“Hello and welcome,” says Ellie Anderbyrne ’05, chief of staff and secretary of the college, to her audience before turning towards the show’s current guest. Recorded and edited in the Center for Entrepreneurship (CELEB), Behind Beloit takes viewers behind-the-scenes with players, staff, and partners in municipal government and semiprofessional sports teams in Beloit. As host of Behind Beloit, she is a natural fit for the role, Anderbyrne has always leaned into her college community and all the surrounding Beloit area offers. “This weekly talk show is an opportunity to slow down, ask questions, and introduce the people and systems that make Beloit tick.”

Broadcasting is a two-year program at Beloit College that facilitates collaboration between students in varying years on real world projects and includes CELEB’s partnership to record the City of Beloit’s council meetings broadcast on BeloitTV. For the new venture, Mats Rudels, visiting professor in media studies, started the camera rolling by recruiting Schane, a sociology and media studies double major and political science minor. He came with experience from courses and internships in media studies as well as camera work for professional wrestling in Rockford and other broadcasting other live events.

Schane sat down during fall semester with Rudels, Brian Morello ’85, director of CELEB, and Susan Rowe, program coordinator at CELEB and BeloitTV, to plan what they wanted from the show and to brainstorm possible guests. By winter Pimentel, and Hernandez had made their way through the green room and into the control booth of the TV & Media Lab. “My hope is that everybody who leaves my class has one piece that they can show in a portfolio. We have fun and practice our skills, but the goal is to bridge to real life,” Rudel says, whose 25-year career has bridged freelancing work for MTV and HBO to Beloit.

Though viewers enjoy seamless audio and video transmissions, production is sometimes anything but smooth, and Schane notes the change he’s seen in his ability to handle unknown situations. “I used to be panicky. I didn’t want to do something unless it turned out exactly right.”

After some emergency digging through closets for batteries and adapting to no shows, Schane is confident in his, and his team’s, ability to be flexible and professional. Together, they have figured out how to use the equipment, find guests, and troubleshoot problems as they arise, even when the solution wasn’t perfect. This collaborative process is at the heart of CELEB’s projects.

“Regardless of the media, it’s seeing how people communicate, how storytelling works,” says Morello. “Now the mystery is unshrouded and they’ve built confidence. Next time they know they can learn what they need to know when they need to know it.”

Onscreen, it’s easy to focus on Anderbyrne’s ability to conduct a good interview about the day-to-day of her adopted hometown that people don’t usually see. “Living and working in Beloit is so great. Hearing each week from different city offices really shows how much great work happens behind the scenes,” says Anderbyrne.”It’s fun to share the stories of the people who work to make Beloit a wonderful place.” And the production team enjoys an added perk to their backstage pass.

“Listening to the community members is eye-opening, and they have shown me I can advocate for things I care about,” says Pimentel, a physics major in the 3-2 engineering program “Everything is in reach at this school.”

For Schane, his sociology foundation helped him to understand how the community benefits by hearing why their government does certain things and helping people understand the system so they can advocate for themselves. Hernandez notes how the guests on the show are his first step to building connections. “If I am interested in something a guest does, I can talk to them after the show and get involved,” he says, and he’s benefitted from his peers’ mentorship to choose media studies as his major.

Each of the 13 episodes air Fridays at 7 p.m. and Anderbyrne ends each broadcast with the same sentiment, gratitude for a new connection and appreciation for what she has always found Behind Beloit.