Vol. 38, No. 18

2-4-2009
By: Julia Harris

Mixing it up at WOSU

Kevin Theessen’s the first to admit he’s got a pretty cool job.

He’s been to the top of Mount Graham in Safford, Ariz., the 11,000-foot-high home of the Large Binocular Telescope. He’s been to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats to watch cars make and break speed records. And he’s been to the top of the 12th Avenue Garage to explore the glassed-in ecosystems of the Biological Sciences Greenhouse.

Most of the time, however, he splits his hours between the WOSU Public Media studios at the Fawcett Center and WOSU@COSI downtown.

As the executive producer in charge of Ohio State’s non-sports programming for the Big Ten Network, Theessen is responsible for promoting Ohio State research, alumni, students and faculty through high-energy, four- to six-minute program segments that combine to provide up to 20 hours of programming per year.

He and his producer/editor, Ben Bays, trek around the country and the campus, gear in hand, ready to capture Buckeyes doing great things.

“Ohio State does some amazing things in the areas of research, partnerships and academics, and we’re basically just trying to help people visualize how incredible some of this work is,” Theessen says. “And big props go to Gene Smith and the Athletics Department because they gave us a budget and the freedom to do the things we’ve always dreamed of but never had the finances to do.”

One of those dreams is a show called “iMix,” first aired in November 2007. It’s a colorful, fast-paced whirl through a variety of Ohio State-related ventures, using a collage of different media. Segments are woven together into half-hour shows for the network, designed to tell as complete a story as possible in a time span not much longer than a commercial break.   

Sample iMix segments have focused on the Buckeye Bullet II, a hydrogen fuel cell car built and raced by Ohio State students; the art exhibits at the new OSU Urban Arts Space and the world-class research being done at the Olentangy Wetlands Research Park. There have been nine shows so far, but Theessen sees an endless supply of ideas to fuel future episodes.

“Coming up with ideas is easy; I mean you walk down the Oval and you’re going to see 15-20 ideas jump out at you,” he adds. “And when you talk to any student, faculty, researcher or grad student about what they’re doing, they’re usually pretty excited about their work, and that passion makes it pretty easy to write about them.”

Passion is not in short supply around the WOSU offices, even with Theessen’s comparatively soft-spoken boss, Brent Davis.

“We won an Emmy last year for an iMix show, shared between WOSU and Jake Housh and Kristen Convery in Marketing Communications,” says Davis, who is director of content and executive producer of the local productions WOSU does for television, radio and Web projects.

A newer and even edgier program is “24OSU,” which Davis and Theessen describe as a kind of “day in the life” show about the university itself. Program segments cover a 24-hour period and track individual students in their lives on and off campus.

For example, one segment follows closely behind a young research assistant as he steps into the clean room of the Magnetic and Electronic Polymer Laboratory. The episode takes a dynamic look at solar cell technology and how researchers are working to more effectively harness light and energy.

“We’ve got people researching in China, people doing oceanographic research in India and people working around the clock here on campus. That’s Ohio State in action,” Theessen says. “We’re a 24-hour university.”

Both Theessen and Davis acknowledge that Ohio State would not be what it is without the ongoing contribution and participation of its alumni, which is where the “Eye on Alumni” program comes in.

Past segments have spotlighted Columbus Zoo and Aquarium Executive Director Jeff Swanagan (1981) and Ted Beattie (1971), president and CEO of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

“For us the show does two things: It tells a great story about what people do after they leave Ohio State, and it sets an example for current students to follow,” Theessen says.

With the wealth of program ideas and formats come challenges. Because these program segments are meant to be aired on a sports network, whose viewers don’t tend to be interested in PBS-style documentaries, it’s a bit of a trick to make them universally appealing while still communicating a message.

“People might turn us off if they think it’s just about Ohio State, but if they see something about, say, virtual surgery and how that’s making doctors around the world better, that’s great,” Theessen says. “And if it’s also about Ohio State? Even better.”

Creativity in packaging has reaped its own rewards, Davis adds. “A buzzword in our industry is COPE: Create Once, Play Everywhere,” he says. “We’re really being able to do that with this Big Ten stuff: We’ll create something and air it on Big Ten, then we’ll put it on the Web and air it on WOSU as a public TV program.”

Theessen concurs. “There’s no longer an expiration date on this stuff. The Web is such a great way to repurpose things and keep them alive.”

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