For the first time in its 30-year history, UTV13 -- Penn's independent student television station -- will have a student-run competitor.
Tomorrow, the Quest Network will debut on Channel 15 of Penn's ResNet, the cable provider for all Penn college houses.
The network will become the nation's first 24-hour student-run network, covering exclusively Penn sports.
According to the station's mission statement, "the Quest Network strives to endorse Penn Sports through extensive game coverage and a variety of informative programming. Our main objective is to enhance the awareness of Penn Sports throughout the Penn community."
Run by College junior Dave Garson and Wharton freshman Jason Gurwin, the station's name stands for, Quakers Sports and Entertainment Television.
Coming into this school year, Garson was in charge of the sports department at UTV, and was the network's director of sales as well.
After developing the idea for the network during his summer internship with the marketing department of Penn Athletics, Garson decided to leave UTV in the past few weeks.
Garson took Gurwin along with him.
"We decided that we wanted to move in a different direction and start our own sports station so we can focus on general Penn sports instead of just big sports like football," Gurwin said. "We thought it would give other teams an opportunity to get publicity and market their teams."
Garson said that it was impossible to simply add sports programming to UTV13.
"As soon as I come to them and say, 'Can I expand this?' they say no," he said. "They say, 'I can't give you that kind of funding and we can't air all that sports because we have all these other shows.'"
Garson and Gurwin petitioned Penn's college houses for the right to form their own station and within 48 hours they were approved.
The Quest Network will broadcast two sporting events a week -- usually either a football or basketball game, and then another smaller sport. The broadcast team will have just one camera, and Garson and Gurwin will be the main broadcast team.
Other shows will include Quakers Sports Weekly, a SportsCenter-type show and Quaker Classics, old Penn game footage.
The network plans to fund itself with advertising, sponsorship and the selling of game tapes to alumni and parents of athletes. Currently, its only income comes from a sponsorship deal with the Sheraton hotel.
"We will have advertisers, we will have commercials," Garson said. "It may not start off that way, but ESPN didn't start with 1,000 commercials."
Garson maintains that he is getting no funding from Penn Athletics, despite the fact that his network's stated goal is to promote the University's sports. He had initially hoped that the Athletic Department would pledge at least some money to the network.
Dan Flynn, the Athletic Department's director of marketing, promotions and community affairs, said that his department is giving no more support to the Quest Network than it would any other media outlet.
"Penn Athletics is working in cooperation with the Quest Network to give them access to athletes and events," he said.
"They are going to try to promote Penn athletics and give us another avenue to promote athletics throughout the campus," Flynn added. "I think that any time you can expand your exposure and do it in a quality way, it helps."
UTV President Sebastian Carden said he has no ill will toward his former employer, Garson, and wishes him well in his new endeavor.
Carden says that he doesn't consider the Quest Network as a competitor, as the two stations have different objectives.
"Their motive is profit and our motive is getting students the professional experience they need to learn the tools of broadcasting," he said.
The UTV president said that Quest plans on eventually hiring professional broadcasters to call its games, while UTV will always be entirely student-run.
Carden also indicated that it will be hard to develop a large base of advertisers with the limited viewership of Penn's ResNet. Roughly 10,000 people have access to ResNet, and UTV's own studies from several years ago indicate that only 300 to 600 people watch UTV sports.
UTV has no plans of altering its coverage with the addition of a competitor. It boasts a staff of 120, compared to Quest's six people. It also has significantly more equipment and resources.
Still, Carden admits that it will be hard for the two networks to coexist.
"There isn't enough capital or demand to start another television station," he said. "There's definitely not enough people who want to do TV to support two television stations."
