While there are many changes around campus this fall, one of the most noticeable has occurred in students’ own dorm rooms. The University’s cable services have expanded and now include MTV 2, Animal Planet and the Disney Channel, among others. In addition to the new channels, station numbers have also been changed.

In the past, students living on campus have received only a small number of stations, picked by students and staff when the University originally entered its contract with cable provider Adelphia. The University was five years into a seven-year contract with Adelphia when it was bought out by Comcast this past year. When Comcast approached the University about renewing its contract for another five years, it stated that it would provide standard cable rather than the “filter” channels that were previously provided. Thus, the station numbers also changed.

Robert Mays of the Office of Telecommunications worked with Comcast to get all the possible channels without any additional cost. While students do not receive any premium channels like HBO, the standard cable package has an additional 26 channels that were not previously offered to students. Mays said that students are getting the same 70 channels that all Main Line residents receive with standard cable.

In addition to the basic cable channels, there are also three channels available only to University students. The Student Government Association movie channel is running again this year and has now moved to Channel 14. Channel 17 will be the VTV channel, which is run by the TV production club. This channel will show student-made films, documentaries, campus news and any other work produced by the members of the club. Greg Potter, advisor for the group, notes that they are running programs as they get footage from campus events. The channel will run constantly, with scrolling news if there is no other programming.

The third channel is a new addition this year, run by the Office of Telecommunications. The Events Management Channel is going to be a rolling page of events and happenings on campus, where information is taken off of the University homepage. Mays said that this channel will definitely be running by the end of the semester.