Culinary Countdown
A lavish squandering of stereotyping and a slight smattering of personal experience would have you believe that we students are a breed of oven-phobes, quite content to seek sustenance in the form of fast food and baked beans heated on the radiator or whatever. LA1 TV’s soon to be released new show, ‘Culinary Countdown’, however, would have you believe that quite a few of us are confident to pit their dishes against each other before a panel of judges.
In joyous and patriotic keeping with collegiality, Culinary Countdown’s first episode will pit Furness and Pendle college’s most dexterous wielders of the knife against one another, in the hope of impressing a judging panel consisting of a fellow student and Louise Davies (manager of the Sugarhouse) strongly enough to progress to the next round.
Doesn’t ‘Ready, Steady, Cook!’ fill this space in our stomachs already? No, because Culinary Countdown is more creative than that; each episode will consist of a round of three challenges, designed to stretch creativity as well as cooking skills. Will McDonagh tells us to expect “three rounds of Roulette, but with a culinary twist”. What does he mean by this? He won’t say, so we’d best watch! If not to find out what the challenges are, then at least to see the competition move away from the colleges, and into the academic and media circles when the show will be hosting students vs lecturers, society vs society, etc.
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The Soundbooth
Do you like music? Sure you do, who doesn’t? Are you bored of the perforating and repetitive sounds of the Sugarhouse? One would hope so. So what excuse, therefore, do you have for not tuning in to ‘The Soundbooth’, the Lancaster University branch of MTV?
With a team dedicated to publicising the musical talent that the the University has to offer, ‘The Soundbooth’ often gives the lens a much needed shift away from the schlock in the charts and points it at our up and coming local artists. From Battle of the Bands to the Live Lounge, LA1 TV wants to ensure that every strum of the guitar, every bash of the drum and every gasp of the saxophone in the immediate vicinity is available for your listening pleasure, lest you miss them.
“Encore! Encore!”, you say? “Why should I bother when I can watch the music live?”, you ask? Well stick around for The Soundbooth’s bonus tones, as it flexes its maestronomical muscles, waves its baton at the hosts and conducts critical insight into albums and up-and-coming artists, with features on the likes of Kitty Daisy & Lewis. Diarise and ingest the coverage and footage of local festivals and gigs, and find out just WHERE the campus bands get their ideas from in the post gig interviews featured on the show.
The hill upon which this campus stands is alive with a mound of music, and LA1 TV wants you to hear it.
– Ronnie Rowlands
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The Scene
Silence in the auditorium, please turn off your mobile phones and relax… And now for our main feature; LA1 TV presents ‘The Scene’,brought to you in association with Vue Cinema. Whether your cinematic tastes lie in the piano accompanied black and white grains of the 1920s, or the slick CGI shine of the bombastic noughties, ‘The Scene’ is Lancaster University’s top platform for waxing enthusiastic over moviemaking, and LA1 TV’s answer to ‘Siske l& Ebert: At The Movies’. If it has been printed on 35mm film and run through a projector, then the show’s rotating collective of hosts and guests is going to talk about it.
‘The Scene’ doesn’t limit itself to mere reviews, either. LA1 TV has many angles to shoot, mounds of film to get through and a thoughtful eye; each episode is chock full of talk not just on the quality (or lack, thereof) of Hollywood’s latest hits, but of debate, discussion, features and musing expeditions across every landmark of anorakdom – there is not a genre, period, director or practioner left unturned.
Of course, such a show marches on its boffins, and ‘The Scene’ would be a poorly acted, poorly filmed and clunky one without an ensemble of celluloid conoisseurs and raconteurs of the six reeler. If you are any of those things, then get involved! The team at ‘The Scene’ are always after students who have watched far too many movies to talk about them, and let’s face it, you’d have to be silly to pass up the opportunity to get your face on the silver screen.
– Ronnie Rowlands
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The LA1 Show
If, like me, you rely on programmes such as This Morning to provide you with your daily dose of current affairs, then imagine if Holly and Phil tailored the show around recent events on campus. Stop banging on about Dancing on Ice Schofield, I want to know what the university’s ballroom dancing society is like. Well, LA1’s flagship show does just this.
The LA1 Show includes features such as ‘society spotlight’, allowing viewers to have a nosy at what goes on in certain societies before they have even stepped foot in the sports hall. The team also venture around campus to broadcast student opinion about recent events, as well as including interviews with some of the university big-wigs. Ranging from upbeat pieces about Lancaster nightlife to need-to-know information for any student, all wrapped up in nifty twenty minute episodes.
When speaking to the series producer, Will McDonagh, he told us a particular highlight so far was covering a piece about Lymphoma – “The charity was able to put us in touch with a cancer survivor who was willing to talk to us about her experience,” said McDonagh. However, it is the student interviews which reveal how utterly clueless we are about certain campus happenings – “The aim of the show was to get across news and features that people wanted more information about, or even better, stuff people were completely ignorant about.”
From next week LA1will be covering all the campus goings-on during the FTO Elections, so if you see one of the team with a microphone and camera, get your telly face ready and head over to say hello.
– Ellie Christie
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SugarTV
The Sugarhouse plays a huge part in most students’ experience at Lancaster and LA1 provide the perfect show to embody the shenanigans that take place there every single week. SugarTV is a portal into the social lives of our student population, with all the bits you can’t remember just a few clicks away.
You’ve peeled yourself off the bathroom floor and you’ve de-tagged the hideously unfortunate photos, it is time for the LA1 team to refresh your memory of last night’s events. SugarTV presenters go on the prowl to meet those of you that make the place worth going to. The ones who say ‘I have only skipped two lectures this week, and therefore I deserve to get inexplicably intoxicated’. As it happens, the people who make Sugar a great night out, make great TV as well.
Producer Will McDonagh, along with the rest of his team, edit through the night to ensure your drunken ramblings and remarkable dance moves are ready and waiting for when that bittersweet hangover kicks in. Of course, after a few Jägerbombs people realise their own potential, so when opportunity knocks to have their talents showcased on camera, it is their time to shine. From extraordinary party tricks to exceptional dance moves, that is a lot of material to edit in one night – “There are quite a lot of clips that we could have put in, which would absolutely have taken away some people’s dignity,” McDonagh told us, “but those are the ones that get us through the night as they are often hilarious.”
– Ellie Christie
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Sportscaster
From the very first whistle, LA1 TV’s Sportscaster has proven to be the station’s second most popular show, behind only ‘Sugar TV’. Its popularity isn’t unwarranted either – Sportscaster is, according to LA1 manager Will McDonagh, a response to the general feeling that LUSU’s medias had “a lack of content on sports”.
Well, how could anyone complain now? As is standard with LA1 TV, Sportscaster not only covers the University’s sporting showcases, but celebrates the athletes in return for their many, many buckets of sweat; “with our ‘Goal of the Month’ feature, we had just under 1000 views last term, giving people the chance to nominate the standout performance in the College A Football league”, says McDonagh.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Sportscaster will leave you wiser to the world of sports. There are regular presenter challenges, where our hosts Tom and Abby lead us on a journey across the niche sporting landscapes, and subject themselves to the task of playing and explaining sports such as Korfball, and many more to come.
With the prestige of the Roses tournament growing by the second, and the Carter Shield / Legends tournaments being cruelly deprived of much awareness, LA1 TV are doing everything they can to secure that recognition and coverage – tune in until the final whistle, and come away with pride in the work of both LA1 TV and our sporting world.
– Ronnie Rowlands
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