the hour. An ident and title sequence would feature every thirty minutes (complete with a special James Bond-themed promo featuring shows from the last academic year, ending with the tagline "Licence To Thrill" - yes really!).

On air, complete with clock

In order to make it look more like a real breakfast show the producers requested an on-air clock to be made for the show. Due to the pressures of the end of term this didn't happen, but amazingly minutes before the show went on air some helpful techie types had the idea to shrink YSTV's clock so it was superimposed on-screen throughout the show, wiping off seamlessly for junctions every half hour and segments with captions.

The two BBC mugs on the coffee table (which itself belonged to Kate Rushworth) were purchased especially for use on the show from BBC Television Centre during the stoic visit the previous week!

To give the show a breakfasty, summery feel it was planned to present the show from YSTV's new sofa on the grass outside the control room, with contingency plans to put it in front of the YSTV Week set should there be rain. Luckily the weather didn't disappoint, but presenting outside didn't come without its problems. A large sheet of chipboard had to be placed underneath the sofa to stop it sinking, and after about half an hour on air the rising sun caused the pre-arranged camera angles to be rendered useless by glare from the sun. During the regional news VT this was rectified with the hi-tech use of sheets of A4 paper taped to the cameras!

In the last half hour of the show things began to conspire against the production...firstly the university's giant grass-cutter-van-thing started roaring around Goodricke, meaning the links had to be shouted and there was a very real possibility we'd have to come off air early should they demand to cut the grass outside the station. Secondly, the playout computer froze at the moment a VT was due to be played out leaving the presenters filling for a couple of minutes while it was reset. Finally, outgoing SU Welfare Officer John Rose had agreed to be interviewed at the end of the programme, and caused a huge panic off-air when he didn't turn up until one minute before his slot was due on. Luck however was shining on us and the show finally went off air at 9.29am as planned, with the crew heading over to the Roger Kirk Centre for breakfast.

The show was repeated all week and is still available to watch on the YSTV Watch Online site. It was also Kat Sutton's final appearance on YSTV.

Behind the scenes photos can be seen on [YSTV's website].

Curiously a programme of exactly the same name and very similar concept was broadcast on YSTV almost exactly ten years earlier. At the time it had virtually no notable representation in the YSTV archive and all the members who worked on it were long since gone and out of touch with the station, so the coincidence is remarkable. It is documented here.