OXNARD : Film Students Produce Shows for Cable TV

Gregory Dobbins decided he needed a change of career, so he put his writing on hold and enrolled at Oxnard College.

Now Wednesdays and most weekday mornings find him pacing about the studio at the Oxnard College television station, producing a show called “Insight” and trying to learn whatever he can about making television programs.

Dobbins says that when he comes out of the program, “I think I’ll have enough experience to tackle whatever I want.” He hopes to one day produce local commercials and television shows for cable.

Dobbins is one of about 60 Oxnard College film students who, with a professor and staff specialist, are responsible for putting OCTV on local cable channels from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

Only three of the 60 students who work at the station are paid; the others earn college credit.

The station used to run nine hours a day on weekdays and four hours a day on Saturdays. But with the purchase of an automated player that can broadcast prepackaged programming, the staff expanded the hours this fall.

Oxnard College is the only one of the three Ventura County community colleges whose film program has access to a cable channel. OCTV is shown in Oxnard on Jones Intercable Channel 24, and in the western half of Camarillo on Ventura Cablevision Channel 19A. “We want people to think of Oxnard College as a place where lots of things are happening,” said Kitty Merrill, the staff specialist in charge of station operations. “If they turn on the TV and see an (electronic) bulletin board,” which the college used to run when it was off the air, that’s not the impression people get, she said.

Of course, stretching nine daily hours of daily programming into 18 has required lots of imagination, Merrill said. Film professor Leroy Robinson devoted most of his summer to finding programs from across the country to fill in blank spots on the schedule.

Now viewers who turn to OCTV at 11 a.m. on Mondays may catch the station playing “Semesters,” a college soap opera produced at a junior college in Ithaca, N.Y. Or, they could find another junior college’s production of the novella “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Both shows are among two that run on U-Net, a national network of junior college television programs to which the station now subscribes.

Or, if they choose another time slot, they can watch programs actually produced at the college. One, called “Music, Music, Music,” features interviews between a student host and a faculty member about the work of a noted jazz musician, Merrill said.

“Insight,” the program Dobbins produces, is hosted by Oxnard College professor Priscilla de Garcia and deals with the challenges facing the college’s re-entry students, Merrill said.

Other programs, such as “Portrait of a Family” or “Sociological Imagination,” are documentary-style “telecourses,” which students earn credit for watching in conjunction with attending weekly seminars, Merrill said.

“What I liked about this program,” Dobbins said, “ . . . was they just threw me in there and put me to work.”