On April 1^st, 2009 WLOY-TV officially changed its name to GreyComm Studios in celebration of its growing successes over the past year. The facility is co-curricular and serves as the cornerstone of a growing Digital Media (major specialization) component in the Communications Department at Loyola.

Close to forty student staff members attended the official signing of a draft to change the college’s television station’s name. “I’ve seen a lot of changes occur in a brief period of time as a result of some hard work of these staff members here at the station,” said Dennis Cornwall a part-time digital media major. “I can remember classes being canceled a couple of years ago because of not having enough students and now to see this amount of involvement is really exciting.”

WLOY’s roots go back to 2001, when Father Michael Braden began to lay the groundwork of design for a college television station here at Loyola College. In 2007 H. Jay Dunmore took over as the station’s operations manager after Father Braden moved on and has seen remarkable growth in two short years. One of his first moves was to assemble a group of student board members to create programming, develop a website for the station and also expand GreyComm’s involvement here at Loyola. GreyComm now boast’s a staff of over 25 members between the Executive Board and Auxiliary Boards alone.

We now have teams specializing in editing, writing, PR, videography, promotions, web and graphic design. GreyComm Studios currently has over a dozen programs in production as well as numerous short films created by Loyola students each semester. Additionally, staff members document most of the events occurring on campus to exhibit on GreyComm’s cable channel 49.

Some of our programs currently being aired on GreyComm, were developed by alumni who have now graduated but have laid the groundwork for in-coming communication majors to continue their work. Communication’s students take over these productions and keep the ball rolling by either making improvements, finding new ways of doing things or just continuing production. Each new semester brings about changes in how we produce our existing programs, but we also have new program ideas constantly being pitched by our students.

Some of our current programming favorites include Stupid Cupid where students compete for a date, Burnin’ Up a fun work out show, the Minority Report a bi-monthly program discussing everything from current events to politics, Loyola College Police Blotter Cold Case Edition a spoof on one of the school newspapers more popular columns and Simply Fab which keeps students up to date on the latest trends in fashion and entertainment. Students can view all programming by going to the stations website at www.wloy.tv/main.html or watching channel 49. Great things are happening at the up and coming GreyComm Studios, so stay tuned to channel 49 for new and exciting programs currently in production for your viewing pleasure!

Written by Dennis Cornwall