Television Students Win National Award

MCCC Television Students Win National Award for “Dish It Out” Broadcast

6/17/14

WEST WINDSOR – Even though the color is silver, it’s pure gold for Mercer County Community College Television students, who received a top national award for their work on a television program broadcast on the college’s local access station, MCTV.

The student crew working on “Dish it Out,” a cooking show featuring MCCC culinary faculty members Doug Fee and Frank Benowitz, won the Silver Telly Award for season eight, episode five of the show, which featured bread preparation and aired earlier this year.

Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional, and cable television, video and film productions, and material created for the Web. The competition typically receives more than 13,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents. The Silver Telly is the highest honor.

Students with the MCCC Television program won a Silver Telly Award for their production of “Dish it Out,” a culinary program produced on the Mercer campus. Pictured is co-host and Culinary Instructor Chef Frank Benowitz, Television program students Leonard Gokou Tape, Brandon Stanzeski, Jonathan Traegler, Tulika Ganguly, and John Hasbrouk, Television Professor Steve Voorhees, and co-host and Hospitality Professor Chef Doug Fee.

Since 2006, MCCC’s Television program has won seven Telly Awards, for work that includes live broadcasts of the New Jersey high school basketball championship, a documentary on Mercer Street Friends, and a marketing video for the Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce. Two previous projects with the MCCC Culinary program, “Art of Food Presentation” in 2007 and “Buffet Wars” in 2008, won Silver Telly Awards. This is the first Telly Award for “Dish it Out.”

“The students really embraced this project and worked together as a cohesive unit,” said MCCC Associate Television Professor Steve Voorhees. “A job like this demands a lot of creativity, attention to detail, planning, and patience in order to make the hosts and the food look good. The production team achieved all of these at a high level.”

“Dish it Out” is a project within the Television program’s Applied Field Production class. In the class, students gain practical experience working on a production team for either an on-campus or off-campus non-profit client. Students learn the fundamentals of client communication, working as a team on a long-term project and producing professional quality work.

Both hosts of “Dish it Out” were pleased with the award, but were quick to give credit to the student production crew for the honor.

“We just show up,” Fee said. “The crew did all the work.”

“We are extremely excited to win a Silver Telly Award and feel very fortunate to work with such wonderful hospitality/culinary students, in addition to the very talented Television students and our special guest chefs,” Benowitz said.

“Dish it Out” airs every night at 9 p.m. on MCTV, which is broadcast in Mercer County on Verizon FIOS channel 20, Comcast channel 26, and Cablevision channel 80. The program is now broadcast in eight states, with online episodes available on YouTube.

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