When Kelsey Hunt thinks of daytime dramas such as “As the World Turns,” she is not transported to a time of whiling away weekday afternoons on the couch.
Instead, Hunt, associate director, Media Services, and a six-week UCCS employee thinks about the demanding actors, byzantine union labor rules and hectic production schedules she endured for 14 years as a behind the scenes player in the once-popular world of soap operas or “soaps.”
“My first job was typing scripts and ordering cars for actors,” Hunt says of her position as a production coordinator for “Another World.” “My desk was in the mail room but I was living in New York and working in television. That was my dream.”
Hunt gradually increased her level of responsibility, eventually working as a coordinating producer then digital producer for “As the World Turns” and leading the development of a digital production department. Her path to success was simple: when someone was sick, she volunteered to fill in; when openings on the production staff occurred, she often volunteered to gain on-the-job training. She eventually earned positions producing such favorites as “Another World,” “As the World Turns,” and “Guiding Light.”
For the Cheyenne Mountain High School and 1996 CU-Boulder graduate, the world of daytime drama was filled with deadlines, production schedules, and a constant demand to do more with less as the broadcast industry changed.
“They say the O.J. Simpson trial was the beginning of the end of soaps and the start of reality TV,” Hunt says of the 1996 trial, the same year she graduated from CU Boulder. “I got into the business expecting to be there for six months and it turned out to be 14 years.”
Hunt is proud of her two Emmy Awards as well as innovations that allowed five episodes to be recorded in only four days as financial pressures mounted and cancellation threats loomed. She also helped form a digital production company, learning techniques unimaginable when she studied television production at CU-Boulder. Those techniques included the idea of publishing to a website instead of relying on NBC’s airwaves. She’s even tried her hand at reality TV, helping to produce pilots for a home makeover show and another depicting two former soap stars trying to make it in Los Angeles.
After “As the World Turns” was cancelled in 2010, the pull to return to Colorado Springs grew stronger for Hunt. She wanted to raise her two sons, Emerson and Will, close to family and near the mountains. A Dec. 2011 job posting to fill the position once held by the late Mark Bell seemed made to order. She combined a visit with family and a search committee interview, accepted the position in January, moved in late February and in March joined the two other members of the department, Media Specialists Ben Sloan and Angie Kinnett.
She hopes to apply the production and management skills learned in New York to UCCS, growing the Media Services Department and developing original UCCS programs for both the Web and television. One idea is to produce a television magazine show highlighting UCCS community-directed efforts to air on Comcast Channel 20.
“We have a lighting grid here that people in New York would envy,” Hunt said of the production studio in El Pomar Center. “Our challenge is to use it effectively.”
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