There is more to the life of a Booze News staff member than drinking and partying.

That was the idea behind the TV show that Alex Hedlund, a first year graduate student in Communications, pitched to MTV producers who visited campus in late May.

The Urbana native, who graduated from the University with a degree in media studies and cinema studies in the spring, is managing editor of The Booze News, an independent weekly newspaper that takes a humorous look at the college partygoer lifestyle. He also writes a regular column called “Big Man on Campus.”

With the end of his senior year approaching, he had not yet been accepted to graduate school and was unsure of where his future was headed.

“I was not looking forward graduation because I didn’t have a next step,” he said. “There was a time period when I was in limbo, had no idea what I was going to do, and I thought I was gonna just move home to my parents’ basement and that would be that.”

It was during this time that Hedlund came up with an idea for a television show loosely based on his experiences working on the staff of The Booze News while dealing with relationships, classes, other jobs and the many of the other trials that face college students.

Hedlund said that he has never seen a successful show about college students and he doesn’t understand why. The original concept for the show was a fictionalized account of the lives of students working on a newspaper staff.

“A lot of the storylines would be about these students juggling their responsibilities on the paper and class and parents – what the parents think about it, what your girlfriend thinks about it,” he said.

Hedlund said that even though he isn’t a big fan of MTV, when he found out that the network was going to be on campus, he thought it would be a great opportunity to tell them about his idea.

He filmed a trailer with the help of staff members from The Booze News. Writer Whitney Middleton, senior in Business, helped by letting Hedlund film her talking with her roommate, typing on her computer and pretending to have an argument on the phone.

Hedlund said he didn’t want to wait in line with the other hopefuls.

“We were like, ‘No, we’re not gonna wait in line, we’ve got a real show here for you. You need to watch this,'” he said. “So we met with a producer and pitched her the idea and she flipped. She loved it.”

After not hearing anything for a month, he received a phone call from Superdelicious Productions, a Los Angeles company that produced FOX’s “The Simple Life” and MTV’s “The Assistant” with Andy Dick. They said they were interested in Hedlund’s idea.

Soon he was spending up to three hours a day on the phone with producers from L.A. discussing characters, storylines and background information for the show.

Hedlund said he soon learned that his show was a finalist for the new MTV series “The Reality Show,” which asks viewers to vote on their favorite show out of 10 finalists.

“I never wanted my show to be a reality show,” he said. “I thought I had like a solid idea, it was going to be more than like, you know, some ‘Laguna Beach’ rip off or anything like that.”

He said that although he was hesitant about the direction the show was taking, everyone around him seemed excited.

“I was pretty shocked because I did it thinking nothing would come of it,” Middleton said. “It was scary to think about my entire life being on film but at the same time it was exciting to think about being affiliated with MTV.”

Word of the show slowly began spreading throughout the campus.

Mike O’Malley, senior in Engineering, said he learned about the show late this summer from Booze News group on www.facebook.com.

“I think I could relate to it more than other reality shows because it takes place in the world I’m familiar with,” O’Malley said.

While Hedlund remained reluctant about the show’s direction, he said others involved were wrapped up in the idea. He said people started going on diets and getting new wardrobes in preparation for filming. There were also former staff members who tried to rejoin when they heard about the show.

“I wasn’t going to back down. I wasn’t going to sacrifice who I was just to be on TV,” Hedlund added.

He feels the producers couldn’t see past the name “Booze News” and look at the depth of the people involved.

One morning late in July, Hedlund received a phone call from a producer who had been meeting with MTV who said they were concerned about the drinking that would be going on. In the end the show was deemed “too edgy.”

Middleton said that while the staff had gotten excited about the idea from helping Hedlund along the way, it was somewhat of a relief when it didn’t happen. She said the show would have added stress to people’s busy lives and possibly had an impact on their future in the job market.

Hedlund is taking his disappointment in stride.

“I’m not bitter at all,” he said. “It’s easy to get excited about an idea. And the one thing that I always told myself is that I’m not going to sacrifice who I am or the content of the show.”