Graduating English students in television takeover

Lindsey Harris and Fotini Papatheodorou (Tini), both graduating from BA English this week, are soon to be seen presenting a national television show for the Community Channel, having also chosen and structured the episode’s content and written the presenter links.

Two other students have been involved in the programme, Jamie MacLeod (second year Geography) and Cambria Bailey-Jones (second year Psychology). Jamie and Cambria, who are Station Master and Head of Creative respectively for XTV, the Student Guild’s Television Station, helped Lindsey and Tini to film the links.

‘UK360’ is the Community Channel's flagship magazine series designed to give a voice to communities and enable people to share their local news and stories with the nation by sending in films, documentaries and reports. The episode is the final in the series and is a compilation of features from earlier episodes. Tini and Lindsey chose the features to be included in the programme, planned and structured the episode, wrote the presenter links and presented them to the camera. The episode will feature familiar faces such as Sir Terry Wogan from BBC Radio 2, Charlie Dimmock from the BBC’s ‘Ground Force’, and honorary Exeter graduate Brian May (CBE), the lead guitarist from Queen.

On getting involved in the process, Tini comments “It was mainly luck! I saw a tweet by UK360 saying that they were looking for a presenter duo. I then spoke to Lindsey about it and we thought we might as well give it a go! It really shows how important a communication tool social media is.”

Lindsey and Tini have both been heavily involved in student television throughout their time at The University of Exeter. In 2012, Lindsey, judged by television presenter Kate Garraway, won the National Student Television Association’s highly commended Best On-Screen Female award which was then won by Tini in 2013, judged by BBC News journalist Kate Silverton.

Lindsey comments, "It's really exciting to be getting our first broadcast credit so soon after finishing our degrees. It was great to be able to put our own stamp on a national television programme, as we were given free rein to choose the content, write our own script and arrange the location filming independently. Our friends at XTV have often joked about ‘The Lindsey and Tini Show’ but we didn't expect to be having this much input and control over a show that will be broadcast on a national television channel so soon!"

The episode will be broadcast on 22 July at 7am and 7pm on the Community Channel (Freeview 87; Virgin Media 233; Sky 539) and will also be uploaded online on the UK360 website.

Date: 16 July 2013