"Quiet on the set, tape is rolling," the floor director says, and everyone's attention moves to the horseshoe-shaped desk with an anchorman on one side and a guest on the other.

Soon they are discussing the threat of liquid explosives — and how authorities can keep this threat off airplanes. Earlier in the day, two other guests talked about Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans last year.

You might think this is a Sunday morning news show, and you would be close. Except this is Wednesday afternoon, and the set is UC Davis' Wyatt Pavilion Theatre — home of the university's new program called Frontiers, featuring faculty and other researchers in the sciences and humanities.

Frontiers is set for debut today on the UC Davis home page, www.ucdavis.edu and, soon after, on UCTV in January.

But Frontiers is much more than a TV show and Webcast. The program also has a Web page (frontiers.ucdavis.edu), where people can find links to Web sites related to program topics, as well as Web sites and biographies for faculty members who appear as guests on Frontiers.

News Service Director Mitchel Benson said: "We're presenting some of the biggest bragging points that this campus has to talk about, and we're presenting them in a compelling and professional manner."

Information and Educational Technology, in an agreement with the provost's office, made a one-time allocation of $119,000 for Webcasting on campus, including an initial $20,000 for the production of Frontiers. The News Service and IET's Mediaworks decided to produce Frontiers for public television as well as Webcasting, and to do more than "sit someone down at a table and stick a microphone in their face," Benson said.

"Our goal is fairly clear: to come up with better content and better production values," said Benson, who serves as Frontiers' executive director. Without these elements, the viewers might not stick with Frontiers, and instead surf to different Web sites or click to different television channels.

Frontiers programs are 30 minutes long, and each features two segments. Mediaworks personnel tape the program with five cameras around the theater. Senior producer-director Jeremy Cooke sits in a mobile control room outside the theater, switching from camera to camera for a variety of shots.

Later he works with Benson on editing, to cut each segment to the correct length and to add still photos, graphics and other video to illustrate each topic.

The Frontiers host and producer is Paul Pfotenhauer, a senior public information representative and broadcast specialist with University Communications, who already produces UC Davis NewsWatch and UC State of Minds features for public television and the Web.

Other contributors are Pfotenhauer's colleagues at the News Service and the UC Davis Health System Public Affairs Office. They work with Benson and Susanne Rockwell, the program's associate producer, on program ideas, line up faculty and help develop questions for the guests.

Associate Professor Matt Augustine of the chemistry department was the guest for the liquid explosives segment, drawing on his experience in developing a nuclear magnetic resonance imaging machine that checks for spoilage in bottled wine, without opening the bottles.

Augustine said the same principles could be used to check for liquid explosives in passengers' sealed containers.

The Hurricane Katrina segment drew on the expertise of history professor Ari Kelman, whose book, A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, came out two years before Katrina; and history professor Louis Warren, another environmental historian.

Said Kelman: "What distinguishes this (Frontiers) is they are willing to take on a really complicated topic and try to do a TV show, to make it digestible for the public.

"In that respect, it is very different than any talk shows that I've done before, say, for the History Channel."

He said one of the university's missions is to educate the public about the faculty's scholarly research, "and this is a way to do that — so that the public can engage in the research that in some respects they are underwriting."

Benson agreed: "We are telling the UC Davis story, and building support in the community."