PantherVision Named Best College Newscast Again

UW-Milwaukee’s PantherVision won the Student Award of Excellence for best collegiate Television Newscast for the fifth consecutive year at the 2015 WBA, Wisconsin Broadcast Association, Student Seminar.

The WBA is a trade association that promotes, supports and represents all of the TV and radio broadcast in the state of Wisconsin. The WBA Student Seminar, which took place in Madison all day on Saturday March 7, allowed students to speak and network with professional TV and radio broadcasters from throughout Wisconsin and students from other schools.

UWM Senior Lecturer Mark Zoromski also conducted a seminar at the WBA event called “Beating the Big Boys–Doing Quality College News.”  Zoromski said that he felt the presentation went very well.

“I heard a couple of students in the second session saying, ‘my advisor was here for the first one and they said you have to come,’” said Zoromski.

During his talk he explained how PantherVision’s Newscast was able to beat huge news corporations when they were the first collegiate news organization to win a national Edward R. Murrow Award.  Zoromski was among good company; other speakers included Jon Adler from Milwaukee’s 102.1 FM, WTMJ Radio news executive, producer and afternoon news anchor, Erik Bilstad, and Amy Pflugshaupt from WMTV-NBC15.

The award winning PantherVision was started by Zoromski when he noticed that UWM did not have a television newscast, so he tried to find out how he could start one.

“It took a couple years of banging my head against the wall and running up against all types of obstacles, but we got it running at the beginning of fall 1998,” said Zoromski.

Zoromski puts a lot of heart, time and energy into his programs and students, say those who know him. Joshua March, a 2014 Fall UWM graduate who got a job as an associate producer at WISN Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate right out of college, admires Zoromski.

“For me, Mark is really the person that I tend to lean on right now,” said March.  March said that Zoromski is there for his students when they need him and that he admires what he does for his students.

Zoromski said he works diligently to teach and push his students to be the best possible journalists.  Zoromski said that he works no less than 60 to 70 hours a week on PantherVision and the Broadcast Club.  He’s driven by his love for teaching,

“I don’t think there’s any better profession in the world.  I love to see students learn and I love to see them succeed,” said Zoromski.

Financially it is not easy running these programs. “It’s remarkable what he (Zoromski) does with what we are given at this school,” said March.

It takes an extraordinary amount of expensive equipment to make these shows happen. The cameras that Zoromski has his students use were bought in 2007 from a $100,000 grant he obtained.  It’s not always easy using outdated equipment.

“I spend a lot of time dealing with broken equipment and things like that.  I’m not an engineer, but I’ve figured out that I have to be,” said Zoromski.  In order to replace the 14 cameras they have right now, it would take an estimated $60,000-$75,000.  Times are a bit uncertain for Panther Vision and the Broadcast Club especially due to the possible $40 million budget cuts to UW-Milwaukee, but Zoromski said, “PantherVision is my baby, and I’ll do everything that I can to keep it alive.”

Even though there are daily hurdles that Zoromski and his students have to overcome, they make it work.

“Our program sets the standard for collegiate television newscast in the state, in the region and in the country and that’s an incredible accomplishment that we’re all so very proud of,” said Zoromski.