When Oak Park and River Forest High School graduate Tyler Milsap enrolled at Howard University in Washington D.C. two years ago, he went from being a popular local TV personality to just another face in the multi-hued crowd of swaggering undergrads.
For two years, Milsap was the host of The Tyler Milsap Show, which aired every other Wednesday on closed circuit TV at OPRF, on the Internet and on public access TV in the Oak Park and River Forest area.
“We touched all kinds of different topics, including sports, sex, teenage pregnancy, race, death, music,” Milsap said in a recent interview, adding that he credits OPRF film and television teacher John Condne for helping him launch the show.
During his first two years at Howard, Milsap stayed away from the hot studio lights of his hometown and brainstormed. He waited, looked for a need, prepared a plan for meeting it and positioned himself to pounce on the opportunity — which arrived last January.
“I had been typing out the idea in my dorm room and trying to figure out show concepts,” Milsap said, noting that he took his idea straight to officials in the college’s television department, just as he had as a sophomore at OPRF.
“They basically said if I could have some shows to present to them, then they could work with me a bit more,” he recalled.
After some months of polishing and working out the idea, Milsap said, he and some friends got together one week before school let out for the summer and shot all of the promotional footage.
The result is Amir Network — a student-run project comprising five student-produced shows that will run on local TV in the Howard area and on the Internet. Amir is Milsap’s middle name. The five shows range in content but will all start out running roughly 10-20 minutes. Milsap will co-anchor his own news show called One-On-One, which will feature exclusive interviews with local and national newsmakers.
When he arrived on campus in 2013, Milsap said TV wasn’t a huge presence at the respected school, despite its strong communications program.
“Television was never big at Howard until now. I got so many students on this project because I presented the project exactly for what it is,” said Milsap, adding that his lineup of shows will give people his age the news they need and can connect to.
“There was really only one big communications thing here and that was the radio,” said Amir’s co-president and founding member Akiah Singfield, 20 — one of more than 120 student volunteers Milsap has attracted to his dream project.
“We have a television network and one of the most prestigious, arguably the best, communications program in America. So we had things in television [before Amir], but they weren’t at this level,” said Singfield, who majors in media and management.
The other volunteers include executive assistants, production assistants, marketing executives, on-air personalities, stylists, cosmetologists, script editors and community outreach executives, among many other job titles.
Milsap said the network is providing students with aspirations to work in the television, film and entertainment industries, quality experience they can leverage in the future. Think of it as an internship run by students who might otherwise be interning, and possibly getting exploited, by large, established companies.
“Everyone in this project has a passion for what they want to do,” said Milsap, who is the network’s president and CEO.
“Everyone who is a host or a reporter actually wants to be hosts and reporters in real life. We’re starting early with what we want to do. This isn’t a club that we’re in just to say we’re in it. We truly love this project.”
Milsap said the network will be shooting some of its first shows this month. The students are currently utilizing studio space donated by Howard’s television department — space that is quickly closing in on the fast-growing network. Singfield and Milsap said they’re currently in talks with some other media powers in the area for the opportunity to share studio space.
In addition, they have volunteers working to secure funding for the project’s future growth, which Milsap said could come by way of sponsorships and investors. Singfield envisions the network spilling over into campuses beyond Howard.
“We want to offer this program at other universities,” she said. “I’m a transfer from Trinity Washington University and they don’t have this opportunity at all. We also want to reach out to middle- and high school students,”
Milsap envisions Amir as something of an embryonic OWN — the cable TV network that is the brainchild of his role model, Oprah Winfrey.
“Eventually, I see Amir Network in all 50 states,” Milsap said. “The goal is to see it beside [networks like] ABC and TNT.”
Not to mention the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
Milsap said he’s confident he’ll get a chance to meet, and strike up a working relationship with the media mogul. Besides, if she can mentor and help launch one Tyler (Perry that is), why not another? There’s room for two, implies the ambitious OPRF alum, whose immediate family has since moved to New Jersey.
“I look up to Oprah. She’s the ideal,” he said.