Former WUTV member Rose Harkrider photographing WUTV Vice President Sofia Malik in Harvey Media Center’s Studio 357 (Photo courtesy of Nicole Backal | Staff Writer)

It was another Friday afternoon, and in the Eads Creative Lab, a sense of excitement filled the air. Microphones were set up, cameras were running, and the scene was set. Everything needed to go according to plan. What was going on? Washington University TV (WUTV) was setting up for the latest edition of their Tiny Desk series — a video program that aims to show off the musical talent of the WashU community. 

While this commotion may now be a common part of the job, WUTV wasn’t always so active. Originally, WUTV emerged in 2011 after breaking off from WUnderground. During the following years, WUTV gained prominence on campus, even claiming a designated room in the Harvey Media Center designed exclusively for the club. But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 led WUTV to close up shop while the school took a temporary break. 

While this should have been just a temporary setback, yet another disaster struck for WUTV. “The president of the club graduated and took with him a hard drive that had 10 years of footage on it and stole from the Harvey Media Center, the club did not elect a new leadership, and the club was just instantly, at that point, defunct,” current co-president and senior Ethan Jobalia explained.

So how did WUTV recover? Despite being essentially inoperative, meetings continued. In 2022, Jobalia joined WUTV after seeing a poster for the club in the Harvey Media Center. 

“I knew, at this point, nothing about cameras. Nothing. But this was a fun club, whatever it looked like. So I decided I was going to restart the club, with help from my friend Ali Devji. He was the guy who kind of gave me my first inspiration to build this,” Jobalia said.

While the club had not produced any video content since pre-COVID times, with the right team, it would be possible to revive WUTV’s film and video production facilities. “The idea was just, get a bunch of people who know what they’re doing in here. I’ll take a back seat, I’ll let them kind of do their thing, I’ll have fun. I was kind of setting it up so that I could be a member, not really president. Two years later, here I am,” Jobalia said.

WUTV has since come back into full swing, and the WUTV Tiny Desk concerts highlight this revival with bi-weekly music productions inspired by the namesake, the NPR Tiny Desk concerts. Past recordings on the WUTV Youtube channel show that the program takes on a wide variety of musical talent, from jazz piano to folk-singing and pop-country performances.

But these Tiny Desk concerts aren’t the only new WUTV productions, as other projects are also in development, including an interview series and a serialized sitcom.

Jobalia attributes the revival of WUTV to a number of factors, from dedicated leadership to gaining access to the Harvey Media Center and audiovisual equipment — but what stood out the most was the club’s ethos.

“I think a lot of clubs on campus are built for people who are experts in their field … But I’ve always been the kind of person where I want to try a little bit of everything,” Jobalia said. “And I feel like this club has become a home for that. Everyone here, everyone you see here, is learning on the job … everyone’s willing to learn.”

And with the willingness to learn comes the obligation to teach. Co-President and sophomore Nicole Backal emphasized the importance of making WUTV that space. 

 “Our promise is that we want to give people a space to learn how to create all different types of visual media — like learning how to use the equipment, learning how to film, learning how to edit,” she said.

By fostering an open environment for creativity and always looking to improve upon itself, WUTV has developed an unmatched potential for success. So, as the club continues to move forward with new and old projects, be sure to show them your support by dropping by the WUTV channel and staying on the lookout for further developments.