Valley Weekend : Kids : United Artists’ TV Studio Offers Opportunity to Learn : Firsthand production experience is available in a free 20-week program.

Are you a high school kid interested in learning about in-studio TV production? Really interested?

This weekend, Larry Jones, production manager of United Artists’ cable TV studio on Oxnard Street in the Van Nuys, will be looking for a few high school kids who are, as he put it, “healthy, reliable and able to lift 50 pounds.”

Those are three of the things you must bring to the table, along with written permission from your parents, if you want to study--for free--the ins and outs of TV studio production. Lessons are being offered Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus after school on other days of the week.

The “free” part works two ways. You don’t pay UA and UA doesn’t pay you. This is important to understand upfront, because the mutual commitment--you helping them and them teaching you--is 20 weeks worth of time.

Enrollment is ongoing, and there are almost always places available. You can start at any time and, after 20 weeks you can take a written exam with the goal of receiving a Certificate of Completion from United Artists’ Cable Television Production Workshop.

Parents can be supportive of such a program for a couple of reasons. In addition to the program providing training that might lead to employment, this kind of activity also tends to turn kids into more thoughtful television consumers.

A recent study by Joshua Meyrowitz and Karen Webster, researchers at the universities of New Hampshire and Utah, shows that there’s no better way to demystify television for young people than to get them involved in producing. The researchers discovered that “this elicits a critical response from students [because] in everything they do right--and in everything they do wrong--they learn how television constructs what it presents as reality.” Their research was reported in Cable in the Classroom, a cable industry publication.

UA’s Jones has noted an additional, more affirmative outcome. “We work hard to get comfortable with one another,” says Jones of his volunteers, and the accumulated knowledge and skills gives the kids “a real sense of validation. They can actually get a career started this way.”

For an application form and schedule, call Jones at (818) 781-1900 weekdays during business hours.