March 9, 2008
Marshall Economics Professor Returns to Huntington on TV
World Bank Retiree now Producing Public Access Television
By HNN Staff
After a 39 year absence, former Marshall University faculty member and student Tom Hoopengardner has
returned to Huntington, at least figuratively, via cable television. Hoopengardner produces "America's
Best Student Shorts", a weekly, half-hour program that now appears on Comcast Cable TV Channel 20 (Huntington Public Access TV) on Thursday nights at 9:30 P.M. and 12:30 A.M..
America's Best Student Shorts showcases "shorts" --short films and videos -- produced by college students from all over the U.S. The program has been running on sixty campus and public access television stations from coast to coast, and Huntington's Comcast Channel 20 becomes the sixty-first. America's Best Student Shorts celebrates the creativity, energy and imagination that college film and video students are pouring into class projects and MFA theses. The short movies featured include all genres: drama, comedy, animation, biography, documentary, and even music videos. "The one thing they all have in common," Hoopengardner explained, "Is that they are enormously entertaining."
Public access TV channels provide air time non-commercial programming of all descriptions. The program content is usually created by grassroots producers -- artists, entertainers, filmmakers, civic groups, non-profit organizations, churches, etc. In the Huntington area, public access programming is aired daily between 8pm and 10 p.m. on Comcast Channel 20, and the daily program block later repeats between 11 p.m. and 1 am. "Huntington Public Access TV is available to everyone," said Richard Bartram, the public access TV community liaison who has championed public access television in the Huntington viewing area. "Yet participation has been very limited so far. Hopefully, community involvement will increase in many ways, including greater participation by Marshall students."
Hoopengardner taught Money and Banking and other economics courses at Marshall from 1969 to 1971, and concurrently took graduate mathematics courses. "Yes, I was at Marshall when the football plane crashed," he said. "In fact, I was driving near the airport right after the catastrophe and wondered what was lighting up the sky." After leaving Huntington in 1971, Hoopengardner returned to the University of Michigan to complete a Ph.D. in economics in 1974. Following a five-year stint in the U.S. government, he worked at the World Bank for over 20 years, mainly covering countries in Eastern Europe. "When I retired from the World Bank a few years ago, I wanted something completely different," said Hoopengardner. "Television production filled the bill." After leaving the World Bank in 2001, Hoopengardner founded and now manages Glen Echo Associates, LLC, a boutique television production company. The company specializes in public service announcements about nonprofit organizations whose causes Hoopengardner supports.
Hoopengardner conceived America's Best Student Shorts a few years ago while a television production student at Montgomery College, the community college serving Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. "Students in my classes were producing great stuff, certainly worthy of a general TV audience," said Hoopengardner. "It occurred to me that students all over the country must be producing great material, too. I resolved to license the best material I could find and to package it into half-hour TV shows." Hoopengardner's original idea was to find sponsors or underwriters willing to support the program financially so that he could pay student producers for content, and to distribute the program on PBS. That hasn't worked out, so Hoopengardner is producing and distributing the program as a labor of love.
For more information about America's Best Student Shorts TV program, visit www.beststudentshorts.com. To learn how to become involved in Huntington Public Access TV, visit http://cinemystique.home.zoomnet.net/.
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Marshall Economics Professor Returns to Huntington on TV
World Bank Retiree now Producing Public Access Television
By HNN Staff
After a 39 year absence, former Marshall University faculty member and student Tom Hoopengardner has
returned to Huntington, at least figuratively, via cable television. Hoopengardner produces "America's
Best Student Shorts", a weekly, half-hour program that now appears on Comcast Cable TV Channel 20 (Huntington Public Access TV) on Thursday nights at 9:30 P.M. and 12:30 A.M..
America's Best Student Shorts showcases "shorts" --short films and videos -- produced by college students from all over the U.S. The program has been running on sixty campus and public access television stations from coast to coast, and Huntington's Comcast Channel 20 becomes the sixty-first. America's Best Student Shorts celebrates the creativity, energy and imagination that college film and video students are pouring into class projects and MFA theses. The short movies featured include all genres: drama, comedy, animation, biography, documentary, and even music videos. "The one thing they all have in common," Hoopengardner explained, "Is that they are enormously entertaining."
Public access TV channels provide air time non-commercial programming of all descriptions. The program content is usually created by grassroots producers -- artists, entertainers, filmmakers, civic groups, non-profit organizations, churches, etc. In the Huntington area, public access programming is aired daily between 8pm and 10 p.m. on Comcast Channel 20, and the daily program block later repeats between 11 p.m. and 1 am. "Huntington Public Access TV is available to everyone," said Richard Bartram, the public access TV community liaison who has championed public access television in the Huntington viewing area. "Yet participation has been very limited so far. Hopefully, community involvement will increase in many ways, including greater participation by Marshall students."
Hoopengardner taught Money and Banking and other economics courses at Marshall from 1969 to 1971, and concurrently took graduate mathematics courses. "Yes, I was at Marshall when the football plane crashed," he said. "In fact, I was driving near the airport right after the catastrophe and wondered what was lighting up the sky." After leaving Huntington in 1971, Hoopengardner returned to the University of Michigan to complete a Ph.D. in economics in 1974. Following a five-year stint in the U.S. government, he worked at the World Bank for over 20 years, mainly covering countries in Eastern Europe. "When I retired from the World Bank a few years ago, I wanted something completely different," said Hoopengardner. "Television production filled the bill." After leaving the World Bank in 2001, Hoopengardner founded and now manages Glen Echo Associates, LLC, a boutique television production company. The company specializes in public service announcements about nonprofit organizations whose causes Hoopengardner supports.
Hoopengardner conceived America's Best Student Shorts a few years ago while a television production student at Montgomery College, the community college serving Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. "Students in my classes were producing great stuff, certainly worthy of a general TV audience," said Hoopengardner. "It occurred to me that students all over the country must be producing great material, too. I resolved to license the best material I could find and to package it into half-hour TV shows." Hoopengardner's original idea was to find sponsors or underwriters willing to support the program financially so that he could pay student producers for content, and to distribute the program on PBS. That hasn't worked out, so Hoopengardner is producing and distributing the program as a labor of love.
For more information about America's Best Student Shorts TV program, visit www.beststudentshorts.com. To learn how to become involved in Huntington Public Access TV, visit http://cinemystique.home.zoomnet.net/.
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