Professor Tim Byrnes
At °IJʿ there’s no “ivory tower,” but political science professor Tim Byrnes is one of the popular panelists on a local television show by that name. The Ivory Tower Half Hour, one of Central New York’s longest-running local shows, is celebrating a decade on the air.
Byrnes has been with the show for about five years, which, according to a in the Syracuse Post-Standard, draws about 9,000 viewers a week.
On the Friday-evening program, Byrnes and his fellow panelists (all academics from area colleges) discuss issues in the local and national news, assigning As and Fs to the most prominent newsmakers. The moderator and host is David Rubin, dean emeritus of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Byrnes enjoys the gig.
“One of my favorite times of every week is the hour on Friday mornings when we prepare for, and then tape the show,” he said. “The most interesting shows for me are the ones we do right around elections. We all tend to have expressed strong opinions and predictions in the months leading up to the polling, so it is fun to see who was right… and even more fun to see who was wrong.”