After years of providing live television coverage for Dance Marathon, a student news group has decided not to cover the 32-hour event.

Recently an e-mail was sent to the Dance Marathon office announcing that the BG24 News staff will not be providing live coverage this year.

This was a decision made by the BG24 executive board due to several concerns including staffing, amount of planning, time available, and scheduling issues with classes and projects.

“We feel that covering Dance Marathon is not in the best interest for BG24 News this year,” said Erika Smith, head of BG24.

This decision was finalized last Wednesday after the executive board sat down and weighed the pros and cons of the 32-hour coverage.

Although BG24 will not provide full coverage, they are excited to still be involved with Dance Marathon because it’s something they have done for several years.

BG24 is working on a smaller production, possibly filming behind the scenes of setup and/or tearing down.

“Post production will be the biggest role in this smaller project,” Smith said. “It can be spread out throughout the rest of the semester, as opposed to covering the event live in just those 32+ hours.”

Details of this project have not been finalized, but both groups are looking forward to it.

Kate Freedman of the office of Dance Marathon is excited to see the finished product.

“We understand the amount of time it takes to put on this sort of production each year and sometimes it just isn’t possible,” Freedman said.

Freedman added that Dance Marathon is considering using a Web cam during the event to offer some live coverage on the Internet.

While Smith said that the BG24 staff is disappointed, exec board feels that this is the best option in order to make their newscast better quality.

Many members work internally with Dance Marathon and it’s hard to be part of both because they require a lot of time and dedication.

So internally, many members are helping out with this great cause.

“The smaller project will benefit Dance Marathon in a new and different way, but still relate to our field of study/interest,” said Jay Schell, who is technical director for BG24.

Schell added that so far he hasn’t hear any complaints from either group.