What Netflix’s ‘On Campus’ Teaches Higher Ed About Authentic Storytelling

Kevin Tyler

Hello and welcome to “Higher Voltage,” a podcast about higher education that explores what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change in higher ed marketing and administration. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Higher Voltage. Today I have a really good friend of mine on the show, which isn’t always the case, but I’m really excited that he’s here today. We’re going to be talking about a brand new show that was just released on Netflix called “On Campus: Game of the Week.”

My guest today is Alex Edge. Alex is President of Production at Almost Friday Media, where he oversees production across the company’s new media and creator-driven talent. As one of Almost Friday’s first hires, Alex helped build the company into what is now a 50-person operation. He has 15 years of experience producing for television and digital platforms, with credits including truTV’s “Adam Ruins Everything,” Food Network’s “Chopped,” and content for CollegeHumor. Alex is currently producing “On Campus,” a Netflix series that explores college life through the lens of college football. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa. Alex, thank you for being here on “Higher Voltage.”

Alex Edge

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Kevin Tyler

The reason I’m so excited about this conversation is that this Netflix series, “On Campus: Game of the Week,” is almost brand spanking new. There are, I think, four to six episodes out now. What drew my attention was that it felt like it captured college life in a way that traditional higher education marketing simply doesn’t do as often as I think it could.

So I wanted to talk to you about the production of it, the idea behind it, some of the audiences you’re trying to attract — so that folks know first that the show exists, but also some of the things prospective college students might be looking for when it comes to communicating culture from a campus.

But before we get into those details, I just want to level set and talk about the goal of the show. Why does it exist now, and how did you get involved?

Alex Edge

Well, thank you. It’s a great question. The answer to how I got involved is very much rooted in the new media nature of what I do and what Almost Friday Media does, and ultimately, where is media going? What does Netflix have to do to expand bigger than they are?

Essentially, the two top contenders in the streaming wars are Netflix versus YouTube. I don’t think a lot of people think of them like that, but there are more hours consumed of YouTube on a TV than any other platform. So everybody is essentially taking notice of that. And what ultimately is the content that’s on YouTube? Why are they watching content like this? Because ultimately it’s not polished. It’s not Game of Thrones, Stranger Things. And so do they need to be spending high dollar amounts to be making content? Can they be making content faster and more topical?

So Netflix came to us — we essentially specialize in this YouTube content, topical content, travel content — and said, “Hey, we want to make this student-led show,” under their podcast department. Which has been a real big mental hurdle for everyone. I think we’ve all seen Netflix’s podcast initiative, but this is very much a show.

It’s allowed us to work in ways that I think other shows can’t. We get a lot of leeway in different places, and that allows us to work a lot faster. So I am taking my new media knowledge, my run-and-gun production knowledge, and we’ve hit the road. We’ve gone to LSU, Ole Miss, Georgia, and the University of Texas thus far. We’ve made two episodes each week, and the length has gone up each week. The first week was 15 and 20 minutes, but we’re hovering around 30 to 35 minutes now.

What we’re trying to accomplish — and you almost said it in a really nice way — I think everybody has seen a version of college life, and it’s either super polished and glossy, and it almost seems unobtainable. But if we all remember college, it’s a lot of cheap pizza. It’s not the most glamorous thing in the world. We could put out a really hype edit and make it look glossy and aspirational — the Georgia episode kind of got a little too much in that direction. But what we wanted to accomplish is: what are the moments in between? What is the true version of college? What are the forty-five parking tickets that you get? The cheap breakfast after a Saturday night out, where you’re breaking down the night and the shenanigans that everybody got into. I think we really wanted to capture some of those in-between moments that are very real, a little bit more gritty, to show the non-hyped-up edit of what people have seen.

Kevin Tyler

I think this is interesting on a lot of levels. The point you raise around streaming — which isn’t the focus of this conversation, but I think is an important component of it — is that so often in higher education we see institutions use platforms like YouTube as repositories or archives of information. It’ll be a bunch of presentations that are an hour and a half long that we know no one’s going to watch. There are more examples than not of that channel not being leveraged to its possibility.

And I think with this new Netflix arm of podcasts — but it’s also video, it’s shows — that offers another platform for institutions to do something similar, right? Let’s have a more proactive message around who we are, who we serve, why we’re here, and why you will succeed. Because what I’m finding about the episodes of On Campus is that the brand of the institution is kind of falling out of these students’ mouths organically.

I think about the Texas episode, where there were these four young women at Barton Springs and they were talking about all the reasons why they love going to UT Austin. It wasn’t scripted. It felt natural. And they talked about belonging, and “I’m from far away and I found my people,” and all these things that college marketers clamor to get in a natural way — and you’ve been able to capture it almost automatically. What is it about being on campus and filming these folks that gives you a sense of what prospective students want to hear from the students you’re filming?

Alex Edge

There’s a little bit of casting in it too, of finding people who have something to say. We’ve got a robust casting department that has found kids who scream Texas, scream Ole Miss. To your point, I really think the Ole Miss episode was striking — the types of people who went there and how they interacted.

But I think it’s the people with something to say about it, who have ultimately immersed themselves and really found themselves. And then that ties into the football culture, and what football is to a university. It’s something that I maybe have taken a little bit for granted. I went to a mid-major to start my college career, and we didn’t have football like these places do. What a rallying cry football is for the campus, and what a moment it is where alumni, prospective students, and the kids — the week does revolve around these games. And it’s like, all right, well, what are we doing? What’s my outfit? What’s our plan? How can we get the house ready?

These fraternities are getting big-name acts and putting big money into it. The Chainsmokers are coming to these places. And I think in this social media world, a lot of these kids want to put that kind of image out there — that they are living this cool, grand, awesome Georgia life, this grand, awesome Ole Miss life, this Texas life.

It’s going to be interesting as we go on to maybe leave some of the SEC places and see how some of the Big Ten schools react — we’re at USC right now — places that don’t necessarily have maybe that intense burn of football culture, and what they report back. But I will definitely go on the record in saying that the SEC, the South, is special. They really rally around football, and they want to tell you about it.

Kevin Tyler

I think about what you said around the times in between. There’s a line in the show opener that says this is a student-led tour of the best colleges in the nation. And like I said before, it captures slices of campus culture that really matter to students. So the scenes where it’s “we come here for the best burrito in town, and we go over here for Miller Lite,” whatever it is — you are getting the connective tissue between the institution and the community that supports it, in a way that a regular viewbook, or a student post on social media, you’re not going to get those types of details. And it feels very open and honest, and just a different way of approaching messaging for an institution. Is any of that on purpose?

Alex Edge

So this is where I think the podcast part of our show does come in. And this can be true for vlogs and maybe docs in general. But we are sitting there, we are having conversations, and we are ultimately recording the conversations. It’s different from a social media post where I’m chopping out the best thirty seconds here and there. This is like, all right, I’ve got the best five minutes. And five minutes is kind of a lot to occupy. So you spend that time with someone, and people are just talking, and you’re going to get that real, authentic person — versus the social media post, which, I think we both know, is not a true representation of what daily life is. It’s a snapshot into the most exciting part.

Versus what we’re trying to do, which is, okay, we’re going to spend some time with you, we’re going to spend five minutes at this place, and you’ve got to talk about these Hotty Toddy balls. And when you hear about it, you’re like, well, that’s a fried mashed potato ball — that sounds good and terrible at the same time.

So that’s where the podcast part of this comes in. We’re able to be a little bit more raw and intimate with our student ambassadors, ultimately giving the audience a more realistic look than a social media post or a Reel.

Kevin Tyler

I agree with that. And I can’t help but wonder who you imagine the audience for this show to be. Who are you trying to attract with this?

Alex Edge

We’re so new that I would like to think that it’s a little bit of everybody. I know Netflix has dreams of collaborating with the schools to make this a marketing asset for schools, because I’ve heard several times from a few different people, “This is like a commercial for Georgia.”

So I think this is the 16- to 18-year-olds. And then of course it is the 18- to 21-year-olds who are like, “You were featured on On Campus.” Now the people from Iowa hopefully are seeing it, and it’s like, “I wonder if On Campus is going to come.” And then very much so, we are hoping to find the 21 to 45s and tap into a little bit of nostalgia. I think that’s probably a little bit yet to be discovered — I think we’re probably hitting a little bit harder on the 16 to 23s. But it is definitely the goal to find that nostalgic audience who will be like, “Yeah man, I miss it. I miss those days.”

Kevin Tyler

It’s funny, because the first episode that I watched, which was the first one released, at LSU — I’m about to date myself here — but it felt very like MTV’s True Life. It fell right into, you know, “I’m a Tiger.” True Life: I’m an LSU Tiger.

And it feels special in the way that you just described, in that it gives people who might be looking at these schools a type of language that will make them fit in almost immediately, because you’re already familiar with the places and the people and the things — like the Hotty Toddy balls. You know what the culture leans into, or what those pillars of that culture might be.

You mentioned there might be a goal of Netflix to work more closely with the schools, which we’ll talk about in a little bit because I think that’s important. But what a great thing it might be for it to feel like a jackpot when Netflix shows up on your campus unannounced to do this thing, and you’re like, oh my gosh — it’s a golden ticket, right? And what this show could mean to the marketing practices for an institution. Because right now we still see a lot of the same kinds of efforts in marketing — the same kinds of tactics, I should say — that are just not working, and we are up against a wall in the industry. So it feels like a new, really fresh way to talk about campus culture that isn’t like, “Here is our campus culture.”

Alex Edge

Yeah, it’s definitely a goal that we want. We want to have a collaborative relationship with the schools. We aren’t out to embarrass anybody. We do want to show party culture, we want to show fun. I don’t think that schools are ignorant to the fact that party culture is a part of it. I do think that we want to be sensitive about it, and we’re not here to show over-consumption in any way. We’re trying to be responsible, and I think we have a responsibility not to be egregious with it. But I think it’s also probably irresponsible to say that it’s not a part of it — that there aren’t parties at the fraternity houses and sorority houses, and thriving bars that you have to pay a hundred dollars to get into.

There were bars on game day at Ole Miss — and granted, it was a big game — hundred-dollar cover, that you had to show up for very early. But I learned that at the start of the year, if the bar is called The Library, you go at the beginning of the year and you buy a library card for a hundred dollars, and that just gets you in free cover. So it’s like a locals-only card.

Kevin Tyler

What?

Alex Edge

But if you don’t have that, you’ve got to show up at like 2 or 3 p.m., pay, get your wristband, and then you can go later — because if you go later it’s even more expensive. But people are paying it.

Kevin Tyler

Of course they are. It’s Ole Miss.

Alex Edge

So we could do an episode about Ole Miss, for sure. And I’m surprised that Ole Miss hasn’t gotten more coverage around just what a caricature that place is. I’m semi-curious about Mississippi State, but anywho.

So yeah — maybe this conversation will unlock some of those doors. But we want to show off what it’s really like, and how cool college is, and how cool football culture is.

Kevin Tyler

I’m curious if you’ve gotten any feedback from any of the campuses that have been featured so far. Have they seen it? Do they know it’s out there? Because it’s pretty guerrilla, the way that it’s made.

Alex Edge

I don’t think I’ve gotten any feedback. I haven’t heard of any feedback. I’m sure that somebody somewhere knows that this is happening. But nobody — I’m sure there’s a little bit of uneasiness. It’s like, do we want to be involved with that, because they are showing drinking. So I think it might take someone to be taking a chance. And I think we would certainly be willing to have concessions, and chat with people, and work something out. We’d love to do that. But like anything, it takes somebody just taking that chance. I bet you people are like, “What is this?”

Kevin Tyler

I bet. The conversation that you and I had preparing for this — when you said that no one on campus in an administration knows that this is happening, I almost fell on the floor. But I also understand that Netflix wants a really real, unvarnished, not-perfect representation of what game week looks like on these huge campuses.

And what’s exciting about it to me is that the time leading up to a big game like that illuminates the best parts of campus, right? Everyone comes out, it’s connective, people are showing up for the same reason. There is a real cultural currency around college athletics that’s just kind of hard to capture when everything is really shiny.

Alex Edge

Yeah, definitely.

Kevin Tyler

I’m also curious if you could share, if you’re able to, how games are selected. Or is it the school that’s selected, or something else?

Alex Edge

Yeah, we’re figuring it out, like so many things on this show. I think we have some places that we definitely want to hit because they are such dynamic places. Georgia was essentially that — Oklahoma’s a good team, but I think we knew it wasn’t maybe the best matchup. This week we’re at USC, and it’s definitely not the best matchup, but we wanted to show what going to school in urban Los Angeles is like, and that was important.

It’s frustrating for me as a proud Midwest Big Ten guy. I want to show the Big Ten charm, but the SEC is special, and there’s just so much pull to do those schools. They shine so bright around football culture.

We are making some moves, because when we did the Ole Miss game — Ole Miss’s or LSU’s first game, the Texas game — those were just such topical, in-the-zeitgeist games that it’s good for us to tackle that. So we’re talking about making some production changes to be a little bit more nimble around the football schedule, because for one, it’s hard to predict. So there are schools and places that we want to hit, but we also want to be trying to get the best game. So it’s just a conversation about the two of those and how they intersect. But yeah, the SEC is real.

Kevin Tyler

Yes it is. I’ve had a couple clients in the SEC, and I can attest. What about students? How are they selected? Is there a casting call? What does that look like?

