Open Student Television Network
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The Open Student Television Network, also known as OSTN, is a national student television network, headquartered in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. OSTN is managed by a full time staff that serves as network management. Content on the network is submitted by member stations, and includes both local station content as well as programming produced for the national network audience specifically. The OSTN is an initiative of the CampusEAI Consortium, an international university consortium that includes institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, McGill University, The University of Exeter, Washington State University, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, and Foothill-De Anza Community College District. OSTN is pioneering the use of Video over IP technologies, and delivers its program streams to affiliates via the Internet2 data network, in contrast to traditional broadcast television satellite distribution methods.
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[edit] Management and Oversight
As part of CampusEAI, OSTN falls under the oversight of the CampusEAI Executive Committee. OSTN employs a full time and part time staff, as listed below, and has two advisory committees; one is made up of students from member universities, and one of student TV faculty & staff advisers.
[edit] CampusEAI / OSTN Network Executive Committee
- Diane Barbour : Chief Information Officer, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Mary Doyle : Vice President for Information Technology, Washington State University
- Lev Gonick, Ph. D. : Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology Services, Case Western Reserve University
- Anjli Jain : Executive Director, CampusEAI Consortium
- Willie Prichard : Vice Chancellor and Chief Technology Officer, Foothill-De Anza Community College District
- Lori Temple, Ph. D. : Associate provost for Information technology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- Beth Unger : Vice Provost for Academic Services and Technology, Kansas State University
[edit] OSTN Management and Staff
- Arun Kumar, President & Chief Executive Officer
- Ken MacPherson, Chief Technology Officer
- Rich Griffin, Executive Vice President and Director of Technology
- Anthony Davis, Vice President of Sales and Business Development
- Paul Forsgren, Operations Manager
[edit] OSTN Student Steering Committee
- Pierson Clair : University of Southern California
- Orcun Unlu : Duke University
- Liz Alper : Emerson College
- Matt Vascerello : Brown University
- Monique Dugaw : Washington State University
[edit] OSTN Advisory Committee
The OSTN Advisory Committee consists of leaders in educational broadcast video space. The Advisory Committee serves as a resource to and helps guide the Student Steering Committee in issues related to programming and technology. The OSTN Advisory Committee currently consists of the following members:
- Laurel Fruth: Faculty Advisor, UNLV-TV, Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies
- Don Tillman : Executive Director, Trojanvision , University of Southern California
- Randy Winchester : Cable Television Project Leader, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Hans Kuhn: Academic User Services, University of Oregon
[edit] Member Universities and Stations
Select Content Providers of the OSTN include:
- University of Miami in Coral Gables
- The Ohio State University
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- Emerson College
- Harvard University
- Michigan State University
- Duke University
- Ithaca College
- Illinois State University
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- The University of Southern California (USC)
- The Savannah College of Art and Design
- The University of Montana
- Penn State University
- Washington State University
- University of Tennessee
- University of Akron
- Cuyahoga County Community College (Cleveland, OH)
- Drexel University
- Marquette University
[edit] OSTN Programming
Programming on the OSTN channel is produced by student television station members of the network, and is distributed via the OSTN program stream. This model is similar to the PBS network in that member stations provide content to the network, rather than the network providing content to stations outright.
[edit] Technical Details
OSTN utilizes a non-traditional method of content and signal distribution, the Internet2 high speed academic network. Whereas a traditional television network sends its programming to affiliates via satellite feeds, OSTN uses an extremely high bandwidth connection via the Internet2 network to directly feed affiliates via standard LAN/WAN connections. This method lends the network to being a pioneer in voice/video/data "convergence", that is the merging of various content delivery methods into one high-bandwidth data stream.
The actual OSTN stream is a 1.6 megabit Windows Media stream, available live 24/7 over Internet2 to all member institutions. Windows Media encoding permits a true NTSC quality stream of video to be transmitted at a relatively low bitrate.
OSTN is delivered to consumers via two methods: over IP to the desktop computer via a web portlet and via traditional "legacy" CATV systems. When injected onto a legacy CATV system, OSTN utilizes VGA to composite video scan converters to create a video signal, which is then either mixed with local student TV programming (a network-affiliate model, such as Buckeye TV) or directly inserted onto the CATV lineup as its own separate channel.
