TV show produced by BYU-Idaho students premieres 50th season, and Nate Eaton was a recent guest
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RIGBY – Latter Day Profiles, a student-produced interview program airing on BYU TV, kicked off its 50th season Sunday.
The show is hosted by Brian Howard and features interviews with prominent members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The 25-minute interview program began production in 2005 on the BYU-Idaho campus. As Howard reflects on this milestone, he tells EastIdahoNews.com he never envisioned it would still be around 20 years later.
“Who knew?” Howard says.
Howard and others started the show as a way to give students TV production experience. He credits his former colleague, Ron Weeks, for coming up with the show’s title.
East Idaho News reporters Nate Eaton and Nate Sunderland were among Howard’s first group of students. Eaton was a recent guest on the show with his wife, Erica, and their daughter, Emmy. You can watch it in the player above.
Seeing former students go on to have successful careers in the news and television industry is one of the things Howard finds most rewarding about this project.
The other thing he likes is talking “to some really cool people.”
Howard has interviewed hundreds of guests over the years. One of his earliest was conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck.
“He was the first official guest (in 2005). His daughter attended BYU-Idaho,” Howard recalls.
Other guests include Jon Huntsman Sr., who passed away in 2018, former news anchor Jane Clayson Johnson and former BYU basketball coach Mark Pope. John Groberg, whose story is told in the movie “The Other Side of Heaven,” was also a guest, as well as former BYU-I presidents Kim Clark, Clark Gilbert and Henry J. Eyring, to name just a few.
Jay Hildebrandt, a former local TV news anchor who now hosts “Sunday Blessings” on Classy 97, has been a guest on the show at least twice, one of which was during the show’s first season. Watch it below.
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Hildebrandt speaks highly of the experience and of Howard’s abilities as a host.
“He did so good with asking the kinds of questions that made me feel comfortable, and questions that focused on my career and faith. Those are two things I feel very passionate about and it was wonderful to be able to talk to him about that and to have a record of it for posterity,” Hildebrandt says.
Like Howard, Hildebrandt is a professor in BYU-Idaho’s Communication department. He says student involvement in “Latter Day Profiles” provides valuable real-world experience.
“This is a product that is seen all over the world, and so it has to meet very high standards. The students are motivated to do their very best and do what they need to do to make it (a quality program),” says Hildebrandt.
There’s a lot of rollover on the production team because there are new students every semester, but Howard is impressed with their dedication to it, even though it’s not something they watch.
“As students come in, they (aren’t familiar) with the show because they don’t watch BYU TV. It’s not their demographic,” Howard explains. “When you get out of college, you’re writing and producing stuff that’s not specifically for your age group, so it’s pretty good training. It’s been great to see students get involved and have fun with it.”
On the first episode of season 50, Howard interviews filmmaker T.C. Christensen, director of titles like “The Cokeville Miracle,” “17 Miracles,” “The Fighting Preacher,” and “Escape from Germany.” (Hildebrandt has a family connection to the main character in “Escape from Germany” and makes a cameo in that film). It’s available to watch on-demand here.
Upcoming guests this season include Cassandra Piket, the interior architect for the Burley Idaho Temple, Christian Euvrard, a church history expert in France and Frédéric Loisel, president of the Paris, France Stake.
Howard appreciates the chance to work with students and always enjoys hearing from people who watch the show.
“Every once in a while, I’ll say, ‘Do we really want to keep doing this?’ Then you meet (someone) who says, ‘Hey, I watch your show. I really like it!'” Howard says. “That’s always gratifying when people say they watch it and enjoy it.”
