News for and about the Internet2 community

["Ellyn Stepanek (OSTN)" <>]

HBO and OSTN Team Up For Student Public Service Initiative
Featuring HBO’s ADDICTION Documentary Series

Groundbreaking Series Provides An In-depth Look Into The Complex
Dimensions Of Addiction, Treatment And Recovery


NEW YORK, April 23, 2007—HBO and Open Student Television Network (OSTN) 
announced today they are teaming up to make ADDICTION, a groundbreaking 
HBO documentary series, available to college students nationwide on 
their televisions and computers. The series will be available to 
students as a public service initiative beginning today via OSTN, which 
delivers its program streams to educational institutions via the 
Internet2 and National LambdRail networks.

ADDICTION, which premiered on HBO in March, brings together the nation’s 
leading experts on drug and alcohol addiction with a collection of 
award-winning filmmakers to shed light on addiction, its causes and the 
latest and most promising developments in treatments. The series will 
launch on OSTN with a centerpiece 90-minute feature-length film focusing 
on case studies and new medical treatments that can radically improve 
people’s lives.

Consisting of nine segments, the film presents an encouraging look at 
addiction as a treatable brain disease and spotlights the major medical 
advances in treatment. From emergency rooms to living rooms and research 
laboratories, the documentary follows the trail of an illness that 
afflicts so many – one in ten Americans over age 12 is classified with 
substance dependence or drug abuse and one in four Americans has a 
family member struggling with the disease.

Following this feature-length documentary, a supplementary series of 13 
short films will delve into the complex dimensions of addiction. These 
short films feature in-depth interviews with the nation’s leading 
experts, explore innovative family training and treatment approaches, 
successful drug court programs that reduce relapses and re-arrests, and 
the dynamics of  dealing with a disease that sometimes requires as much 
investment from family and community as it does from the individual 
struggling to recover

“We are proud to bring this gripping and extremely informative HBO 
project to college students as a public service,” said Prashant Chopra, 
chief executive officer at OSTN. “We are hopeful that the information 
conveyed by ADDICTION will help college students better understand the 
issue and recognize that they can take control of their situation and 
help others to do so as well.”

Joe Snee, vice president Lodging & Special Markets at HBO, said, “We are 
delighted to be teaming up with OSTN on this public service initiative. 
It is important for college students to understand that addiction is a 
brain disease with treatable options, and ADDICTION gets this message 
across in a powerful way.”

ADDICTION showcases the work of many of today’s leading documentary
filmmakers including Jon Alpert, Kate Davis, David Heilbroner, Susan 
Froemke, Liz Garbus, Rory Kennedy, Eugene Jarecki, Barbara Kopple, 
Albert Maysles, D.A.
Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus and Alan and Susan Raymond.

Segments in the feature-length film include “Saturday Night in a Dallas 
ER,” “A Mother’s Desperation,” “The Science of Relapse,” “The Adolescent 
Addict,” “Brain Imaging,” “Opiate Addiction: A New Medication,” 
“Topiramate: A Clinical Trial for Alcoholism,” “Steamfitters Local Union 
638” and “Insurance Woes.”

ADDICTION is a presentation of Home Box Office in association with the 
Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and 
the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

About OSTN
OSTN is a leading provider of educational, foreign language, news and 
entertainment IPTV content and services. OSTN features the only 24/7 
worldwide channel exclusively devoted to student-produced programming. 
OSTN now is delivered to 41 million subscribers at 4,500 university 
member campuses and 36 countries around the globe. OSTN can be viewed on 
televisions and personal computers.

In North America, OSTN uses both the  Internet2 and National LambdaRail 
advanced nationwide networks to distribute programming to members. It 
uses ORION in Ontario, Canada and the GEANT2 Network, managed by DANTE, 
in the European Union. GEANT2 links to Asia via TEIN2, the Middle East & 
Africa via EuroMed, Latin and South America via ALICE and Australia via 
AARNet. For more information, visit www.ostn.tv/.

About HBO
Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary 
of Time Warner Inc., providing two 24-hour pay television services - HBO 
and Cinemax - to over 40 million U.S. subscribers.  The services offer 
the most popular subscription video on demand products, HBO On Demand 
and Cinemax On Demand, as well as multiplex channels and HD feeds.  
Internationally the subscription video on demand products HBO On Demand 
and HBO Mobile, along with branded joint ventures, bring HBO services to 
over 50 countries.  HBO programming is sold into over 150 countries 
worldwide.

###
begin:vcard
email;internet:
x-mozilla-html:TRUE
version:2.1
end:vcard