What would you get if you mixed Fairfield students with “American Gladiators”-type events?
The HAM Channel , Fairfield’s student television channel, has recently unveiled that it will be producing the first ever “F.U. Olympics,” in connection with IRHA’s Spring Weekend.
Dan Kole ’09, executive producer for the project, said the “F.U. Olympics” will chronicle almost all of the events of Spring Weekend, which is slated to take place on April 26, but with a twist.
Events such as dodgeball, three-legged races, pie-eating contests and balloon shaving will provide the content for the special. The activities will be filmed and then story lines, play-by-play voice-overs and color commentary will be added in post-production to create a humorous spin on the events.
There are also plans to have news anchors, reporters and a news desk right in the middle of the day’s activities.
Broadcast manager Dave Grazynski described it as “an offbeat sports broadcast to match the offbeat sporting events that they [IRHA] are hosting throughout the day.”
The primary goal of the special is to highlight the HAM Channel’s talents and produce a comedic take on the activities.
“The ‘F.U. Olympics’ special at May Day [Spring Weekend] will be a collection of fun and games geared towards making people laugh,” said HAM Channel president John Daly ’08.
“Taking the dodge ball tournament and doing play-by-play or having rock wall races will make for good television when done right by our creative and writing staff,” he said.
Ending the night, as a sort of closing ceremony to the “F.U. Olympics,” will be a concert, potentially by a big name artist, according to Kole.
The new event takes the place of the Channel’s StagAwards, an awards show that highlighted the best things of the year on campus. Both Kole and Daly cited low attendance and interest in the event as the primary reasons for making the change to the new special.
“It [the StagAwards] was just simply not drawing the crowds we were hoping and expecting,” said Kole.
Due to this, the Channel decided to “to focus our strengths towards an event that would draw a bigger audience,” said Daly. This decision is a part of an initiative to restructure the channel.
Just this year, the HAM Channel made the decision to switch to YouTube as its primary outlet, versus the traditional closed-circuit television channel, which is only available on campus.
However, not everyone on campus is so optimistic about the event.
Several students named the HAM Channel’s low viewership and lack of campus presence as reasons for doubting the special.
“I don’t think that people really watch the HAM Channel,” said Rob Bonner ’11. “I think there are good things on the HAM Channel, that should be seen by a bigger audience, but the support is not there currently on campus.”
Others, Joe Calvaruso ’11, who find the idea “pretty cool,” are excited for it. “I’d participate in it – I’d be an animal in it too.”
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