George Oliphant looks tired.

Sitting at a picnic table in front of Canyon Pizza, 260 E. Beaver Ave., sporting baggy eyes and sipping his second Red Bull, he looks about ready to pass out.

It's 8:30 on a Friday night in State College and the VJ from the College Television Network (CTN) is getting ready to go out on the town, for the second night in a row.

CTN broadcasts music-heavy programming to more than 720 college campuses across the country. Though not surprisingly, like its parent company MTV, it also features a few shows.

Oliphant hosts Dean's List, the network's version of Total Request Live, only with videos catered more toward college students.

Tonight, he and segment producers Jimmy Guillen and Lamya Al-Janabi are filming for Night Owl, a show that looks at nightlife in college towns that has also invaded the universities of Colorado and Wisconsin. Now it's Penn State's turn in the spotlight.

"I find out what's the scoop with students," Oliphant said earlier in the day, comparing the feel of the show to Insomniac with Dave Attell on Comedy Central.

"I want to get the whole Friday night experience across the student body," he added.

The experience the night before was mostly confessional. Oliphant commandeered a State College taxicab and did laps around Beaver and College Avenue, à la the HBO special. He spent the night picking up students and getting them to open up, sometimes more than he expected.

"Everyone was so wasted," he said. "We almost had a couple girls flash us."

With the Friday night portion of filming, Oliphant was hoping to catch more than just the drunken cab ride home, the tail end of a Penn State night out for some. This romp through town and gown would take him to a range of local nightspots.

"Who could be at the library on a Friday night?" he wanted to know.

Seemed like a good question, but upon driving to campus the answer turned out to be no one. The only encounters were with a campus police officer who informed the crew the library was closing momentarily and an overeager librarian who scolded them soundly for trying to leave through the wrong door.

All this for an opening shot of Oliphant browsing through a dictionary of quotations, which the crew had to brainstorm with for a couple minutes to tie into the segment.

"It's hard working on the fly. Plus I've got a newspaper guy eyeing me," Oliphant said.

The CTN crew had better luck at the HUB-Robeson Center, where patrons of the late-night alcohol-free alternative, Uncommonly Fun Options offered their perspective on the night out.

"It seems like a great way to spend the night instead of going out to the frats," Geoff Morgan (junior-information sciences and technology) told the camera, looking up from his Settlers of Catan board game.

The Uno and Magic: The Gathering players mostly shared that sentiment, but said they would probably hit up the bar scene once they became of age.

While Al-Janabi shot the interviews, Guillen handled a clipboard of release forms, getting signature from those captured on film.

"If the paperwork isn't done, we can't use the footage," he said.

The segment producers on these shoots are responsible for informing their subjects where they're from and what they're doing. The whole process can be hectic, but once the clips are edited and rearranged they yield the finished piece.

"This is not an easy job," Guillen said.

The crew left the HUB and jumped back into the car to head off campus. Earlier in the day, Oliphant had met some girls who invited him to their apartment in Calder Commons. But the crew began to disagree about whether this stop on the journey was really necessary.

After hashing it out in a nearby parking lot, they entered the building and rode the elevator up to the destination, where a girl waited anxiously in the doorway. A crowd from the room across the hall swarmed in, apparently expecting CTN's arrival.

"Our place is always this clean. We didn't just clean it because we knew you were coming," tenant Patricia Andris (junior-human development and family studies) said.

A dance party was arranged in one of the bedrooms, and ten or so dressed-to-kill students bumped and grinded to Sean Paul.

"Sometimes they throw us into things," she said, but added that she was pleased with the footage they were getting from the apartment party.

"You can never shoot enough. You can always edit. And you never know how something will work out until you check it out," she said.

It's all part of the show. A whirlwind tour to produce a mere five-minute segment. And the night was just getting started. The CTN special will air in about two weeks after filming this past weekend.