The second year of production began for Sports Xtra this week, giving UNC journalism students the chance to be on a team of their own.
Professor Charlie Tuggle, the faculty advisor of production for the show, said he acts as a coach while the students do the bulk of the work.
“When it comes time to do the show, I go into a different room,” he said. “The people in the studio, they know what they need to do, the people in the control room, they know what they need to do.
Sports Xtra has achieved a notable amount of visibility in a short time.
One of the show’s segments during its first semester won the National Broadcast Society’s award for best video sports program.
The show’s founder and last year’s executive producer, Will Rimer, was hired as a production assistant at Fox Sports 1 in Los Angeles.
Rimer said he wouldn’t have been hired without his work on Sports Xtra.
He said he created the show after Carolina Week — the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s video newscast program — reduced its output from two shows a week to one show two years ago.
That reduced the amount of air-time sports coverage received, he said, mostly limiting it to football and basketball coverage. This required more experienced crew members, which made it more difficult for newcomers at Carolina Week to learn.