Hanna Chu
Staff Writer
While most students are busy studying for finals during dead week, a group of Pepperdine students are going to Las Vegas, but they are not going to gamble.
Some of the cast and producers from “The Robby Mooring Show” will be attending an awards ceremony at the Las Vegas Convention Center on April 21 after winning first place for a student-produced studio show in the 2005 Broadcast Education Association Festival of Media Arts Student Video Competition.
“I was really surprised,” said Robby Mooring, a senior television production major and host of “The Robby Mooring Show.” “I didn’t think we’d win. We were just goofing around. We didn’t expect to get an award for this.”
The show emulates a late-night talk-show format like “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” but the entire production is “scripted, so it’s like a sitcom,” said Andrew Hoff, a senior business administration major and the show’s co-host. “All the guests are fake. My character is Doc McGee, and I’m fake,” Hoff said.
The producer of the show, senior television production major Jon Schmidt, was the first one to learn that “The Robby Mooring Show” had won first place in the competition.
“I was Googling my name, because I wanted to know if I was the only famous Jon Schmidt in the world,” Schmidt said. When he found out the show won, he said he “didn’t believe it at first.”
“I knew that we had mailed it in, but I didn’t think we would win,” Schmidt said.
Even the show’s director, senior Brianna Dellinger, did not find out that they won until the word spread through campus.
“I guess the Peppervine is good for something,” Dellinger said.
“I was very surprised to win,” she added. “I know our show is great for a college show, but I didn’t realize we would be competitive on the national level.”
This sense of disbelief was mutual between many of the students involved in the show’s production.
The idea for the show was developed when Schmidt and Mooring visited the beach. They had worked together previously on a television game show called “U-Betcha” and wanted to keep the same team working together. While “U-Betcha” proved to be too much work for a small production team, they had other ideas for what might make a successful show. As they were talking it over, Schmidt suggested a show similar to David Letterman’s late-night talk show.
“The show was born on the beach,” Schmidt said.
Although Hoff and Schmidt write a script for each show, “all the people who act in it contribute, because it involves a lot of improv,” Hoff said.
Mooring and Hoff are consistently featured on the show as co-hosts, but the guests change with every episode, just as it would on any other late night show. The show even has a band, called The Robby Mooring Show Quartet.
“We knew that there was no way to get famous guests to come on our show, so we have to have fake guests,” Mooring said.
But instead of having a routine interview with some laughs, the show takes a different approach.
“It’s Robby’s show, but he’s never in control of his own show,” Schmidt said.
The show has many running storylines and repeated jokes that would only be understood if viewers saw the previous episodes.
The award-winning episode is one where Mooring finally fires the entire production crew for constantly causing disruptions during the talk show.
“He fired the camera people, so nothing moved, and then he fired the music people, so there was no music,” Hoff said. “There were a lot of bleeps.”
The show has garnered attention from many Pepperdine students.
“My favorite part of the show is the opening because the monologue isn’t funny, but the way Robby does it makes it pure genius,” senior religion major Zac Luben said.
“Drew has a flair for acting,” senior history major Nate Breedan said. “I like to watch Robby deal with the chaos that is Drew Hoff.”
“The Robby Mooring Show” even has a Facebook group for its fan base.
Although Mooring and Hoff are hosts, the comedic show is the product of a team of students who work together.
Senior Hood Whitson is co-producer of the show.
“He (Whitson) does a lot more of the technical elements like the lighting and the set design,” Schmidt said. “He’s the quality control. Brianna decides what cameras to take and if people are in their places. There’s a lot of people involved.”
For the group of students working on “The Robby Mooring Show,” the experience has been about more than just learning production skills.
“I have been working with Jon and Hood for the majority of our college experience,” Dellinger said. “This is definitely the best work we have done. It is always non-stop laughing.”
The whole “Robby Mooring Show” is done without a budget.
“We do the whole show with absolutely zero money,” Hoff said.
All the students involved have to balance their time between the show, school and other things going on in their lives.
“We’re getting better at it as we learn how to do things,” Hoff said.
“The Robby Mooring Show” airs on TV-26 on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 11 p.m.
03-24-2005