The fourth season of OFF CAMPUS, a sitcom created by students in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, will air on CW Philly 57.
Drexel University’s student-produced sitcom OFF CAMPUS will debut its fourth season on CW Philly 57 this weekend. The show, which was recently honored by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, will air the night of Saturday, Oct. 26 at midnight.
OFF CAMPUS tells the story of recent college graduates living in an off campus house in Philadelphia. The show features professional actors Kat Catanakis, Jamie Kerezsi, Chris Ready, Jay Robin and Tom Saporito, who offer a lighthearted and honest look at the confusing world facing college graduates during turbulent economic times. It is written, directed and produced by students from the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.
“CBS, and The CW Philly in particular, are delighted to have been able to provide a broadcast outlet for this student production since 2011,” said Jon Hitchcock, president and general manager of CBS 3 and The CW Philly. “The fact that Drexel’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design can continue to produce programs of broadcast caliber is something both the College and all of us in Philadelphia can take pride in.”
Philadelphia’s CW Philly 57 will air the third and fourth episodes of the series on Saturday night. The third episode of OFF CAMPUS finds the roommates’ lives disrupted by strange happenings in a neighbor’s apartment. In the fourth episode, tensions rise when one of the roommates’ former flings unexpectedly “moves back in.”
In early September, episode four won a College Production Award of Excellence in the “Outstanding College Long Form Fiction Programming” from the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
“Over the course of an entire school year, students in our Department of Cinema & Television craft the scripts and handle all aspects of the production and post,” Allen Sabinson, dean of Westphal College. “We reach out to students in Music Industry, Fashion Design and Interior Design for assistance on scoring, costumes and production design. And, under Andrew Susskind’s inspired supervision, they create an ongoing series that is of professional quality done in a manner that affords our students the closest possible experience they can get to working on a Hollywood set. We couldn’t be more proud of OFF CAMPUS for the NATAS honors and exposure on CW.”
The show has previously earned an NATAS award for “Outstanding Achievement in a Student Production” in 2011 and a nomination in 2012 for “College Production–Arts and Entertainment/Cultural Affairs.” And this is the second year that CW Philly 57 has partnered with Drexel to air OFF CAMPUS.
“The TV Series Production class is intended to emulate as closely as possible the experience of producing a prime-time network television single-camera pilot, exposing students to the rigors of budgeting, scheduling, production and editing,” said Andrew Susskind, director of the TV Production & Media Management Program and faculty advisor for the show. “More importantly, OFF CAMPUS honestly reflects the unique uncertainties, challenges and possibilities of the world that awaits today’s college graduates.”
OFF CAMPUS is made possible by the generous support of the The Kal and Lucille Rudman Institute for Entertainment Industry Studies. The CW Philly (WPSG-TV) and its sister station, CBS 3 (KYW-TV) are part of CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation.