Seniors JJ Davidoff and Spencer Meyers Lead RCSTV, Riverdale’s Newest Media Outlet
Riverdale Review: Why did you two start RCSTV?
Spencer Meyers: My ninth-grade year, I was in the Student Council, and I thought that there was an issue with the communication between the Council and the student body. I thought that there was a lack of information there with telling the student body what was really going on. And I thought RCSTV could be a good platform to increase the communication between the Student Council and the student body. Also, we really wanted to provide Riverdale with something fun, something entertaining that could be a positive force in the school. Something that could bring the community together, something that everyone no matter what their interests are, can watch and enjoy watching. We also wanted to increase communication within our school [and] let everyone know what was going on. We wanted to create a balance of sharing informative content that lets people know what’s going on, and also do a lot of really fun stuff that excites the community and that everyone wants to watch.
RR: What are some memorable things that RCSTV has already been able to do?
JJ Davidoff: Everything we've done has been memorable in different ways. Our quality has gotten better as the years have gone on, and now we're in our third year running the club. In our first video, I played Mr. [Rob] Shin in basketball, and that was funny. We interviewed [then-senior] Stephen Fealy about his music production and [then-junior] Corwin Cheung about his Rubik’s Cubing. And then we picked it up from there. Last year I would say our biggest breakthrough was when we covered the Dodgeball Tournament. I think that's what really got us on the map. People were just really into that and really into sideline interviews and it was just a really cool way to get everyone excited about a community event. And then this year we went to a girls’ and boys’ varsity soccer practice, and we just got a good bunch of cool, funny footage. That was really popular.
Meyers: In our first year, we also covered the ninth-grade elections. We interviewed Jordanna Yablon and Juliette Shlomm, who were running for presidency as [ninth-graders]. Then, last year, the first video that we did was an interview with [Head of Upper School Mr. Tom Taylor], for the student body to get to know him and for parents to get to know him and welcome him to the community...I think that was our most popular piece, but I think that was a valuable thing to people, to give him a way to introduce himself to the community rather than, like, an email. We also did a video with [Director of Athletics Mr. John Pizzi], asking him about the athletics calendar and where the athletics stood. There were a lot of unanswered questions at that time about when we were going to have sports again, so we wanted to get some questions answered for everybody.
RR: What is RCSTV’s format and length? Where do you upload new episodes? Is the format standard across all of your videos, or does it change?
Davidoff: We don’t really have a standardized format. We’re experimenting with different types. We've done like 15-minute interviews. Then we've also done whole episodes where there’s more than one segment. The mic’d-up practices were only 30 seconds long each.
RR: What is RCSTV working on right now?
Meyers: Right now, we're working on a mental health documentary. We've already gotten some responses from people willing to volunteer. We really want to give students a platform to assess and communicate their feelings about their mental health experiences at Riverdale. There are a lot of workshops, and we had that assembly recently, and we just want to get some feedback from the students to give it directly to the administration, to let them know what’s going on and if we're on an upward trajectory with how the school is handling mental health issues. That’s going to be our most significant project to date. I think it’s really meaningful and has an opportunity to create a lot of change at the school. And I'm very excited about that project.
Davidoff: We'll also keep doing our interviews and going to practices with winter sports, because that was just really popular and funny.
RR: How can RCSTV expand its outreach to the entire Upper School?
Meyers: Distribution has been a big problem for us. In the past, we have wanted to try some different means of distribution, and have been kind of shut down with the censoring of our content. And [there are] a lot of channels we have to go through to get our content publicized. I do think that if we get our content out, a majority of the school would be really excited about it and be really interested. The problem is just, how do we get it in front of them? Not everybody checks their email all the time, and that has been a big challenge for us.
RR: What do you think that RCSTV has to offer that, say, The Riverdale Review doesn’t?
Davidoff: Well, it’s a different form of media: it’s video, and The Riverdale Review is writing. But I think we're a little bit less of an institution, in the sense that we're not really as connected to the administration. We might not get censored as much as the newspaper, and it’s not like we don’t have trouble publicizing our stuff, but we're just a little bit less constricted because we're a relatively new club.
Meyers: There’s definitely a place in time for essays and formal writing and for interviews of that nature. But RCSTV can also provide a more exciting format to watch people in your school on film and being interviewed, live and in person. That’s a really cool experience. One of the big things in our club is that there really is no hierarchy. You can come in as a ninth-grader and contribute instantly. You can do whatever you’d like to do. We give our members a lot of freedom, and the idea behind that is we really want to touch on basically everything that there is. We want to cover as much as we can and do a variety of things. We don’t limit ourselves as to what kind of content we can put out.
