A group of Iowa State students have invaded morning television.

“It’s 8 a.m. and you’re watching STV 9. Now it’s time for Wake Up ISU,” host Jason Shoultz intones as another morning’s show begins.

“Wake Up ISU,” is a live morning show produced, directed and hosted entirely by students at the university-owned television station, STV 9. The show is put together by a group of ISU students not for class credit, but to gain experience, serve ISU students and faculty. But the show is ultimately an effort to save STV 9 studios from the wrecking ball.

The show’s staff said “Wake Up ISU” is an attempt to show the university that STV 9 is a valuable resource for students in the electronic media studies program within the Journalism and Mass Communications Department.

“I felt like STV 9 was just sitting over here being wasted. I knew we could get the right people to have a successful show, so I decided to give it a shot,” said Jason Shoultz, the creator, producer and co-host of the show.

STV 9’s studios are housed in Exhibit Hall. The future home of STV 9 is uncertain because the building is scheduled for demolition in the next few years to make way for a new engineering building.

“It is important we show the university what we can do so they don’t put our studio in a maintenance closet somewhere when they tear down Exhibit Hall,” said Scott Drzycimski, the show’s broadcast meteorologist. “We’re trying to prove with this show how resourceful we can be and that STV 9 is worth saving.”

Don Sprague, technical supervisor for STV 9, said plans are in the works to build a rehearsal studio in a vacant spot in the basement of Hamilton Hall, but the facility wouldn’t replace the STV 9 studios.

STV 9 has its eye on one of the two studios in the old WOI-TV communications building, but with many other organizations on campus vying for the space, the future home of STV 9 up in the air.

STV 9, which stands for Student Television 9, is a cable-access channel that reaches those in the Ames and Nevada viewing area.

“Wake Up ISU,” which airs Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8 a.m., has a morning show format with news, sports, weather and special guests and entertainment pieces.

“I’ve always liked the idea of a morning show because it incorporates entertainment and hard news in a more laid-back atmosphere,” Shoultz said. “Hard news is OK, but we like to have fun too.”

Now entering its third week on the air, “Wake Up ISU” has already welcomed such guests as one of the football team captains, the editor of the Iowa Agriculturalist, the ISU marching band director and even a 7-foot boa constrictor and an 18-pound tortoise from The Ark pet store.

“Wake Up ISU” has also aired several entertainment pieces including coverage of Club Fest and a tour of the drive-thrus in Ames in search of chicken nuggets.

“The show is kind of a cross between the ‘Good Morning America’ show and ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ with all the crazy stuff we do,” Drzycimski said. “It’s amazing what people will do when you have a camera in your hand.”

But staff members say the show’s student-run status is what’s most important.

“With this show, there is nothing holding us back,” Shoultz said. “We don’t have any big network executives breathing down our necks and telling us how to run the show, just the STV 9 management team.”

Most of the funding for the cameras, lights and equipment used in the studio comes from the Government of the Student Body. Shoultz said he hopes that with GSB’s financial support and possibly a few commercial sponsors, STV 9 can afford a new video editing system.

No staff or crew member of “Wake Up ISU” is paid.

“What makes our show so unique is that we are a bunch of people who came together to produce a live television show twice a week for no credit or anything,” Drzycimski said. “This is quite an accomplishment and we hope to see more of this in the future on STV 9.