UT students will join the Longhorn Network’s production team through five paid internships before the network’s Aug. 26 launch.

The University’s 20-year agreement with ESPN to broadcast exclusive coverage of UT athletic and academic events will bring $300 million to the University and its licensing and marketing firm. For the first five years of the contract, the University has committed half of its $10 million annual payment from ESPN to academic initiatives including two endowed chairs announced by President William Powers Jr. last spring.

Interns will work for 12 to 14 weeks and assist with a variety of tasks, including cutting highlights for programs, submitting story ideas and running the teleprompter during live broadcasts, said Longhorn Network Production Coordinator Brittany Horine.

“We are looking for a very broad pool of candidates,” Horine said. “If someone came from a nontraditional production background but they had certain qualifications and were willing to learn, we could mold [the internship] to be something they would be interested in.”

Fall internship applications will be accepted through the University’s CareerSource website until Aug. 5, but students not hired for the upcoming semester are encouraged to apply again in the spring, Horine said. She said students who intern with the network could be offered permanent jobs or internship positions in Los Angeles and Bristol, Conn.

“This is a great opportunity for students because they will get to work in a state-of-the-art facility with ESPN through the Longhorn Network,” she said. “There are tons of options for them as long as they are hard workers, they want to be challenged and they want to learn.”

Horine said all students are welcome to apply for the positions but a professional and educational background in communications will be helpful. She said the recruiting team is working to extend the job posting to the Business and Education schools’ career services websites.

“We are more than open to any ideas that students have,” she said. “They are a huge source of helping us out with information about the University and it’s always great to get the students’ points of view.”

Elaine Szarmach, a Communication Sciences and Disorders graduate student, said she plans on taking advantage of the professional opportunities the University has to offer when she graduates in May.

“It’s nice to have the career services network available, especially since I’m new to the University and don’t know too many people in the community,” Szarmach said. “I think this internship is a good opportunity for communications students to be more prominent in the community.”

Head football coach Mack Brown said in a June press release the Longhorn Network will give fans one-of-a-kind access to University sports.

“We’re going to be able to give fans of Texas and college football an inside look at our program like nobody’s seen before,” Brown said. “It will give them a chance to see what it’s like to be a Longhorn and get to know all the coaches, players and everyone involved in it on a much more personal basis.”