Alex Edge

Yes, there’s a casting call. I would need to catch up with our team to see really what’s working with them. We’re trying to improve that process, to cast a little bit of a wider net. But I think they’re calling the local clubs, local organizations, the bars — whoever would enjoy this sort of thing.

In a similar way to the school involvement, I think the more people that see the show, and hopefully as the show does better, people will be reaching out to us and our submissions will improve. But right now we’re turning over every stone and just trying to figure out who’d be interested, who wants to do this.

Kevin Tyler

So as we mentioned, it’s huge institutions that have been featured so far. Do you envision a world in which smaller, more regional schools are featured in these episodes?

Alex Edge

Yes and no. Netflix is still a major show, and so I think we are going to be appealing to the larger masses — the Ohio States, the Michigans, the Georgias, the Texases. Those are always going to play the best. People are interested in them.

But our showrunner and myself are intrigued about the Harvard versus Yale game, which would be fun on a different level. But it does get a little bit more niche.

Kevin Tyler

There are some HBCU games that would be super, super cool.

Alex Edge

Yes. It’s eluding me right now, but there is — and maybe you know — I think two weeks after the season ended, there’s apparently the game. It’s supposed to be the biggest football event that nobody’s heard of. Maybe you know what it is. It’s not Grambling. I think it’s in Louisiana or around somewhere there, but it’s supposed to be just phenomenal. I should have written this down — we just talked about it today. But yes, we would love to do something like that. Not as an in-between episode, but it’s like, all right, we’ve gone to five SEC schools in a row. Let’s break this up. Let’s go to Grambling.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah, FAMU would be amazing as well. There are so many different kinds of institutions where the brand reputation might not live on the same plane as an Ohio State or a Michigan — but the football games might. And that might be the ticket for them to get into this kind of visibility.

Alex Edge

Georgia Southern. That’d be awesome.

Kevin Tyler

On a platform as big as Netflix, with the reach that it has, for no money. They’re not paying for this.

Alex Edge

We’ll get there. I feel confident. We’re trying to make a name for ourselves, so we’re playing the hits.

Kevin Tyler

But there’s no investment from the institution, right? Like zero, because they don’t know what’s happening. So it’s free advertising, and that’s super cool.

Does working on this project make you think about higher education differently than you may have before?

Alex Edge

This is probably another podcast episode, and I don’t know how badly you want to get into this type of thing. But I am blown away by how important football is, and athletics are — and outside of just our show and this game, NIL and the money that comes in.

I think in so many ways college has jumped the shark a little bit. Where does academics rank on the priorities for students? I’m sure for a big majority of them it is still high, number one. But I’m sure that for a huge part of them it was like, I love the football team, I love what the social aspect looks like, and the school is maybe second, and the academics are second or third. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I think I still am — that in large part, this is so important.

Kevin Tyler

It’s an important component of the college experience for a lot of people, whether you are an athlete or not. It’s part of the fabric of the experience. Your comments raised for me the Protect College Sports bill that was just passed recently around NIL and antitrust and everything else that’s included in that, and how that might shift or change the landscape for college athletes — and so many other things. College has become a lot of things to a lot of people, and athletics plays a really important role in that.

The question that I’d love to end on is the question we end every episode with. Knowing that you are not working in higher education in the ways that folks like me and my peers do — what do you think higher education is going to look like in five or ten years?

Alex Edge

I think that there probably needs to be some version of this in high school too. We need to adjust. I think it needs to become a little bit more practical. I think the trades need to be probably a little bit more important. AI is very real. It’s here to stay. And I think that there are a lot of degrees that kids are getting that they aren’t able to apply to their jobs, or their inevitable future jobs. It’s like, all right, I got this degree in X, but I’m going to do it in Y, because those are the only jobs that are ultimately available. I’m not sure college has quite caught up to that.

And/or liberal arts schools, I think, could have an interesting moment. Critical thinking could be having a moment right now — all right, well, how do you exercise your brain to think creatively and outside the box, to accomplish this problem that a robot can’t? Creativity, I think, needs to be important. So I think college should make a little bit more of a focus around the trades, and ultimately creativity and philosophy, to combat this AI.

Alex Edge

What did that answer just do to you?

