David Crossley: Difference between revisions

I was the person who started York Student TV in 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 had recently taken over the running of the student filmmaking activity that was then part of the 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 do 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 about 10 people, mainly through a student society stall at the beginning of the first term in October 1967 (an early manifestation of the event now known as Freshers Fair).  The group 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 - not a common skill among university students at that time.  One member actually owned a portable typewriter which we used extensively.  This was [[Sieta Rijkelijkhuizen]] who later became station director and who, like me, now lives in Australia.