The Center for Arts and Media at South City Campus was featured throughout Salt Lake City on channel Fox 13 Good Day Utah’s morning broadcast on Friday, Nov. 8.
Good Day Utah features reporter “Big Budah” Leroy Teo, who arrived at the campus before 6 a.m. He and his cameraman broadcasted live from eight different locations across the new Center for Arts and Media building.
“Kerri, I am going to repeat exactly what you said to Dan during the break: ‘These studios and facilities may be better than ours.’ Holy cow, and it’s a community college program,” says Big Budah.
Big Budah’s visit marks an important recognition by local media that SLCC has a facility that is so advanced, it may rival local television studios.
“For the students to be able to connect to what the industry is doing and to be able to have that industry come in and take notice of what we are doing here, just reinforces and strengthens things that will help our students migrate and move into professional work,” says Neil Vanderpool, associate dean of Communication and Performing Arts at SLCC.
Though many students were featured on camera throughout the live broadcast, Jasna Zahirovic was given the opportunity to connect with the broadcasters in a way that other students did not.
Zahirovic aspires to become a broadcast journalist. Big Budah and the Good Morning Utah cast gave Zahirovic that experience by asking her to conduct an on-air interview during one of the live broadcast segments.
Big Budah is not just the fun-loving, happy features reporter that many see throughout Utah every weekday morning, he is also a producer. Before each broadcast segment, Big Budah was seen planning who he would speak to, what the cameraman would be filming and prepping everyone in the room for the events at SLCC that went live television across the state.
When the television crew went to film a segment in the radio production studio, Big Budah and the Fox 13 broadcast team conducted a simulcast with SLCC’s live broadcast radio station and Fox 13’s live broadcast television program.
While the Fox 13 crew was broadcasting their segment on television, the same broadcast was heard on Radio SLCC.
“Why would I come here when I’m already working for a television station?” asks Big Budah. ”I think it’s good to be on the cutting edge. What are the kids learning that I need to be on top of?”
