MCTV news, live for six hours of election coverage

A presidential election will only happen once during your college career. MCTV, not missing their opportunity to make history, hosted an unprecedented six hour live event, bringing coverage of the 2004 presidential election to the college community.

As the final countdown began, the newsroom fell silent as these students realized the magnitude and significance of their undertaking. Ralph Filardo III, executive producer of the show and director of news, MCTV, decided during the summer that this project was something the club should aim for.

"We knew about a month ago that we were definitely going to do this, and prepared for three weeks straight," Filardo said.

The program, entitled 'Rock the Vote 2004, America Decides,' was hosted by six anchors; Ralph Filardo, Amer Nabil, Louis Ortiz, Kate Dayman, Christina Garibaldi and Joanne Brakatselos.

The 26 staff members on hand throughout the night were in charge of cameras, lighting, teleprompter and graphics.

Even though the anchors' and crew's preparation for the night spanned three weeks, going live meant dealing with news as it happened and scripts were written and rewritten throughout the night as the poll results came in.

In addition to straight news coverage, reporters were sent out into the field to gather student perspectives on the election for a dorm challenge competition. The sophomores were declared the winners of this competition, in which they were asked questions regarding this and prior year's presidential elections.

Live in-studio guests were interviewed, including Marist Poll representatives Greg Morse and Jon Sumler, and SGA representatives Linda Crane, Rachel Mills, Ken Juras and Brandan Lee, who each represented a different political view and discussed their feelings on several different topics including education, health and taxation policies. Keith Strudler, Keith Kindred and Daniel Calandro participated in a live 'fact or fiction' discussion moderated by anchor Nabil.

Live feeds of interviews with MIPO director Lee Miringoff and the chief editor of Florida Today, Earnest Arico, provided a discussion about the controversy behind the votes in Florida and the effect the state might have on this year's election.

Daymon, a senior member of MCTV, thought this was a great experience for all those involved, including herself.

"As for Marist College, what more could the students ask for than live TV?" Daymon said. "Hopefully we can do it more in the future."

Tim O'Leary, chief engineer, MCTV, played a large role in making this entire project possible. Leary encouraged the club to try out new equipment, including earpieces for the anchors, which allowed them to get live updates as they were reporting. He also designed the patriotic set used during the program.

The Media Center helped get the studio ready for the live feed and provided tech support.

In addition, a new graphics system was used, as well as a new switcher, which provided transitions from shot to shot.

When the anchors and guests were not on camera, live CNN and WMAR feed was used to fill air time.

Nabil is especially proud of how far the club, which was named Club of the Year last year, has come since he joined as a freshman.

"At times it brought tears to my eyes to realize how far the club has come," Nabil said. "It used to be that MCTV news could barely get a weekly program, now here we are doing live coverage."