Kevin Tyler

No, what I was going to say is that I don’t know all the ins and outs of why this show is happening right now, or what Netflix’s goals are. There are things that you don’t know, that I don’t know, that only Netflix knows. But it feels like the timing could not be better for this kind of introduction to a new way to talk about institutions, or a part of the institutional experience in higher education. Because as an industry, we are so dedicated to antiquity and nostalgia, and what we’ve always been is how we always want to be. And there’s a time and place for that, right? I get it, I understand. Longevity has currency. But the expectations of this new consumer base are different than what has always been important to people in the past.

And being able to see ourselves as prospective students on a campus is really the goal of marketing, right? You are doing that in a way that no school actually is. They’re crafting narratives. They are coming up with what some might call gimmicks. There are all these other ways of looking at what new could look like in higher education. And this feels like a really interesting opportunity for people to see how storytelling — even storytelling that is attached to athletics — can move people to say the things that you want them to say in your commercials, in a real way that doesn’t feel scripted and produced. It feels like there’s a lot of opportunity here, if not at least a lot of ways to look at it as an example of what could be true about higher education marketing.

So what I was reacting to is just that no one here knows what the future of higher education is going to look like — but if we don’t change the way we talk about it, it won’t matter at all. This is, I know, not the focus of your work with Netflix, but it definitely is what captured me and my interest in having this conversation.

Alex Edge

Well, you’re absolutely right. And look, we definitely have talked about it, and we are extremely open about it, and it is — to one of your first questions — it is a goal of the show. I want to show what the intimate moments of college are. And again, it’s those moments in between the social media posts. It’s waiting in line with your friends. It’s wearing the outfit that isn’t meant for twenty degrees, and you’re running from your dorm to the bar. It’s some Iowa stuff too — it’s the parking tickets, it’s the scooters, it’s walking to campus, it’s being late, it’s the cramming for a test, but then maybe I will go out. It’s being broke — even though some of these places, these kids aren’t broke.

Kevin Tyler

You need to pay a hundred bucks to get in a bar.

Alex Edge

What’s crazy — and I shouldn’t do this — but she didn’t even go. She got the wristband and she didn’t go.

Kevin Tyler

Get out of here. Are you crazy?

Alex Edge

She had a more fun thing going on somewhere else. So, funny how you can have options. I would have spent all day there. I would have gotten my hundred-dollar wristband and I would have sat in the corner and spent the entire day.

Kevin Tyler

Funny how that can happen sometimes.

Alex Edge

But enough of that. Listen, we want to tell a really authentic story, and we don’t want to show a polished hype reel. The show is a bit of a podcast, it’s longer form, so you can have real moments with our kids.

Kevin Tyler

Alex, thank you so much for joining me on Higher Voltage to have this conversation. I can’t wait to see what other schools are going to be coming online and being featured later this season. And we’ll have a close look at what happens with enrollment. Maybe we can have someone come on from the administration to talk about how this may have shifted the reputation of the institution, or had some impact on the bottom line.

Alex Edge

I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the support here. We will be going next to Penn State and then to Indiana, so giving the Midwest, Big Ten a little bit of love. Before, I think, ultimately we’ll probably end up in Knoxville, and Notre Dame, South Bend, and last but not least going to Columbus, Ohio for the Michigan and Ohio State game. And I know you’re not a massive fan. But that’ll be an interesting one to see, because the Michigan–Ohio State game is a part of Thanksgiving history for a lot of people.

Kevin Tyler

I’m not. I know about it, but I’m from there, so whatever that means.

I think the other part about this that I think is kind of cool is that — I’ve traveled to hundreds of college campuses, but those trips have not always aligned with college game days. And you get to see, weekend after weekend, institutional tradition, day in and day out. There’s got to be something special about that, to me at least.

Alex Edge

Yeah, I mean, again, we’ve gone to the hits. And I probably spent too much time talking about Ole Miss when candidly I should have been talking about LSU. Louisiana just in general is a special, special place, and what defined that was the tailgate. It was just so many different types of people, so many different types of music, so many different types of food, and everybody was there for the same reason. They couldn’t have been more different. That one’s a really incredible place.

But what makes this whole thing different is that Ole Miss is kind of doing the same thing, but it’s different. And Texas was doing kind of the same thing, but it’s different. I didn’t get to go to Georgia, but Georgia again was like everybody’s doing these same things, but it’s different. Because these states and schools all have their different history and different cultures, and it is pretty special.

Kevin Tyler

Alex Edge from Almost Friday, and now Netflix. Thank you so much.

Alex Edge

Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate your time.

Kevin Tyler

That’s it for this week’s episode of Higher Voltage. We’ll be back soon with a new episode and until then you can find us on Twitter @VoltHigherEd and you can find me Kevin Tyler on Twitter @KevinCTyler2.