The Jumbo Channel

To an outsider, it’s just a room. Cracked tiled floors, black walls, and glaring overhead light. A few fake potted plants in a corner and large, looming tripods. But to Andy Liebman and Tony Bennis, back for a tour of their old stomping grounds on the third floor of Curtis Hall, the Tufts University Television studio was a long-lost haven. Bennis, A79, pointed to a booth off the main studio and said, “Remember when Dan wired up the control room?” To a bunch of kids who were jazzed about building their new venture in television from the ground up forty years ago, their engineer, Dan Winter, A81, was an unsung hero. “The quality of our news and studio production skyrocketed,” Bennis told his tour guide, Danielle Bryant, A15, the current station manager.

Quality wasn’t all that skyrocketed—the station also launched many careers over the years. For Liebman, A78, E14P, who founded the station in 1977, Bennis, and several of their associates, TUTV was a door to success in film and television.

Bryant took her guests across the hall, where boxy equipment and piles of tape and cable have given way to one slick cabinet of small cameras that made Bennis and Liebman shake their heads in envy. “We once had to ditch a guy from the van on our way to Middlebury in the dead of winter,” Bennis recounted, because the collective weight of the camera, deck, and monitor, plus the crew needed to tape a Jumbos football away game, had the fender trailing sparks on the highway. “Now you just need this,” Liebman said, taking his iPhone out of his pocket.

Liebman scored the original, clunky gear in a deal with the administration: TUTV would tape child development classes and tennis lessons in exchange for using the equipment to produce shows during the off-hours. Thanks to the station founders’ doggedness and to inevitable technological leaps, the station has come a long way from the days of “if you buy it, we’ll schlep it.”

TUTV isn’t actually on TV anymore, for one thing. Its thriving YouTube station offers student films, music videos of Tufts bands, and seasons of original web series like My Gay Roommate and Jules and Monty. The latter program, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet set on campus and in Somerville apartments, depicts love among warring fraternities—featuring indie rock, a mix of Shakespearean and Tuftonian dialogue, and that trendy days-gone-by filter.

Filters. Quick cuts. Music. Bennis contrasted these with the vaudevillian lengths to which he and his peers went to finagle instant replay at basketball games. He and the equipment would occupy a back bench in Cousens Gym, while the cameraman sat down front with the announcer, Jimmy Young, A79, the station’s sports director—who had a rope tied to his belt. “We didn’t have a mic to Jimmy, so whenever there was a shot we wanted to replay, I’d tug on the rope,” Bennis said. “One time there was a big, game-winning shot and I tugged so hard he fell on the floor.”

On top of sports, the original TUTV had news and game shows, like Blind Date, Trivia Triangle, and The Roommate Game, a takeoff on The Newlyweds. Triangle was hosted by Mark Mastromatteo, A80, who was also the station’s news director. Reached by email, he said the show was so popular by the time he graduated that it aired on local cable in surrounding towns. He’s never forgotten the episode where “a team of Medford High brains gave our fun-loving Jumbos quite a beating,” he said. There was plenty of edgy comedy, too—in Saturday Night Live–style sketches (like the one about the cocaine-infused soap that “really wakes you up in the morning”) and spoofs such as Sederday Night Fever.

Bryant, the young tour guide, couldn’t get enough way-back-when stories from the guys who pioneered the station. “TUTV has been such a pivotal part of my Tufts experience,” she said. “This is where I live, where I unwind, meet friends, get creative. This is such an important space for me.” And it could turn out to be her springboard to a media career; currently interning at WGBH and the production company Charles River Media, she hopes to break into film after Tufts.

“TUTV was an industry launch for so many people,” Bennis said. He himself went on to found Synergy Media Partners, which produces everything from feature films to music videos. Young (of the instant replay rope tug) is an Emmy-winning sports anchor, producer, reporter, and show host in New England. Mastromatteo is the president of Mastromedia Inc., a communication services company, and director of a leadership development organization called Leadership Pasadena.

After making Emmy-winning documentary films for twenty-two years for Frontline and Nova, Liebman founded EditShare, a tech company whose database houses digital material that can be shared and accessed around the world. “Right out of Tufts,” he said, “I started working in TV and film, diving headfirst into jobs like associate producer and moving up the line.”

Bennis added: “Andy and the rest of us launched TUTV with the drive and confidence that sometimes you can only find in a college student who can pursue a dream, no matter how far-fetched it is. And it was a blast.”