Lexi Muoghalu remembers the anxiety she felt descending the stairs to the basement of Fell Hall for the first time.
The journalism major from Naperville developed a passion for making YouTube videos as a middle school student, and a media class in high school nurtured her budding interest in broadcasting. It all led her to Illinois State University and the TV-10 studio at the bottom of those stairs in Fell Hall.
Appears In“I was so nervous that first day,” Muoghalu recalled. “But it was nice because all my classmates were in the same boat. We were in it together.”
Once hesitant to approach strangers for interviews or read from a teleprompter, it’s all second nature these days. Muoghalu is a TV-10 veteran now. “I love reporting. I love telling stories,” she said. “TV-10 has been a great experience.”
TV-10 is Illinois State’s student TV station. Students enrolled in School of Communication courses are solely responsible for the only live TV newscasts originating from Bloomington-Normal. They apply what they learn in the classroom to produce four live newscasts and two specialty shows every week during the academic year. TV-10 is part classroom, part laboratory.
TV-10 enrolls between 60-80 students. Jac Vonachen is one of them. He’s a senior mass media major from Peoria who got his first taste of TV production as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. When he transferred to Illinois State, he knew he wanted to be a part of the TV-10 team.
“I love working with cameras, making videos, creating content,” he said. “You get to do all that stuff here.”
Vonachen prefers working “behind the scenes” as a director and control room manager, while Muoghalu is more comfortable on camera. But TV-10 students are regularly encouraged to step outside their comfort zones.
“Our professors are adamant about having a lot of different skills, being able to do a lot of different things, and not just having a singular specialty,” Vonachen said. “That can be kind of difficult for some students, but you learn a lot from it.”
Muoghalu’s time at TV-10 helped her land a rotational internship last summer at Chicago’s ABC7, where she continued that cross-training. She didn’t feel the same nerves she felt walking into TV-10 the first time, thanks to what she had learned at Illinois State. She was often complimented by the ABC7 team for her broadcasting knowledge.
“I think it’s because I’d had so much hands-on experience at TV-10 that a lot of other colleges can’t or don’t provide,” she said.
TV-10 is helmed by news director Jim Gee ’96, M.S. ’13, and production coordinator Bob Carroll ’89 ’94, M.S. ’15. Both are TV-10 alumni with professional broadcast and production experience. They prepare students for careers not limited to TV. They emphasize transferrable skills.
“The people who graduate from this program have a huge toolbox in terms of both practical skills and the ability to learn new skills that will allow them to excel in many different careers,” said Gee, a former president of the Illinois News Broadcasters Association. “They’ll be able to impact society in many different ways, even if they don’t go to work in a TV newsroom when they leave here.”
TV-10 celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. The station boasts an impressive alumni roster that maintains its connection to the station through a network that’s helped many young alums find their first jobs in the business. Alumni regularly come back to meet and speak with current students.
That makes the job fun for Gee and Carroll, but nothing beats seeing current students learn and grow in the basement of Fell Hall.
“It’s rewarding to see the students succeed, especially the student who may be struggling a little bit,” Carroll said. “But then you finally see the light go off in their head and they get it. There’s satisfaction in that.”
